As I was driving last week, a song from the Escape from L.A. soundtrack popped up. This got me thinking: I’ve seen **Escape from L.A. ** but I’ve never seen Escape from New York.
I’ve seen, and honestly quite enjoyed, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School Forever but I’ve never seen Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. And somehow, I’ve seen all the movies in the Terminator series…except the first movie. I’ve seen Blade Runner 2049 but not Blade Runner. Until fairly recently, I could’ve added Army of Darkness to the list too because I saw it more than 20 years before I saw either version of Evil Dead.
If we can include TV series I have seen all the episodes of the Star Trek television series except for the original. I have only seen about a dozen episodes of the original series; I find it something of a chore to watch between the acting and the cheesy special effects.
One day in college, I rolled my ankle playing basketball. I wanted to back out of going to the movies that night, but my “friends” told me to walk it off and go with them to see Highlander II: The Quickening. I wasn’t nearly as disappointed as they were, but I was in a splint and crutches the next day (and month).
It’s probably somewhat cheating to count Marvel movies, but the first Cap, Thor, and Tom Holland Spider-Man movies I saw were The Winter Soldier, Ragnarok, and Far From Home.
Joke’s a bit dulled by the fact that really is a sequel. Lupin III is the grandson of Arsene Lupin, who appeared in a series of short stories, novels, and plays from 1905 to 1935.
I can’t think of any examples of the thread’s topic, for me, now…but two mentioned did apply at one point…
I saw Army of Darkness years before seeing Evil Dead I or II, and Beyond Thunderdome well before Mad Max or The Road Warrior. (I have since completed both series.)
I can think of a few video game examples, though - Skyrim was the first Elder Scrolls game that I played, and still the only one I’ve finished (Arena, I couldn’t even get to run, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion the systems turned me off pretty early in), and I’ve only played Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4.
Back in the day, I saw Aliens before watching Alien, Terminator 2 before Terminator, and Empire Strikes Back before Star Wars.
In the early '90s, the Chinese students association at our university would regularly import action movies from Hong Kong. So I’ve seen a number of Jackie Chan and Jet Li sequels without seeing the originals: Drunken Master II, Armour of God II: Operation Condor, Police Story 3: Supercop, and Once Upon a Time in China II come to mind.
I watched the Pink Panther movies from The Return of the Pink Panther until Trail of the Pink Panther when they came out. It wasn’t until much later that I watched the original Pink Panther movie.
I’ll bet a lot of more people have seen the Rambo films than ever saw the first film in the series, First Blood*
I know that, although I’ve seen Billy Jack, I’ve never seen the film that introduced the character, Born Losers. (Although, apparently, Billy Jack was the film Tom Laughlin wanted to make in the first place, and quickly dashed off Born Losers to capitalize on the Biker Film craze and get his character introduced. a case where the “sequel” was the intended real film, with a sorta fake “prequel” made first. The Born Losers - Wikipedia )
When the next film came out, it was called Rambo: First Blood Part II, although most people thought of it as just Rambo. The next film was called Rambo III. But since there was never a film called Rambo II that always bothered me. Maybe they shoulda called it Rambo II : First Blood Part III.
You know, even though the James Bond films are very well known, I’ll bet most people have never seen Dr. No, the first in the Eon series. It’s the oldest, and rarely shown on TV anymore.
Mad Max wasn’t a big film in the States. The Road Warrior was, and got a lot of play, but I don’t recall the original film being re-released after that, or even shown on television. The only time I saw the film was when I rented it myself. Even after the release of the other Mad Max films, I don’t recall seeing the original broadcast or anything.
The first film is very much unlike the sequels. There has evidently been some sort of upheaval, but most people live in something like a normal city, and it’s all nice and green. That whole Desert-Apocalyptic Hell thing started with The Road Warrior, and they kept it up through the other sequels. I think the first Mad Max film would be too jarringly different for people to relate to.
Due to whatever distribution peculiarities, when I was a ten-year-old in the West of Scotland, it basically eternally played in some big cinema in Glasgow, but didn’t run in the local cinema. And while, by God, they had three small boys desperate to see it, my parents took the line that they weren’t being dragged up to Glasgow to see it.
My younger brother was still the huge Star Wars nut. As a result my initial exposure to the first film was the novelisation. Probably as a result, what’s even more weirdly true is that my first exposure to Empire was a comic book version he’d bought. So I didn’t even get to see the big twist on screen. But that did play at the local cinema and so I did see the sequel in first run. Finally saw the first film (in a special double bill) a bit later.
Like a lot of people my age, Terminator 2 was seen by me before the original. Terminator 2 was all the talk of my school friends, especially the liquid metal effects in the movie. For a few years there, I’d never seen the original Terminator. I eventually went back and saw it, but I knew tons of kids my age that had only seen T2.
I would agree that Mad Max is kind of like this to. I would go further to predict even more people have now seen Fury Road, possibly not realizing it is the fourth one.
I saw one of the later Harry Potter movies but not the others. In fact, this one was the first of a 2-part movie (#7 maybe?) and I didn’t see the next one.
Same for Hunger Games. I saw *Mockingjay *but not any of the others, including Mockingjay 2. Both of those examples were because a friend wanted to see them (she’s a fan of both series).
I’ve seen Terminator Genisys and Mad Max: Fury Road without seeing the originals. Both of those came up in the sci-fi movie marathon I go to every year (in fact they were both the same year). I’ve also seen Terminator Salvation and two different Planet of the Apes movies but not the first.
I liked the first Mad Max film and think it fills in Max’s back story well. You get to see that he was once a police officer, had a wife and kid, and what drove him down the path of a loner. And of course you get to see ToeCutter played by the same actor who plays ImmortanJoe even though George Miller says they’re not the same character.