so in some movies they finish it with a good sense of finality, but the movie makes money so they decide to make a sequel. when the sequel comes out there’s usually some convoluted story about why the film series is able to continue. why the villain is still alive, etc.
What are some examples?
like I’m thinking of Halloween h20, where Michael Myers head is knocked off, then they say in the sequel it was the ambulance driver. stuff like that.
The sequels to Return of the Jedi?
The Mummy 2. Not that it wasnt a fun film.
Jaws the Revenge?
David Cross made sure he wouldn’t have to do a third Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret… by having his character blow up the world.
After years of fans and the cast clamoring for more, he and his writers came up with a way… too complicated to explain, but he’s a completely different character caught up in intriguing ripples emanating from the “original”…
A good prequel example, in The Thing (2011) they had to awkwardly explain the helicopter intro to The Thing (1982), since you would think if the Norwegian base had a helicopter the entire time the Thing would just wreck it or steal it like in the sequel series. Well apparently the Norwegian helicopter the entire time was off picking up supplies during literally the entire events of the film only showing up at the very end of the movie post-chaos. This ends up being entirely convoluted because it doesn’t explain why the Norwegian pilot who has absolutely no real frame of reference to the killer shape shifter alien and was just told about all of this literally 10 minutes before the events of The Thing (1982) is now suddenly all gung-ho and willing to kill the American scientists at the start of the sequel just to kill the alien dog.
Not really a convoluted explanation for the movie itself but in Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek Insurrection they had to come up with excuses why Worf was on-board the Enterprise even though Star Fleet had transferred him to Deep Space Nine(he was a regular on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine).
In First Contact the Enterprise rescued him from the damaged Defiant during a battle with the Borg.
In Insurrection they just said he was on leave from Deep Space Nine
Liz Hurley was deep state, err a fembot rather. Which was ok, because Rollergirl.
Highlander II: The Quickening. Hard to make a sequel when the original film ended with Connor MacLeod being the only remaining immortal. So, they largely threw out the original backstory, retconned it to make the immortals into aliens, who had been exiled to Earth, and resurrected Ramirez (Sean Connery).
And I’m not sure that the series even really bothered with an explanation, just kinda started having immortals coming out of the woodwork.
The pilot for the series had a cameo by Connor McLeod. He and Duncan briefly discussed the issue. The explanation was more or less that the Immortals were in a bracketed contest, ala the NCAA basketball tournament. Connor had won his bracket. Duncan’s bracket was still going on. If Duncan eventually won his bracket, he’d have to fight Connor.
I think.
Weekend at Bernie’s 2. It turns out some of the money Bernie stole is buried somewhere, and only Bernie knows the secret location. The problems is he’s dead. The solution? Use a voodoo ritual to turn Bernie into a zombie who will lead you to the buried treasure. It’s a far fetched scenario, but I still thought the movie was hilarious 
.
The “what happened to” captions at the end of American Graffiti almost sabotaged the option of a sequel with the entire cast (two characters are purported to have died not long after). * More American Graffiti* had to be weirdly structured so different characters’ stories were told in different years, so the sequel to an ensemble film is essentially an anthology.
They made sure they wouldn’t have to do a third Planet of the Apes . . . by having the bad guys blow up the world.
However, time travel was already a part of the series, so the studio just made new sequels set in the near future, instead of the far future.
Not a movie but related to one - Crichton killed off Ian Malcolm in the original Jurassic Park, he died of his tyrannosaurus bite wounds. But he wrote him back into The Lost World so Jeff Goldblum could star in it, explaining that Jurassic Park had an unreliable narrator and while Goldblum seemed dead, the authorities were able to revive him on the helicopter ride back to the mainland.
I suppose, it’s been forever. I do know that there were more immortals being made, as his co-star sidekick turned into one. Counts, as a convoluted explanation.
And Connor and Duncan did end up having to fight, as portrayed in the Highlander: Endgame movie, which I actually did see in theaters. It was literally just me and my friend in the entire place. It was pretty bad, almost walkout bad.
We won’t even talk about Highlander II, I’ve retconned that out of my memory.
A group of about a dozen of us, all fans of the original film, saw it, in the theater, on opening night. Afterwards, we turned to each other, and said, “what the hell was that?” I haven’t seen it again since, and have no desire to ever do so.
I am convinced that the sudden (and fairly senseless) death of Ramirez most of the way through the film was the result of Connery saying, “I’ve had it with this shite film, write me out.”
That’s apparently part of how their “brackets” worked - as long as that part of the tournament was active, new Immortals would continue to appear. Connor’s “bracket” was completed, so no new Immortals would appear to challenge him - he was just kind of waiting around until Duncan’s bracket finally produced its One.
I think
Oh, absolutely. I was just responding to your comment that the series didn’t offer an explanation. It did, sort of, in the pilot.
I know I saw that movie in the theater, but I have less recollection of it than you do. There was also a SyFy original with only Duncan that followed that, but I have even less recollection of it.
I have no idea what you’re talking about here.
I paid money to see Highlander II and I agree with
I finally gave the series another try with Highlander IV, and was pleasantly relieved to discover it was an actual movie. And that I was actually entertained (unlike H2). And Aaron Paul could actually act (unlike most Immortals).
But Highlander brings up a companion question to the title of this thread… Why did they NOT make a convoluted explanation for why a Spaniard was speaking with a Scots accent?
Once you cast Connery, why not make his character from Scotland, or just not mention his ethnicity?
(see also, “Why not make the Captain of the Enterprise a Brit once you’ve gotten Sir Patrick on board?”)
Because there was already a Scotsman speaking with a French accent in the film? 
Yeah, that’s always been one of my favorite bits about that movie. You had a French actor playing a 16th Century Scotsman pretending to be a 20th Century New Yorker, a Scotsman playing an ancient Egyptian pretending to be a 16th Century Spaniard, and an American playing an ancient Central Asian steppe nomad pretending, badly, to be a 20th Century American.