10 Movie "Sequels" That Were Really Just Remakes
6. Shaft
The "Sequel": NYPD Detective John Shaft II (Samuel L. Jackson) is actually the nephew of the original series' Shaft, John Shaft I (Richard Roundtree), who has a cameo at the end of the movie. So, in this world, the 1971 film did actually take place.
Why It's Just A Remake: Shaft is so blatantly a remake that most casual viewers don't even know it's a sequel, because without that Roundtree cameo, it basically wouldn't be.
While the plots may differ somewhat (as they do in many remakes), the similarity here is that the crime caper core is actually quite forgettable: they're pretty much both formulaic thriller narratives that allow two awesome black actors to dress up like bada**es and beat people up for 120 minutes.
The music is the same, Jackson's Shaft is mostly an impersonation of Roundtree's and both movies have a heavy racial theme throughout (with a varying degree of effectiveness, mind).
They're both decent movies, and Shaft 2000 largely got away with it because of the three decades of time since the original, and the deviating plot. The core tone, themes and iconography, though? All the same.