Sorry about the thread title, but I did not know how to phrase this.
I just watched ‘The Last Boy Scout’ and I thought it should be included in the Die Hard Box set of DVDs. It is Die Hard 2 1/2. Bruce Willis plays almost the exact same character with the movie having similar plot lines and humour as the Die Hard movies.
Are there other examples in other movie series?
I remember reading rumors that Gran Torino would actually be about ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan in his golden years. If you’ve seen the movie you know that Clint Eastwood plays a guy called Walter Kowalski (I believe) but there is really no reason it couldn’t be Dirty Harry. I guess you could consider it an unofficial sequel.
Speaking of Clint Eastwood, in Pale Rider, when the villain hired a gunman to kill the preacher, the actor playing the gunman bore more than a passing resemblance to Lee Van Clief. So it could be considered an “unofficial sequel” to the “Dollars” movies.
Also, the writer of High Plains Drifter said that the movie’s basic premise was “what would have happened to the town in High Noon, if Gary Cooper’s character had been killed?”
Gene Hackman’s character in Enemy of the State (1998) is almost exactly like his character from The Conversation (1974), and might even be the same person, depending on how clever you think the filmmakers were.
Pulp Fiction features the same actress playing the same character that she did in Curdled, although her name changed for some reason. Then Curdled was re-made into a full-length film two years *after *Pulp Fiction was released.
Maybe not quite what the OP wanted, but Michael Keaton played ATF agent Ray Nicolette a year apart in Jackie Brown and Out of Sight, both of which were based on books written by Elmore Leonard, sort of putting both movies in the same universe. Not a sequel, but not an entirely unrelated movie either.
*War, Inc. * is sort of an unofficial sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank.
I thought Unforgiven finally told us who the Man with No Name was…at least thats how I like to think of it.
For those of us who don’t wanna chase your links,who?
Preston Sturges’s The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek can be construed as a sequel to his The Great McGinty, since both McGinty and the Boss show up in Miracle. Evidently the events of Miracle happened in the middle of McGinty.
In the same light, Coming to American has a cameo of the Duke Brothers from Trading Places.
Considering this bit of trivia from IMDb, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch:
The cabbie, lazybones.
Red Sonia is effectively a sequel to the Conan movies. Some sources say the character Swarzenegger played was actually Conan but they had to change the name due to licencing issues.
Kull the Conqueror was intended to be Conan the Conqueror. Schwarzennegger bailed, so they re-wrote it for Kevin Sorbo.
The Kurt Russell movie Soldier is considered to be somewhat of a sequel to Blade Runner
Die Hard 2 wasn’t supposed to be a sequel to Die Hard. It was originally a movie called 58 minutes and was rewritten to feature John McClane instead. Die Hard With A Vengeance was supposed to be a Brandon Lee movie called Simon Says and Live Free or Die Hard was going to be WW3.com. So none of the Die Hard sequels were actually originally meant to be sequels!
The entire series the Prisoner felt like a sequel to Danger Man/Secret Agent. McGoohan swore that #6 and Drake were too different people, but, c’mon:
1.) Patrick McGoohan played both
2.) They both showed McGoohan’s dislikwe for the Bond-type agents, with the same quirks (No guns!)
3.) They even used an unused DM/SA script for an episode of The Prisoner, fer cryin’ out loud (The Girl Who was Death), with, IIRC, one of the guys from the previous series.
4.) The novels based on The Prisoner called #6 Drake. Certainly those authors (who had no connection with the series otherwise) thought they were prettyt much the same.
Am I the only one who though that Kyle McLaughlin’s turn in the film the Hidden as a weird FBI agent perfectly exsplained why he was such a weird FBI agent in the TV series Twin Peaks?
Yes! Very similar characters, although I wouldn’t go far as to say Agent Dale Cooper was an alien. Remember also that…
McLaughlin’s character “died” in The Hidden, although his “soul” took up residence in Michael Nouri’s LAPD detective character. Great movie!