Were there any sequel movies before Star Wars?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

So were Superman 1 and 2. Well, mostly. Until the bottom fell out of 2, and they had to scramble.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

Speaking of superheroes, The Green Hornet and The Green Hornet Strikes Again!

[Voyager]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

Speaking of superheroes, The Green Hornet and The Green Hornet Strikes Again!

Not to mention some Nancy Drew movies!
(Well, my daughter thought she was when my daughter was young.)

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

Pre-Star Wars, there was a movie and its sequel about an ordinary citizen who did his best to foil criminals while cursed with a weird super-power.

I’m speaking, of course, of The Shaggy Dog and The Shaggy D.A.

[Don_Draper]

Would Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy count as a trilogy? There are three very distinct divisions (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), and I have seen them (or at least the first & most popular segment Inferno) published as separate volumes. But was it intended by Dante that they could (or should) be read as separate-but-related works?

[ftg]

@bienville

Wow! Spanning two decades!

Gee willikers!

[astorian]

Spencer Tracy had *** Father of the Bride*** and*** Father’s Little Dividend.***

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

Clifton Webb had Mister Belvedere Goes To College and Mister Belvedere Rings The Bell after earning an Oscar nomination as Mister Belvedere in Sitting Pretty.

[Peter_Morris]

@Thudlow_Boink

And one could argue that The Odyssey counts as a sequel to The Iliad.

Iliad 2: The Voyage Home

[commasense]

When Apollo 13 came out, David Letterman said he wasn’t planning to see it, because he hadn’t seen Apollo 1-12.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

Y’know, for generic sequel titles, it’s hard to top SALT AND PEPPER – where the black guy is Mister Salt, and the white guy is Mister Pepper – giving it another try two years later with ONE MORE TIME, with Jerry Lewis directing Sammy Davis Jr and Peter Lawford.

[mbh]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

Which, coming back around, reminds me that The Three Musketeers in '73 was of course followed by The Four Musketeers in '74.

@Little_Nemo

And these two movies were filmed together.

They were originally intended to be a single film.

originally posted by Wikipedia:
During post production on The Three Musketeers, the producers realized that there was enough footage for two films and created The Four Musketeers. Most of the actors were incensed that their work on the long shoot was used to make an entirely separate film. All SAG actors’ contracts now have what is known as the “Salkind clause”, which stipulates how many films are being made.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

IMDB says that though plans were afoot for a fifth film (“The Ravagers”), as well as a proposed teaming with Frank Sinatra for “Matt Helm Meets Tony Rome,” the poor box-office showing of both “The Wrecking Crew” and Sinatra’s second go 'round as Rome in “Lady In Cement” brought the Matt Helm series to an end.

But before that, yeah, Frank Sinatra’s sequel as Miami private eye Tony Rome qualified, as did Dean Martin’s sequels as globetrotting secret agent Matt Helm.

[ftg]

Actually, The Iliad and The Odyssey are two books in a series that some ancient writers viewed as the 7-part Epic Cycle. Written by different authors, but based around the Trojan War. Some even throw in other cycles like the 4 part Theban Cycle. (Which is not the same as the 3 Theban plays by Sophocles.)

People have been flooded with sequels for over 3 thousand years and counting. Why should movies be any different?

[MrAtoz]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

Which, coming back around, reminds me that The Three Musketeers in '73 was of course followed by The Four Musketeers in '74.

And let us never forget The Three Mesquiteers, a series of 51 (count 'em, 51!) B-movie Westerns in the 30s and 40s, most notable today for the handful that starred John Wayne, just before Stagecoach happened.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

Barbra Streisand and Omar Sharif followed up FUNNY GIRL with FUNNY LADY in '75.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

While playing the Lone Ranger and Tonto on TV, Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels got tapped to do a big-screen Lone Ranger movie in '56; after the series ended in '57, they teamed back up for The Lone Ranger and the Lost City Of Gold in '58.

[TBG]

@dasmoocher

Cool. When are they doing the sequel to Titanic? That movie was pretty good and made a boatload [heh] of money.

Titanic 2: The Titanicing

[AncientHumanoid]

Does that Japanese monster movie The Gargantuas count as a Titanic sequel?

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Jim_s_Son

Trying to the of “big, successful movies” using the definition of “Academy Award Best Picture Winner” (yeah, I know, every SDer is going to yelp how stupid the Academy voters are) 1929 winner “Broadway Melody” arguably had three, but they weren’t direct sequels.
1942 “Mrs Miniver” had a 1950 sequel with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon returning.
1970 “Patton” had a TV movie in 1986 with George C Scott, 1971 French Connection, 1972 Godfather, 1973 The Sting, sort of, different actors, 1976 Rocky

You missed GOING MY WAY, which (a) won Bing Crosby the Oscar for Best Actor as Father O’Malley, and (b) begat Crosby as O’Malley in THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S.