As a kid, the first time I saw it, I thought the title was trying to be “poetic”. Or British!
Speaking of The Thin Man series, I hate the title “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”. Why not just “Glass Onion”? Or “A Benoit Blanc Mystery”? Or hell. CSI KFC. 
Just because marketing is an art doesn’t make it artistic.
John Wick
John Wick: Chapter 2
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
John Wick: Chapter 4
Why only Chapter 3 deserved a subtitle, I do not know.
Or a bad one, where you missed Mad Max first time around. I was square in its target demo at the time and am 100% sure (but capable of being wrong, of course) that in North America, at least, TRW was released before MM. Or at least widely released.
ETA: Ah hah! From Wikipedia, re MM2/TRW:
In the United States, with a gross of US$23.6 million and of $11 million, the film also outperformed Mad Max. When that film was released in the U.S. in 1980, it did not receive a proper release from its distributor, as AIP was in the final stages of a change of ownership after being bought by Filmways, Inc. a year earlier, and its box office was affected.
So I think you were lucky!
I saw Mad Max before I saw Road Warrior but it didn’t occur to me until long after that one was the sequel to the other. It was just the same actor in two movies driving cars like John Wayne in two movies riding horses.
Even though Road Warrior opens with a two-minute prologue consisting of clips from the first movie, constituting a flashback to establish the character?
I must have been getting popcorn.
Not to mention the pretty obvious Stone = Jewel tie-in… although (without spoiling it too much) the “precious stone quest” is abandoned pretty early in the sequel.
El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness
The working title of the third one was Medieval Dead then it was Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness, before they settled on the final title.