10 Greatest Prequel Movies Of All-Time

Prequels get a bad wrap... and deservedly so: they're notoriously hard to pull off, and rarely feel worth the effort that it takes to create them.

The problem is that they usually set out to fill in gaps that were left ambiguous on purpose the first time round. You know, things that were done to create a sense of mystery or make the main hero into something of an enigma. Who cares how Han Solo became Han Solo, anyway? Isn't it better to leave what happened "before" to the imagination? According to Hollywood, the answer to that question is: "Uh, no!"

Despite the fact that most prequels are terrible, however, there are a handful that are genuinely worthwhile; movies that - believe it or not - justify their existence in clever, interesting ways and don't squander what was good about the originals.

Here are 10 prequels which prove that this sequel sub-genre isn't quite as redundant as many movie-goers seem to think; that it's actually possible for a prequel to both enhance its predecessor and the established mythology...

Note: Some films often labelled as "prequels," like Batman Begins and Casino Royale, haven't been included on account of their being part of their own, separate universe; I've opted for prequels made as part of an existing canon.

It would be incorrect to claim that Prometheus turned out to be the modern sci-fi masterpiece that those initial trailers made it out to be. As a loose prequel to Ridley Scott's own Alien, it offered up a film that somehow managed to be both overplotted and underplotted all at once.

But those visuals, the atmosphere, and the set design... for everything that went wrong, something else went really, really right.

As a cinematic experience, Prometheus is an exhilarating ride that manages to be entirely absorbing from start to finish. Set many years before the events of Alien, the movie chronicles the ill-fated exploits of a crew, led by Noomi Rapace's Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, who travel to a distant planet to "meet their makers."

One of the biggest criticisms that prequels tend to face is that there is little tension; that we already know which characters will survive. This wasn't the case here; due to the time frame, none of the characters were familiar, which allowed Prometheus a rare strength that most prequels inherently lack.

Though it's a shame that so many of Prometheus' big questions were left hanging by the end of the film, it still proved to be a very interesting and - at times - intelligent slice of sci-fi cinema - one which carefully avoided damaging the legacy of the 1979 classic. It isn't perfect, but there's still much here to appreciate.