# Tetralogy. Does this trend of having the 4th movie 20 years later have a name? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 27, 2009, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147 "2009-11-27T18:03:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![blinkingblinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@blinkingblinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blinkingblinking)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/1 "2009-11-27T18:03:25Z")
Rambo, Die Hard, Indiana Jones. There are also 3rd movies that are long time after the first two - Terminator, Crocodile Dundee, Godfather. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/2 "2009-11-27T18:14:42Z")
Desperate money-grab? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/3 "2009-11-27T18:53:26Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Desperate money-grab? Beat me to it. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/4 "2009-11-27T18:56:13Z")
It’s called “Hollywood runs out of ideas.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/5 "2009-11-27T21:39:56Z")
I don’t think it’s anything specific to third movies: The same thing happened to _Rocky_, too, after they’d already had how many? ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/6 "2009-11-27T21:44:39Z")
Or to SUPERMAN and BATMAN, for that matter. To say nothing of movies about Tarzan, Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman (although there’s usually not as long as a 20 year span between re-makes/re-visits/re-thinks) ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/7 "2009-11-27T21:55:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I don’t think it’s anything specific to third movies: The same thing happened to _Rocky_, too, after they’d already had how many? Rocky - 1976 . . Rocky II - 1979 . . Rocky III - 1982 . . Rocky IV - 1985 . . . . Rocky V - 1990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rocky Balboa - 2006 ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/8 "2009-11-27T22:22:59Z")
Then there’s George Romero’s Living Dead [del]trilogy[/del] [del]quadrilogy[/del] [del]quintilogy[/del] Saga. **Night of the Living Dead** (1968), **Dawn of the Dead** (1978), **Day of the Dead** (1985), then 20 yrs later **Land of the Dead** (2005), **Diary of the Dead** (2007), and a 6th film, **Survival of the Dead** in the can waiting to be released. There’s also the 1990 remake of Night that we wrote and Tom Savini directed and the remakes of Dawn & Day that he had nothing to do with (the Day remake being utter garbage). His former partner James Russo’s **Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition** which featured a new scenes and a subplot involving a priest, it’s sequel **Children of the Livind Dead**. Night has also been remade as **Night of the Living Dead 3D** , and apparently the Canadians are planing 3rd remake. Russo also created his own zombie franchise in the 1980s with **Return of the Living Dead** which has 4 sequels (in which the events of Night were said Romero’s fictional account of a “real” Army zombie experiment). The reason why Night has been remade so many times (and many different versions of the original film released) is that in addition to being a classic film the copyright notice was accidently left of the new prints when the title was changed from Night of the Flesh Eaters and it lapsed into public domain. _Anybody_ can remake it, make a sequel, rerelease it, make it into a play, etc without having to worry about paying royalties. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2009, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/9 "2009-11-28T05:07:47Z")
The thing with Romero’s movies, he can only make them when he gets funding to make them, he’d have made **Land of the Dead** in the 90’s if he could’ve just come up with the cash. And **Diary** isn’t really a “sequel”, not that the others are really true direct sequels in a traditional sense anyway, but it’s intended as a “reboot”. You’ll note each of his previous movies each seem to be later and later in the “zombie timeline” as it were. **Night** is the outbreak, **Dawn** is shortly after the outbreak where people are still just trying to figure out what to do, **Day** is quite a bit after the outbreak where things are getting kinda desperate, and **Land** is long enough after the outbreak where there’s a whole mini-society going now despite the zombies just waiting to come chow down. Then **Diary** is back at the initial outbreak stage again. (And yeah anything released called **Day of the Dead** other than the Romero original, whether it be the [one falsely claiming to be a sequel](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411269/), or [the ‘reimagining’ with Ving Rhames](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489018/), definitely utter garbage.) > [@blinkingblinking](#): > > There are also 3rd movies that are long time after the first two - Terminator, The Terminator - 1984 T2 - 1991 T3 - 2003 Salvation - 2009 All of them are pretty far apart. Sure the gap between 2 and 3 is biggest, but none were really close enough that it seems as significant as **Rambo Balboa** or **Die Hard’s Crystal Skull** where you had a bunch fairly close, then a huge gap, then another. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2009, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tetralogy-does-this-trend-of-having-the-4th-movie-20-years-later-have-a-name/519147/10 "2009-11-28T05:24:28Z")
I’ll add Star Wars to the list, there’s a twenty something year gap between the fourth film and the previous three. > [@Dexter Haven](#): > > Or to SUPERMAN and BATMAN, for that matter. To say nothing of movies about Tarzan, Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman (although there’s usually not as long as a 20 year span between re-makes/re-visits/re-thinks) I think there’s a difference in once again revisiting a story every few years by a different director making a different movie like with Dracula or Tarzan or Sherlock Holmes, and cases like the OP mentions where the new movie is meant ot be part of the same series of films, often with some of the same people involved. The newest Superman movie probably counts though, since it was trying to be continuous with the Gene Hakcman/Cristopher Reeves films.