Most sequels are… of a somewhat less-than-Oscar-worthy quality. A movie is made, people love it, the critics love it. Or maybe they just concede that it’s entertaining. Anyway, filmmakers distill the basic plot, mix it with a few new characters, add some heavy-handedness, drain out the originality and what made the movie good in the first place, and boil everything down into a bland Forgettable Film Pudding.
Once, on very rare occasions (you can tell by the blue moon, flying pigs, and the opening of skating rinks in Hell), the director will manage to make a second film that’s as good as the first. Sometimes even better. You can probably count them on your fingers, but they exist. The Godfather Part II is often mentioned, and Toy Story 2. (In fact, I got the idea for this thread after reading an effusive review for Toy Story 3 in today’s paper. Which would make it a brilliant threefer).
So… pick yer best second acts.
(Books, of course, suffer from sequelitis as well. But the process that makes a bad written series is different from the kind of thing that goes on in Hollywood. So that’s for a separate thread).
Hate to be really nitpicky (I know how much that is frowned on here:))
Army of Darkness, Last Crusade and Clear and Present Danger were all part three of the respective movie series. OP asked for best second acts.
I might grudgingly concede that if you are talking about Tom Clancy movies starring Harrison Ford, then CaPD was a superior sequel, but only because Patriot Games was shit.
And while Manhunter was based on the novel Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs wasn’t filmed as a sequel, but as a film in it’s own right. In fact IMHO it was superior to it two true sequels Hannibal and Red Dragon.
I would like to nominate Star Trek II. As well as being a far more entertaining story to the first ST movie, I think it was one of the best Star Trek movies altogether.
I also liked what Blade2 did to the story. The first Blade movie was a nice take on the vampire genre, but I personally liked what they did with the reapers in the sequel (plus Ron Perlman).
I question whether The Four Musketeers is actually a “sequel” of The Three Musketeers. It was originally filmed as a single movie and the producers later decided to cut it in half and release it as two movies.
As I recall, the actors sued the producers, since they were only paid for one movie.
IIRC, BTTF II and III were actually shot at the same time and also The Matrix II and III.
It might also be an interesting discussion if LOTR should be viewed as three movies or one movie released in three parts, since the all the principal photography was done at the same time.
Using this same logic, I have to put up Cyborg 2. While I did not see the original Cyborg, Cyborg 2 has Angelina Jolie naked.
Looks like any movies I’d seriously nominate have already been mentioned, so it’s just +1’s for The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, and The Wrath of Khan.
What surprises me is how movie franchises can hit in an every-other-one pattern like Star Trek, Indiana Jones.
It totally broke away from the established plot progression and epic scale of the Old Testament, and instead focussed on one protagonists personal development through the remininces of friends. Plus, I don’t want to use the spoiler tag, but it has a surprise ending.
