Most movie sequels these days have something in common: they're released pretty quickly
after the previous film in the franchise. Sometimes, however, it takes a good few years
to get that sequel going and sometimes it takes decades. Here are some of those movies.
After defeating the Soviets in 1988's Rambo 3, John Rambo decided to hang up the old bandana
for two whole decades. In fact, the Vietnam vet-turned-international action hero wouldn't
return until 2008, with the appropriately titled Rambo. The fourth installment of the
First Blood franchise, Rambo finds Sly Stallone's world-weary soldier heading into the Burmese
jungle to rescue a group of missionaries. Of course, after 20 years, Rambo's a little
bit slower and a whole lot wrinklier. So why did it take so long for Stallone to get his
beloved Green Beret back in action?
Well, according to Stallone himself, he just couldn't find a story that grabbed his attention.
The actor briefly considered sending Rambo down to Mexico to rescue a kidnapped girl,
but ultimately scrapped that idea and settled on having Rambo stick up for the displaced
Karen people. Sadly, though, absence doesn't always make the heart grow fonder, and neither
audiences nor critics were really clamoring for a sequel all those years later. Currently,
Rambo is both the lowest-grossing and worst-reviewed film of the franchise.
When the original Independence Day landed in theaters in 1996, the alien invasion flick
abducted over $800 million at the box office, and it seemed like a sequel should've been
the obvious next step. But even though there was talk of a follow-up as early as 2002,
it took the alien mothership quite a while to return to Earth two whole decades, in fact.
According to director Roland Emmerich, there's a good reason why it took so long for Independence
Day to resurge. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Emmerich explained that he's always
been against sequels, and would only consider making one when he can see a way to make it
not look or feel like a sequel.
Nonetheless, 20 years after the first film, Independence Day flew back into theaters with
the long-gestating sequel, Resurgence. Unfortunately, this second movie was missing two major things
Will Smith... and an audience. The movie was a flop, and the chances are good these evil
extraterrestrials won't be coming back to Earth anytime soon.
Based on the novel by Irvine Welsh, 1996's Trainspotting is the pitch black comedy that
first put Ewan McGregor and director Danny Boyle on the map. But the ending left a lot
of people wondering just what happened to protagonist Mark Renton.
Well, literature lovers got their answer in 2002, when Irvine Welsh wrote a follow-up
to his classic novel. But film fans had to wait a little bit longer. Why's that? Original
screenwriter John Hodge did actually try to adapt Welsh's second book, but the script
just didn't work out. As well as that, once-frequent collaborators McGregor and Boyle had a huge
falling out after a debacle surrounding 2000's The Beach. Boyle led McGregor to believe he
would play the lead in the film, but the director picked Leonardo DiCaprio instead. Afterward,
the two didn't speak for about ten years, which played a huge part in keeping Trainspotting
2 away from theaters.
"We didn't speak for a long time, which was such a waste."
Eventually, McGregor and Boyle made amends, and soon after, there was serious momentum
behind the scenes. One week in 2015, Boyle and the creative team behind the first Trainspotting
spent a week brainstorming a way to make the sequel work, and Hodge was finally inspired
to write another screenplay one that mixed parts of Welsh's sequel with a number of modern
elements. The result? 2017's T2 Trainspotting.
Some people love Henry Cavill, some prefer Tyler Hoechlin, but when it comes to playing
the Man of Steel, nobody does it better than Christopher Reeve. He first donned the red
cape in 1978's Superman, and came back three more times to save the world. But Superman
3 and 4 weren't classics to say the least and their failures killed the franchise for
19 years.
Over the next couple of decades, Hollywood tried desperately to bring the Son of Krypton
back to the silver screen. J.J. Abrams wrote a script called Superman Flyby, Tim Burton
and Nicolas Cage tried to get Superman Lives off the ground, and some people even considered
pitting Batman against Superman, long before Zack Snyder's movie came about. Finally, in
2006, Bryan Singer teamed up with Brandon Routh for Superman Returns, a movie that's
actually part of the Christopher Reeve series.
However, Singer's version totally ignores the third and fourth film in the Reeve franchise.
Instead, it picks up after Superman 2, which hit theaters 26 years prior. The Singer film
is loaded with references to the Reeve movies, including the voice and image of the then-recently
deceased Marlon Brando as Kal-El. Unfortunately for poor Brandon Routh, Superman Returns has
largely been forgotten by fans but hey, at least the guy is still getting a little work
in the world of DC.
Starring the one and only Jeff Bridges, Tron paved the way for the CG world we live in
today. And sure, the visual effects might look a little dated by today's standards,
but today's standards wouldn't even exist without this 1982 cult classic. Sadly, as
sci-fi movies like The Matrix took CGI to greater and greater heights, it looked like
the world didn't need Tron anymore.
Then, in 2007, the folks at Disney decided to rev up their light cycles and take Tron
out for another spin by hiring Joseph Kosinski to direct a sequel. Hoping to build excitement
for the film and show everybody the look of the world, the filmmakers created a super
expensive trailer and debuted their short film at the 2008 Comic-Con. The reaction encouraged
Disney to go ahead with Tron: Legacy.
The 2011 sequel gave the world two Jeff Bridges for the price of one, not to mention a pretty
cool score from Daft Punk. Unfortunately, the 28-year gap between films had dampened
audiences' excitement to see another installment in the franchise, resulting in a movie that
didn't exactly light the world on fire. In other words, don't expect to see Tron 3 anytime
soon.
In 1979, Mel Gibson climbed behind the wheel of the V8 Interceptor and roared into cinemas
with Mad Max. The Australian actor would reprise the role two more times, becoming The Road
Warrior and finally going Beyond Thunderdome. Of course, Gibson always rode across the wastelands
with director George Miller, the visionary behind the dusty, dirty franchise. But after
their 1985 collaboration, the series ran out of gas.
Then, in 1998, Miller was minding his own business, literally walking across a road,
when he got the idea for a new Mad Max movie. The director wanted to start shooting in 2001,
but 9/11 happened, wrecking the economy and screwing up the film's budget. It also didn't
help that Mel Gibson was about to have a major public meltdown and reveal himself to be,
well… kinda controversial.
"Four years after Oscar-winner Mel Gibson made headlines for making an anti-semetic
statement, it seems that his mouth may have gotten him in trouble again."
So the fourth Mad Max film was put on hold for a grand total of 30 years, until Miller,
Tom Hardy, and Charlize Theron finally came together to create the best film of the entire
franchise: Fury Road. And sure, it took three decades to get going, but let's be honest
it was more than worth the wait.
Tom Cruise came onto the scene with Risky Business, but it was Top Gun that made him
the bona fide movie star that he is today. And since everybody knows that Tom Cruise
is a bit of an adrenaline junkie one who absolutely loves sequels featuring crazy stunts it seems
like a Top Gun 2 would've been the most obvious thing in the world. But Cruise took a heck
of a long time to climb back into that cockpit.
True, there were rumors in 2010 that he'd take to the skies once again, but Top Gun
director Tony Scott's tragic suicide in 2012 kept the sequel from getting clearance for
a few more years. However, the movie did eventually take off, and Top Gun: Maverick will be soaring
into theaters in 2020... a whopping 34 years after the franchise first took to the skies.
Here's hoping for more volleyball, more motorcycles, and more highways to the danger zone.
It may seem unthinkable now, but Blade Runner was a major bomb when it was released in 1982.
All these decades later, however, Ridley Scott's tale of robots on the run has become one of
the most beloved and influential films in sci-fi history. And to many, it was basically
an "untouchable" movie. But there were two people who thought maybe a Blade Runner sequel
might work: Bud Yorkin and his wife Cynthia Sikes.
Yorkin was one of the producers of the original film, and along with co-producer Jerry Perenchio,
owned the rights to its story. For a long time, neither producer wanted to do anything
with the property, but once Yorkin and Sikes started thinking about a "part two," they
bought out Perenchio and got busy expanding Rick Deckard's world.
Initially, Ridley Scott was going to direct, but a certain other sequel to one of the director's
classics sidelined the English filmmaker. So Denis Villeneuve of Sicario and Arrival
fame was tapped to sit behind the camera. With Harrison Ford starring alongside Ryan
Gosling, Blade Runner 2049 hit theaters in 2017, 35 years after the original debuted.
While the movie wasn't a box office smash, it did impress critics, and the film finally
earned the much-deserving and oft-overlooked Roger Deakins an Oscar for Best Cinematography.
When Mary Poppins was released in 1964, audiences were eager to step in time with the film's
catchy songs, and the movie earned a staggering 13 Oscar nominations. Julie Andrews even went
home with the little gold trophy for Best Actress, and the movie turned her into a major
star. But there was one person who absolutely hated the film P.L. Travers, the author who
first introduced Poppins to the world.
Travers absolutely detested the upbeat adaptation, so when Walt Disney asked if they could adapt
another one of her eight books about the prim and proper Poppins, Travers shut Disney down
there and then. Disney head Jeffrey Katzenberg would resume conversations with Travers throughout
his tenure at the company, but the irascible author made things so difficult that Katzenberg
just gave up.
There wasn't any movement on the Mary Poppins front until after Travers passed away in 1996.
About 16 years after her death, the folks at Disney approached the author's estate again,
and this time, they actually got the go-ahead. Sadly, Julie Andrews was too old to reprise
the role, but 54 years after the original film, Emily Blunt did a practically perfect
job of playing everybody's favorite flying nanny.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho is arguably one of the finest horror movies ever made.
It's the granddaddy of the slasher genre, and gave the world one of the all-time great
villains with Norman Bates not to mention making an entire generation afraid of hotel
showers.
“ah”
But this 1960 horror flick wasn't exactly begging for a sequel. The original ends with
Norman locked inside a mental asylum, his secrets revealed and his mind completely gone.
But when did a solid conclusion ever stop anyone from making a sequel?
The next installment of the Psycho series first came in book form. The original film
was based on a novel by Robert Bloch, and the author followed up his pulp thriller in
1982 with a book that has elsewhere been described as "unfilmable." In fact, it's so nuts that
Universal Studios had no desire at all to adapt Bloch's new novel. Instead, they decided
to make their own film with a completely different plot. They hired Tom Holland no, not that
one to write the script, and they were originally going to make it a TV movie starring Christopher
Walken.
But then the OG slasher himself, Anthony Perkins, fell in love with the script and returned
for the role. Once Perkins was on board, Universal turned Psycho 2 into a fully-theatrical film.
By the time the movie hit theaters, it had been 23 years since Norman first went all
kill crazy in that motel bathroom. And while it's probably true that Hitchcock's classic
didn't need a sequel, Psycho II has its fair share of defenders. So it wasn't a total waste,
at least.
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