Filmmakers thought the fans would never notice,
but they were wrong! These are the sequels that ignored major cliffhangers.
The most significant cultural impact of the very long "Friday the 13th" film series is
that it made homicidal maniac Jason Voorhees an iconic character. He's certainly intriguing
and mysterious, and he kills with total fervor. Concealing his identity behind a
creepy hockey mask, Jason looms so large that it's easy to forget he's not the chief villain
of every "Friday the 13th" movie. For example, his mother avenges his death in 1980's "Friday
the 13th," and he doesn't begin his killing spree until 1981's "Friday the 13th Part 2."
With its leading title and twist ending, 1985's "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning" sets up its own
franchise for a soft reboot. In this, the fifth "Friday the 13th" movie, Jason's original killer,
Tommy Jarvis, remains haunted by the murder. But when a Jason imposter hunts Tommy to avenge the
death of his son, Tommy defeats the killer and takes on the identity — and mask — of
Jason Voorhees. This means that in the next movie, "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives,"
Tommy-as-Jason is the central villain, right? Nope! The 1986 sequel begins with Tommy — who's
played by a different actor — digging up Jason's corpse to burn it. Unfortunately,
he accidentally resurrects the killer, and with that, Jason lives to strike again.
Slasher movies thrive on jump scares and sudden twists. And since "I Know What You Did Last
Summer" was something of a next-generation homage to slasher flicks, the 1997 horror film made good
on the promise of shocking and unexpected deaths. One of them comes at the tail end of the movie
when a character played by the most famous person at the time seemingly dies in a grisly fashion.
"He's just out there, and he's watching us and waiting. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, HUH?"
The entire movie is about four teenagers who spend a year attempting to evade death by revenge from
a raincoat-wearing stranger they unintentionally "killed" in a traffic accident. As "I Know What
You Did Last Summer" reaches its conclusion, it seems like Julie James, played by Jennifer Love
Hewitt, is in the clear. She's left home and is attending college in Boston. But when she
heads into the shower one day, she sees "I STILL KNOW" written in the steam on the shower door. Her
unavenged victim-slash-killer shows up suddenly, Julie screams, and the movie ends. At that point,
viewers can assume the raincoat man kills Julie quickly and efficiently,
but the 1998 sequel "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" begs to differ. Julie is the
main character in the movie; she apparently didn't die, or even fight off her attacker,
because the film makes no mention of the final, horrifying moments of the first film.
While 2015's "Ant-Man" is more comedic and absurd than a typical Marvel Cinematic Universe entry,
the film's stakes remain very high. Dr. Hank Pym, played by Michael Douglas,
develops a suit that can shrink a human. After he's kicked out of his company by
his one-time protégé, he recruits Scott Lang — played by Paul Rudd — to stop that villain
from figuring out the same tech and using it to carry out unfathomable acts of evil.
The whole point of "Ant-Man," then, is to stop the all-important tech from getting into
the wrong hands. But it does; a Hydra agent named Mitchell Carson flees Pym Technologies
with some Yellowjacket particles and runs off to parts unknown. Where does he go,
and how does he use Yellowjacket particles to advance his own agenda? Audiences never find out,
because neither of the sequels — "Ant-Man and the Wasp" nor "Ant-Man and the Wasp:
Quantumania" — follow up on Carson. When confronted with this lack of plot development,
"Ant-Man" director Peyton Reed explained the unresolved cliffhanger. He told CinemaBlend,
"There was a sequence where Ant-Man has an encounter with him. But then
for a couple reasons, I felt like maybe we should leave those particles out there."
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a perpetually complicated and intricate network of films, with
each entry directly connecting to so many others. That's how Marvel Studios keeps audiences coming
back for more; we have to know what happens next, particularly after the post-credits sequences.
After the credits and mid-credits scenes rolled on the 2016 MCU movie "Doctor Strange," viewers
who stayed in their seats caught one more sequence. It centers on Mordo, a supporting
character who trains Dr. Stephen Strange in the use and history of magic. The after-credits scene
really seems to set up Mordo, who's portrayed by Academy Award-nominated actor Chiwetel Ejiofor,
for a solo movie, Disney+ TV series, or significant plot arc in a future film. In
the sequence, Mordo discusses the overabundance of sorcerers on the planet with fellow magical one
Jonathan Pangborn. As such, Mordo presumably heads out to knock off some wicked wizards,
but viewers never see that happen — not even as a multiverse possibility in "Doctor Strange
and the Multiverse of Madness." In fact, he's barely in that movie.
In 1999, Sony bought the rights to make movies based on characters in the "Spider-Man" universe
and later produced a "Spider-Man" trilogy. After its rivals at Marvel Studios started
up the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony ramped up to stay competitive, rebooting the franchise
with "The Amazing Spider-Man" in 2012 and "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" in 2014. Sony
has since released a couple of "Venom" films, three more "Spider-Man" movies, and "Morbius,"
but the company never made a project featuring the Sinister Six — a team-up of the biggest,
baddest, and most famous villains from the decades-old property. Among the antagonists:
Doctor Octopus, Electro, Mysterio, Sandman, Vulture, and Kraven the Hunter.
But it looked like Sony had a "Sinister Six" movie in the works around 2014,
which it later confirmed, according to Deadline. A sequence in "The Amazing
Spider-Man 2" offers a quick glimpse of costume and prop elements of Sinister Six members,
such as Vulture's wings and Doctor Octopus' tentacles. While some of those villains
turn up in later Spider-Man movies, starting with the MCU-based "Spider-Man:
Homecoming," the "Sinister Six" movie that was so blatantly promised never came to fruition.
In "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," rakish and roguish pirate Captain
Jack Sparrow finally seems to have met both his romantic and adversarial match
in Angelica — played by Penélope Cruz. She's a pirate as crafty and daring as Captain Jack,
and she claims to be the daughter of the legendary Blackbeard. Oscar-winner Cruz came
on board the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise nearly a decade in and injected new energy into
it. But "On Stranger Tides" would mark her, and Angelica's, one and only appearance in the series.
Growing weary of Angelica's machinations and unwilling to trust her, Jack abandons her on
a tiny island before returning to his life of independent piracy and heading off to find
his lost ship. That's how the movie ends, but a post-credits scene shows audiences what happened
next. A voodoo doll that looks like Captain Jack washes up on Angelica's island, and it's evident
she plans to use the darkly magical object to exact revenge on him. Jack Sparrow dealing with
a voodoo curse should have been a big part of the plot of 2017's "Pirates of the Caribbean:
Dead Men Tell No Tales," but it isn't. Angelica doesn't even show up in that sequel.
"Prometheus," a prequel to the "Alien" series, is slow, cerebral, and requires intense concentration
from audiences. Ridley Scott, who directed the initial "Alien" in 1979, helmed the 2012 movie,
which purported to set up the events that lead to those other blockbusters. In the film, two
scientists lead a deep-space expedition to explore humanity's possible extraterrestrial origins. And
just like in the other "Alien" movies, there's a lot of foreboding, death, and destruction.
"Prometheus" winds up with optimistic,
spiritual scientist Elizabeth Shaw as the only human survivor on her ship,
along with an android named David. At the end of the film, Shaw and David seek out the home
planet of the menacing Engineers to discover why they wanted to exterminate all humans.
A sequel to "Prometheus," "Alien: Covenant" hit theaters in 2017.
Shaw only briefly appears as a corpse experimented on by David,
who also destroyed the evil alien threat from the first movie. Shaw and David's interactions
with the Engineers are not discussed, and so their motivations remain a mystery.
The 2000s action movie franchise "xXx" positioned itself as an edgier James
Bond series for a new generation. Vin Diesel stars as Xander "XXX" Cage,
an extreme sports athlete who cheats death as a matter of course and is recruited by the NSA
to be a top spy. Unlike the ongoing Bond franchise, which is primarily a string of
self-contained movies, the three "xXx" films all follow a sequence of events. That makes
the filmmakers' decision to ignore some cliffhangers very confusing to viewers.
At the end of 2002's "xXx," Xander Cage completes his mission and is enjoying some well-earned rest
and relaxation when handlers approach him with his next big spy assignment. As the film ends,
it's unclear if he's going to accept the job, and nobody ever finds out, because Diesel didn't want
to return for 2005's "xXx: State of the Union." The story goes that Xander Cage died offscreen,
while Ice Cube plays a new agent named Darius Stone. But then Diesel returned in 2017 for
the third film, "xXx: Return of Xander Cage" — meaning the character never really died after all.
Since launching in 1996, the "Mission: Impossible" franchise has become one
of the most successful action series of the past 30 years. 2011 saw the fourth
entry of the franchise arrive in theaters, titled "Mission:
Impossible — Ghost Protocol." It introduced a new team of IMF agents who are working with
Ethan Hunt to try to clear their names after they are accused of planting a bomb in the Kremlin.
These fresh additions to the series included Jeremy Renner's intelligence
analyst William Brandt, Simon Pegg's field agent Benji Dunn,
and Paula Patton's agent Jane Carter. After they are successful in their mission,
Hunt gathers everyone together again at the end of the film and hands them another one,
implying that this group will continue to work together as a new terrorist organization emerges.
Unfortunately, fans never got to see any more of Carter despite the fact that other characters
from the film reappeared in subsequent releases. With little mention of her,
it is unclear where she is or what might have happened. Carter was seemingly set
to return to the franchise, with rumors suggesting that she would have appeared
in "Rogue Nation," but scheduling conflicts meant her character was cut from the film.
Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe became the juggernaut it is, Marvel Comics fans had the
"X-Men" series to keep them occupied. Beginning with the first movie in 2000, the franchise
ballooned to more than a dozen films. 2006 saw the release of the third movie in the series, "X-Men:
The Last Stand." It follows Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants as they attempt to prevent
a cure for the mutant gene from being forcefully imposed on mutantkind. It also features Jean Grey
unleashing the Phoenix Force, ultimately killing Professor Charles Xavier and allying with Magneto.
The movie ends with a post-credit scene where a coma patient in a hospital wakes up and talks with
the voice of Charles Xavier. This suggests that Professor X has somehow survived by placing his
mind into the body of another person. But Charles Xavier, played by Patrick Stewart, returns in
three sequel films. He first makes a cameo in the 2013 film "The Wolverine" before becoming
part of the main cast again in the 2014 release "X-Men: Days of Future Past" and 2017's "Logan."
It isn't clear how Professor X was able to return to his normal body,
as it had apparently been disintegrated by Jean Grey. No explanation is given either. He simply
tells Wolverine that he too has gifts, but he doesn't reveal what happened between the films.
"How's this possible?"
"As I told you a long time ago, you're not the only one with gifts."
One of the defining aspects of the James Bond movies is that different actors have played
007 over the years. Of course, this tradition only arose because original actor Sean Connery
left the franchise. When he departed following the release of "You Only Live Twice" in 1967,
George Lazenby took on the role of the fictional spy in 1969's "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."
The latter film follows Bond as he tries to stop Blofeld from destroying the world's food supply.
By the end of the movie, Bond has fallen in love with Contessa Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo,
portrayed by Diana Rigg. The two eventually marry,
though the relationship is cut short when they're involved in a drive-by shooting at
the hands of Blofeld and his henchwoman. Tracy is killed and Bond is left devastated by the events.
Producers were able to convince Connery to return for "Diamonds Are Forever," and the opening scene
shows Bond tracking down and killing who he believes to be the real Blofeld. Yet no
explanation is given as to why he is so determined to dispatch the villain and Tracy isn't mentioned
at any point in the film. In fact, there are some suggestions in the opening moments that
Bond is actually pursuing Blofeld directly after the events of "You Only Live Twice."