# It's a sequel, but it's a totally different genre **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 3, 2011, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701 "2011-11-03T02:03:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![The\_Lovely\_Margo\_Lane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/34f0e0/32.png) [@The\_Lovely\_Margo\_Lane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Lovely_Margo_Lane)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/1 "2011-11-03T02:03:46Z")
So on Saturday evening I watched [**Cat People**](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034587/), and followed it up on Halloween with its sequel [**Curse of the Cat People**](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036733/). I’d seen them before, wanted to share them with my boyfriend who’s been getting more interested in classic horror. Obviously we enjoyed both. There be spoilers below for some movies from the 40’s… If you haven’t seen them, **Cat People** is a creepy psychological horror story about an all-American young man who meets and marries a sweet Serbian immigrant artist. She loves him but refuses to consummate the marriage, as she is afraid that she’ll turn into a cat-monster and rip his face off in the throes of passion. She enters psychoanalysis to no avail. Some scary shit goes down. She ends up dead, along with the shrink, and husband Ollie ends up with his work wife Alice. It’s debatable whether she actually does turn into a cat or was using a leopard stolen from the zoo to bring her tormented inner demon to life. **Curse of the Cat People** picks up perhaps 8 years later. The survivors of the first movie are living in the suburbs and have a little girl. The girl is a dreamer and has trouble distinguishing fact from fantasy. Not out of the ordinary for a 6 year old. She ends up with an “imaginary friend” that is the ghost of the Serbian cat woman from her parents past. Again, it’s debatable whether she’s actually seeing a ghost or if she created “Irena” based on her parents’ pictures. Contrary to what one might expect from the first movie, scary shit fails to go down. Ollie (the dad) has a really hard time dealing with his daughter’s imagination, as he identifies it with his first wife’s troubles. It’s a really interesting story about a family dealing with a child’s development through the lens of a previous trauma. So this got us to thinking: What other movies are there out there that are true sequels, with the same characters and some acknowledgement of the events of the earlier movie, but are a completely different type of movie? Prequels etc count, as long as they are actually overtly related in these ways. I think there’s a lot of potential out there for similar stories that are about what happens to people who live through a horror-movie scenario and then have to just go on living, but other genre shifts could be interesting too. Boyfriend suggested the **Evil Dead** movies, as the sequels have the same main characters but change in tone pretty significantly. I’m not entirely convinced but it’s a start. Any ideas? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/2 "2011-11-03T02:39:16Z")
Alien was a Ridley Scott haunted house monster horror film in space. Aliens was a James Cameron war movie. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/3 "2011-11-03T02:42:54Z")
Curse you, **msmith537**! /shakes fist ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/4 "2011-11-03T02:48:02Z")
Chucky and Leprechaun both started off attempting to be real slasher horror movies, but they realized how stupidly ridiculous they were after a few sequels and changed into horror comedies. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/5 "2011-11-03T02:50:27Z")
The original Indiana Jones was a pastiche of early adventure serials, but Crystal Skull got into the 50s B scifi flicks territory. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/6 "2011-11-03T02:51:33Z")
Here’s a [description](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19840101/REVIEWS/401010348/1023) of a possibly memorable movie and its sequel as being from different genres: > [@Roger Ebert](#): > > “Raiders [of the Lost Ark]” was inspired by Saturday afternoon serials. It was a series of cliff-hanging predicaments, strung out along the way as Indiana Jones traveled from San Francisco to Tibet, Egypt, and other romantic locales. It was an exotic road picture. “Temple of Doom” mostly takes place on one location, and belongs more to the great tradition of the Impregnable Fortress Impregnated. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/7 "2011-11-03T02:56:41Z")
What about the Rambo movies? _First Blood_ was a psychological thriller centered on a dark antihero. _Part II_ was… a James Cameron war movie. I’m seeing a trend here… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Lovely\_Margo\_Lane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/34f0e0/32.png) [@The\_Lovely\_Margo\_Lane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Lovely_Margo_Lane)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/8 "2011-11-03T03:02:49Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > What about the Rambo movies? _First Blood_ was a psychological thriller centered on a dark antihero. _Part II_ was… a James Cameron war movie. > > I’m seeing a trend here… Good one. I’ve seen **First Blood** but never the second one - is the shift addressed at all? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Lovely\_Margo\_Lane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/34f0e0/32.png) [@The\_Lovely\_Margo\_Lane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Lovely_Margo_Lane)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/9 "2011-11-03T03:05:38Z")
The Indiana Jones suggestions are interesting. I never really thought about them that way, since I saw the original three out of order and so many times throughout my childhood that the plots kind of run together. I do think that they are still within the same swashbuckling adventure genre though they have differing structures. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/10 "2011-11-03T03:16:46Z")
I thought of **Cat People** as soon as I saw the thread title. The first film is horror, the second a straight psychological drama with little scary happening (except for a subplot that seems tacked on). There aren’t even any Cat People. Though it never happened, there was a plan to do one of the Jaws sequels at **Jaws 3, People 0** and turn it into an **Airplane** -like spoof. The studio decided against it. Technically, **Return to Oz** was a sequel to **The Wizard of Oz** and is far different in tone than the 1939 movie – darker and more scary. **The Black Bird** , a comedy, is a sequel to **The Maltese Falcon** , going so far as to have a couple of actors in the original reprise their roles (decades later). ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/11 "2011-11-03T03:20:11Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > Chucky and Leprechaun both started off attempting to be real slasher horror movies, but they realized how stupidly ridiculous they were after a few sequels and changed into horror comedies. Also the _Nightmare on Elm Street_ sequels, not counting the Jackie Earle Hailey remake. ---
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/12 "2011-11-03T04:20:14Z")
The first **Evil Dead** movie was a serious attempt at a Lovecraft-based horror film. But it was done so poorly that it became a semi-cult so-bad-it’s-good movie. So they went for more laughs in **Evil Dead II** , and really turned it up in the third, **Army of Darkness**. I also think each one increased the previous budget by an order of magnitude. ---
**Author:** ![ryan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a8b319/32.png) [@ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryan)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/13 "2011-11-04T05:33:57Z")
**Pitch Black** was a monster/horror movie set in space and it’s sequel **The Chronicles of Riddick** was an action sci-fi film. Pretty much exactly like **Alien** and **Aliens**. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/14 "2011-11-04T09:12:19Z")
**Gremlins II** was more overtly comedic than **Gremlins**. Each **Mad Max** sequel looked like it was in a much farther-gone dystopic future than its immediate predecessor. **Mad Max** didn’t seem particularly futuristic. **The Road Warrior** kind of did, and **Beyond Thunderdome** looked like **Firefly** ’s Reavers had taken root. The **American Pie** movies are pretty consistent in tone, but the justifications for Eugene Levy’s character’s inclusion have gotten increasingly tenuous. Really, I think the guy’s a brilliant performer, but not since Michael Caine in the **Jaws** sequels has there been such a gap between actor and movie. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/15 "2011-11-04T09:49:56Z")
**The Boondock Saints** was an action movie with some comedy in it. **All Saints Day** was a comedy with some action in it. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/16 "2011-11-04T12:26:28Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > **Gremlins II** was more overtly comedic than **Gremlins**. This was going to be my answer. If you’re looking for books as well as movies, _Huckleberry Finn_ might count, as a sequel to _Tom Sawyer_ (not to mention the later, lesser _Tom Sawyer Abroad_ and _Tom Sawyer Detective_). Stephen King & Peter Straub’s _Black House_ was marketed as a sequel to _The Talisman_, but where _The Talisman_ was a quest fantasy, _Black House_ is a straight horror novel. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/17 "2011-11-04T12:32:49Z")
I don"t know if they fall into different genres, exactly, but the two “volumes” of Kill Bill were pretty different in tone. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/18 "2011-11-04T13:21:18Z")
28 Days - Rehab drama 28 Days Later - Zombie drama ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/19 "2011-11-04T14:05:59Z")
Can I just lump Star Wars 1-3 and Star Wars 4-6 together as my example and call it a day? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701/20 "2011-11-04T14:10:16Z")
“sucks” vs. “cool” aren’t necessarily genre distinctions. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-sequel-but-its-a-totally-different-genre/601701.md?page=2)