Sequel, prequels, threequels, Hollywood especially has learned that a successful
original is as good a money tree as long as you have fingers to count on.
But despite the sad tendency of some studios to punt on second down,
they're not all bad.
These are our picks for the top five sequels of all time.
(Sound) >> The most common flavor of sequel is
probably the second story sequel.
The characters are the same, and so is the world, and
the conflict is probably related, but the story is undeniably separate.
The original ended, and with it, its plot.
It could have stood alone, but now we're back for another go around.
This could be from checking in nine years later, as in Before Sunset, or
with the emergence of another threat, as in Aliens.
It's Evil Dead II or Blade Runner 2049, or T2, or The Dark Knight, or
the Bride of Frankenstein, or sent up wonderfully in 22 Jump Street.
It's the follow ups to Toy Story or Mad Max, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, or
however many Godzillas they've made by now.
But come on, for our first slot here, could you even imagine us
picking something other than The Godfather Part II?
>> Why do you have to go?
>> because I have to do business.
>> I could help you.
(Music)
>> Someday you will.
(Music)
The Godfather II is kind of a double whammy here.
Because it's simultaneously an awesome sequel and an even awesomer prequel,
alternating between the story of Michael Corleone, five years post ascension, and
his father Vito as he makes it in America, coalescing into a sandwich of
awesomeness that some have argued is even better than the original.
We wouldn't go quite that far, but it really says something when you're
compared favorably to one of the best American films of all time.
Godfather II takes the characters of the original saga and
extends their emotional arc to double its depth
while telling a story that is very nearly independent to the original.
And as an extra bonus cool factor,
The Godfather Part II is the first ever part II.
No previous film had used numbering to denote its sequels, ever.
Paramount apparently had misgivings about the idea, worrying that audiences might
not want to buy tickets for a continuation of a story they had already seen.
But man, were they wrong.
(Sound) Now, not all sequels are semi stand alone vehicles, nor
even are all originals.
Another type of second entry belongs to the multipart story,
a serialized segment amidst a larger arc that was designed from the outset.
Those most often come from vast multipart source materials, novel series,
and comic book runs in grand epics.
The best of the bunch include the likes of Kill Volume 2,
The Bourne Ultimatum, Superman II, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
The original two sequels of the Star Wars Trilogy are kind of tricky to categorize
here since episode 4 was originally just a standalone Star Wars that
was then redconned into the first of a trilogy or a trilogy of trilogies, rather.
Making the Empire Strikes Back a followup belonging in our first category while
Return of the Jedi is solidly a multi-parter landing here.
And with Empire out of the picture,
we don't think Jedi can quite edge out our second pick here which is actually
going to go to Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
>> Gandalf.
>> Gandalf, yes.
(Music)
That was what they used to call me.
(Music)
Gandalf the Gray.
(Music)
That was my name.
>> Gandalf.
(Music)
>> I am Gandalf the White.
(Music)
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.
>> The Lord of the Rings installments are such a rare breed in that not only were
they designed and planned together from day one, but
they were actually all shot simultaneously.
As if Peter Jackson were just making one great big nine hour movie,
which we think in his mind, he kind of was.
The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy was shot in one big 274 day chunk.
And while Fellowship and Return are each fantastic in their own right,
we think the second entry is maybe our favorite.
And that actually means a whole hell of a lot.
It has every reason to be the awkward middle child.
The Two Towers gets none of the fun character introductions and
world building or any of the 300 climaxes of the finale.
And yet, it manages to turn a storyline filled with a whole lot of trudging into
one epic three hour long chase, introduce the world to Andy Serkis's Gollum, and
cap it off with one of the finest battle scenes ever shot along the way.
And the cohesion of its conception and authorship really makes a difference here,
as it carries in a certain momentum from its predecessor and allows for
a kind of steady resolution in its climax, with a few balls still in the air.
One need only sit down for a binge watching marathon to see how brilliantly
it fits in and how thoroughly it benefits for it.
(Sound) Of course,
sometimes sequels are more than just one rung on a single ladder.
Some of them slot into entire franchise universes in complex,
not entirely linear ways.
Consider The Avengers, which is like a nexus point sequel of
a half dozen different individual starting points.
Or Wonder Woman or Thor: Ragnarok,
Captain America: Winter Soldier, Star Trek: First Contact, or The Wrath of Khan.
Rogue One, Wes Craven's New Nightmare or Goldfinger.
They all fit into a franchise context that's
wider than would be suggested by just calling them simple sequels.
However, if there's a franchise that has done this the best, it's gotta be X-Men.
Which has just gotten better and better, took a really fascinating turn in Days of
Future Past and used its franchise weight to immense power in our next pick, Logan.
>> They're waiting for you at the Statue of Liberty.
>> The Statue of Liberty was a long time ago, Charles, a long time.
There are no new mutants, understand?
There hasn't been a new one born in 25 years, not anywhere.
You always thought we were part of God's plan.
Maybe, maybe we were God's mistake.
>> What a disappointment you are.
>> Boy, are we just so thrilled to talk about Logan here, because it is, to our
mind, pretty much the best superhero film ever shot, up there with Unbreakable,
The Incredibles, and The Dark Knight, head and shoulders above everything else.
And I don't think we've had an opportunity on this show to gush about it yet.
But it's not just a great franchise entry sequel and a great superhero flick.
It's a superlative superhero movie, largely because of where it fits into
the franchise and how it operates boldly within it.
Logan takes this character of Wolverine we've all been living with and
watching save the world for over a decade and a half now, and
uses all of our emotional investment in him to a completely unprecedented end.
It trades saving the world for saving just one person, yet
shrinking the stakes actually makes us feel more deeply.
And, while it's certainly a good movie in its own right,
it is 100 times more powerful for the cinematic universe it does it in,
putting the weight of eight full features behind its impact.
(Sound) Some sequels bring us endings, but
others bring us new beginnings.
Maybe they're a soft reboot, or a changing of the guard.
But they take an old series and
add a new entry that spins everything in a modern direction, breathing in new life.
This was Batman Begins, or Rise of the Planet of the Apes, or Jurassic World.
This was Force Awakens or Fury Road.
They acknowledge their ancestry while drastically asserting their individuality,
restructuring the series in a sort of stylistic Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
And the sequel that does this best is our next pick,
the reboot to defeat all reboots, Creed.
>> I want you to train me, all right?
I need somebody solid, and who else better to go to?
All right, you at least owe me that.
(Music)
>> I can tell the way you talk, you've been to school.
So I figured you've got some brains.
Why would you want to pick a fighter's life when you don't have to?
If Apollo was around, he would tell you that, too.
>> He ain't around.
I've been fighting my whole life, I ain't got a choice.
>> It's always about a choice.
I was in the ring.
I saw how it went down.
That fight should have been stopped.
I should have stopped it.
>> Maybe he wanted to go out like a fighter.
Maybe he did exactly what he wanted.
>> I think he'd rather be here talking with you.
>> Ryan Couglier's visionary spinoff of the Rocky franchise is a Hollywood primer
on how to pass a torch.
Pulling off the circus high wire act of balancing franchise awareness,
fan service, and
homage to the original with a fearless new direction and vision for the future.
Creed does equal justice to the chapter it is closing with the new ground it breaks.
It wisely spreads its roots deep amidst its forebears by shifting its focus to
not just a new fighter, but the son of Apollo Creed,
the original adversary turned ally turned figure of grief.
This gives him a built-in history, and
one that we immediately understand, catapulting us into a necessarily complex
dynamic between our leads Michael B Jordan as the future of the franchise and
Sylvester Stallone fully embracing his age as it's passed near his career best.
It is bold, both in how it diverges from the original series and
how it retreads familiar ground,
culminating in a finale that will make any original Rocky fan wax nostalgic in full
view of the exciting trajectory it suggests for its inevitable follow-up.
(Sound) And finally, topping out our list at number five,
we want to look at one of the oddest form of the sequel, the side-quel.
This is a sequel in maybe the loosest sense,
the distant cousin of it's original.
Yeah, maybe they share some essential DNA, but it doesn't continue the same story
line or even necessarily follow the same characters.
It takes a totally new tack with a couple familiar elements for context.
Think 28 Weeks Later, or Prometheus, or the Animatrix, or
10 Cloverfield Lane, or again, with Rogue One.
We want to briefly mention the spiritual sequel here, a follow up that shares only
in a thematic or tonal thrust with sequels like Everybody Wants Some,
Three Colours: Red, Hot Fuzz, or Legend of the Drunken Master.
And it's tempting to count For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, and
the Ugly for all taking place in the same universe with the same man with no name.
But unfortunately, that was more of a marketing ploy than anything.
And he also had a name, or three different ones, rather.
But fortunately for
us, recent years have been kind to us when it comes to side-quels.
Giving us our final, and
very spoiler filled pick, Split, which, seriously, is going to be a spoiler.
Not a major one, but you'll definitely be sad if you let us ruin it.
So pause this.
Go watch it.
We'll still be here when you get back.
>> The beast is a sentient
creature who represents the highest form of human's evolution.
He believes the time of ordinary humanity is over.
(Music)
>> I hope this makes you feel calm You will be in the presence something greater.
>> I was going to ask you to wear a shirt, but I won't.
because tonight is a sacred night.
>> It's almost over.
>> Shyamalan is back, and we never thought we would be saying that so excitingly or
unironically.
He's quietly worked his way out of director's jail in recent years,
on to parole in 2015 with The Visit, and
fully to freedom with this year's redemptive Split, rejoining civil society
as an A list thriller director with a keen sense of the psychological.
Split is worth twice the price of admission for
James McAvoy's performance alone.
He has moments of subtly shifting physical nuance that literally made us gasp
in the theaters.
Split is a bit of an undercover sequel until its final moments,
saving its in universe connection for
the subject of more a stranger than usual famous namesakey final M Night twist.
But it is so worth it, thrilling in what the twist
tells us will come next more than how it recontexualizes what came before.
We are excited by the idea that it is a side-quel itself,
delighting in the reveal that it takes place in the universe alongside of another
one of our favorite superhero flicks.
It engages in the conversation about sequels, about how movies can overlap and
create their own expectations for what happens next.
It ignites our imaginations about not just the future of the story universe, but
what will eventually happen in ours.
The production of another sequel.
It's far removed from the plot gimmickry of his past sins, and nuanced and
empathetic despite a few odd reviews to the contrary.
But it's also brilliantly meta in how it slots beside another story in our
imagination and amidst the director's aura in general.
Which is why it's one of our favorite sequels of all time.
So those are our picks for the best sequels of all time.
What do you think?
Do you agree?
Do you disagree?
Did we leave out some of your favorites sequels?
Are you going to be so
bold as to say there's a sequel out there that actually surpasses the original?
Let us know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe to Cinefix for
more movie lists.