10 Best Movie Sequels (Not Directed By The Original Filmmaker)
Star Wars, Star Trek, the MCU, Aliens and those other franchises whose sequels stunned!
Over the decades, there have been so many great movie sequels and so many, well, less than great sequels.
When it comes to sequels, prequels, reboot, remakes, reimaginings or whatever term is cool in Hollywood at the time, all bets are well and truly off. For every great follow-up picture, there are countless utter stinkers. Sometimes those additional films will have the same director back in the fold, while other times it'll be a different name on the back of the director's chair.
One would think that a sequel moving forward without the helmer who made the original movie such a success could be devastating and a sure-fire way of total failure, yet that's not always been the case. Time and time again, a fresh director has come in and steered the franchise ship to a home run - even, at times, surpassing what has come before it.
With all of that in mind, then - and focussing in solely on second entries in a franchise - here are ten times where a sequel picture had a different director to its predecessor, but still managed to hit it out of the park.
10. Blade Runner 2049
How do you even attempt to do a sequel to one of the all-time great sci-fi movies in history? A film whose popularity has only further increased from decade to decade? A picture that continued to have fans debate its true meaning time and time again? Why, you bring in revolutionary filmmaker Denis Villeneuve.
That was the case for Blade Runner 2049, which was a sequel 35 years in the making.
Ridley Scott's 1982 Blade Runner rightly continues to garner so much praise to this day, but many raised an eyebrow when a follow-up was announced for a 2017 release. That sequel was not needed, served minimal point, and the consensus was that the only thing this new movie could achieve was to tarnish the legacy of Scott's '82 picture.
Blade Runner 2019 was largely well received by the masses, and a key component of that was the choice to have Villeneuve overseeing the picture. Having gone from strength to strength with Prisoners, to Sicario, to Arrival, Villeneuve was the perfect person to handle the mountainous task of a Blade Runner sequel - and he handled that task with aplomb.