10 Movie Sequels That Turn Wimps Into Total Badasses
From zeroes to heroes before your very eyes.
Generally speaking, movie sequels have to make some big changes in order to be considered successful.
Any entry in a franchise that comes after the first will be bashed if it appears to be just copying what came before (see The Hangover Part II) so screenwriters, producers and directors will put a lot of effort into making their sequels feel different, deeply focused on avoiding that much-maligned 'rehash' and the backlash that usually comes with it.
These efforts can have great, or poor results; 2015's Terminator Genisys was criticised for turning Arnie's classic anti-hero into a laughing stock - a wrong decision made with good intentions - and there are a lot of similarly negative cases, but one positive of sequels aiming to up the ante is that characters can be changed in a great way, beefed up, or given more interesting things to do.
Sure, characters in sequels can change for the worse, but they can also change for the better, gaining a much-needed jolt of courage or badassery that makes them an infinitely more enjoyable watch, or a much cooler proposition than they were originally...
10. Evelyn O'Connell - The Mummy Returns
Evelyn "Evie" Carnahan was your typical, know-it-all bookworm in 1999's The Mummy.
Her skills were not physical or combat-related - she showed nothing but fear when faced with the prospect of a fight - but she was able to decipher hieroglyphs, follow clues that lead to the discovery of the titular creature, and, of course, ride a camel with absolute expertise and precision.
She was a strong character then - and a useful one, in places - but she lacked fearlessness, and became essentially useless once the Mummy had been unleashed, spending the rest of the movie as the damsel in distress.
Enter Brendan Fraser's Rick O'Connell. Rick and Evie are married in-between movies, and the newly-appointed Mrs. O'Connell comes packing a whole host of new abilities that are on display throughout The Mummy Returns.
The handful of years she's been married to Rick have allowed him to impart some of his combat know-how directly to her; Evie is now competent with a sword, and shows not a flicker of doubt when faced with blade-wielding goons as they invade her home.
She's even shown handling a gun later in the film while Rick and her son, Alex, are being chased by small pygmy-like creatures through a forest, and considering her character didn't show any affinity toward weapons in the first movie, this change is immense.
Evie became as brave as she was clever, a potent combination that gave her the means to save Rick from the jaws of death at the end of the movie.
That being said, we almost wish she'd let him die, so the atrocious second sequel wouldn't have been given the green light.