The movie sequel is, along with the reboot and the remake, one of the most transparent indicators of Hollywood’s greedy excess; any film that does well is almost definitely going to get a follow-up – whether the original cast and crew are attached or not – and the result is often vastly inferior to the original effort. It’s really a case of necessity (or its lack thereof); an original film spawns from someone’s mind largely without any pressure or ulterior motive, whereas most sequels are motivated by the enthusiastic nudging of executives who see nothing but dollar signs.
Though there’s countless sequels that have managed to better the original – Terminator 2 is perhaps the test case for this – what about movie sequels that nobody really needed nor had any particular expectations for, yet wound up being pretty damn good anyway? It’s a rare beast, but these 10 films somehow caught lightning in the bottle, whether the first sequel or the fourth, or even the sixth.
Here are 10 unlikely movie sequels that were surprisingly awesome…
10. Rambo
Though the original Rambo movie, First Blood, was a genuinely brilliant and affecting critique of the Vietnam War – and even featured a genuinely moving portrayal from Sylvester Stallone – the first two sequels were so rabidly maligned that it ended up pretty much being lumped in with them, pawned off as another brainless action film. The second and third film were absolute garbage, and therefore nobody would have expected that 20 years later, with Stallone over 60 years old, he would get the bow and arrow out one last time.
Rambo is by no classical means a great film, but it hews much closer to the visceral tone of the original film. It’s a savagely violent action flick, but isn’t as flippant with it as the middle two sequels; there are consequences to the violence, and the film incorporates this into its theme, that you have to spill blood in order to save lives.
The climactic set-piece of the film, which has Rambo blowing hundreds of mercenaries into gory chunks with an AA gun, is one of the most ludicrously violent things I’ve ever seen, and made it clear that while John Rambo might not be so limber and strong as he once was, he still knows how to kick ass.
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8 Comments
FAST FIVE was an absolutely brilliant action/heist film and all the more enjoyable as I had low expectations before watching it.
Thanks for giving some love to Rocky Balboa and Rambo. There is nothing as a film fan I like more than being completely surprised by a movie and both of these films accomplished that in a great way.
It’s been theorized that House of 1000 Corpses was the movie that he was expected to make, and Devil’s Rejects was the film he WANTED to make in the first place.
I think Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol was the weakest of them. Almost invisible villain with no feeling of threat what so ever (Philip Seymour Hoffman was a total bad-ass villain). No sense of ‘big-action-movie’ like it should have, it felt more like a buddy-movie (hey, let’s forget that we are now considered as terrorists and go around the world having fun, maybe kill some bad guys?). Nothing wrong with good buddy-movies but this was supposed to be Mission Impossible -movie.
I actually thought MIB3 was the best of the MIB movies. We will have to wait and see if Will Smith can pull off the same magic as he did in MIB3 for his upcoming sequels Bad Boys 3, Hancock 2, I Robot 2, and Independence Day 2.
Rise of the Planet Of The Apes is one I’d say was surprisingly awesome. I loved the original which inmy dad had the good nature to show me before cultural references took the fun out of it, the Tim Burton remake was an embarrassment and then this just appeared. It was a brilliant movie that I don’t think anyone saw coming after Burton had his way with the franchise.
A good, strong list. However I believe that you are missing a key film in one of the more popular film franchises. After Star Trek V, The Final Frontier and given the age of the original cast most fans had the franchise as dead or on lif support. A sequel seemed unlikely. Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country was not only a great sequel but after the flop of V it let the original cast go out on a high note, collectively.
I see two major problems with 28 weeks later, the first one being the obvious logical flaws, like locking the whole population in a single room, protected only by a few guards and a simple lock. The second one, however, is more important to me; my expectations after 28 days later, which I still consider one of the best movies I have seen so far, were just too high. There was something in the first movie that made the whole scenario believable, it answered many questions that usually remain untouched in zombie movies, like “Can zombies die of starvation?” . I am quite sure that it’s one of, if not the one most realistic motion picture in that genre, something I honestly can’t say about the sequel.