Dunno. My brother and I (36 and 42) had seen The Rescuers before Down Under came out. It might be a function of availability in the 80s give the whole Disney vault bs. We saw it primarily because we went to an independently owned video store owned by someone who got every Disney movie he could get his hands on, which is also why my favorite Disney movie as a little kid was one almost no one I’ve mentioned it to is familiar with: Toby Tyler or Ten Weeks with a Circus.
Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo? I long ago forgot about the original, but remember the sequel because of the expanded title.
I admit I didn’t actually see either of them, though.
I also remember The Rescuers rather than The Rescuers Down Under. This is likely correlated to age at time of release given that they are children’s movies with a 13 year gap between releases.
Going with my username, **Godzilla vs ____ ** sequels were more well-known than the original Gojira movie. Especially before DVDs and the Internet.
Back then, people associated Godzilla with the rubbery monsters battling, miniature props and mismatched lip movements on Sunday afternoon UHF television. Those focused on the late 60s and 70s Godzilla movies, where the budgets went way down. “Godzilla vs Megalon” is considered the nadir of the series with horrible production values. It unluckily fell into public domain in the US, and was all over TV and bargain VHS bins. Therefore, it’s often the lasting impression of a cheesy Godzilla movie.
When the 1956 original Godzilla movie became easily available, I know I was surprised by the dark, somber, nuclear-war theme. If you watch the original 1954 Japanese version sans Raymond Burr, it almost has a film noir quality.
They were just as unwatchable as the 9 movies preceding “Malcolm X”.
The game Dune II is the archetypal RTS game. Nothing before it was close, the Warcraft and Starcraft series follow very clearly in its footsteps. Twenty years later in 2012,* Time* named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time.
Dune I was a forgettable action adventure game that broke no new ground. I never played it.
No one ever talks about the first 29 xXx movies.
The first Die Hard being technically a sequel to a Frank Sinatra movie is on every “bet you didn’t know” list for the movie. I’ve never actually seen The Detective.
In what way is it a sequel?
Really? Considering what *The Detective * is about the murder of a gay man, it seems far afield. I see that there was a connection between the two books the movie is based on, but the connection between the movies is tenuous and it looks like Die Hard changed things considerably.
But then, I’ve seen The Detective but never saw Die Hard
Die Hard was based on the Roderick Thorp novel Nothing Lasts Forever, which was a sequel to his novel The Detective, which was adapted into the Sinatra movie. Both books had the same protagonist, but the name, age and backstory were changed for Die Hard. Still technically a sequel, the lead part in Die Hard was contractually Sinatra’s to turn down before it could be given to anyone else. Fortunately for us, the septuagenarian turned down the action movie lead.
In that it’s based off a sequel novelto the novel The Detective is based off.
The same is probably true for most long-running non-sequential series (i.e., series that don’t build much of a cross-installment arc). Which Hardy Boys book is the best known? I don’t know, but statistically, it probably wasn’t the first one. Or most of the classic kid-adventure series: Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, Danny Dunn, Tom Swift, etc.
House 3 was actaully titled - The Horror Story
I don’ think sequels being adapted makes the movies sequels if the characters and plot were changed.
Ever hear of the album Tapestry? No, not Carole King’s but Don McLean’s first one that went absolutely nowhere. His followup, American Pie, did much better.
How is that a sequel?
Bride of Chucky is far better known than the 3 previous Child’s Play movies. Jennifer Tilly, no kid, plus humor made for a more lasting impression. (Although the first one did a bit better at the box office, you don’t see much about it around the 'Net these days.)