10 Movie Franchises Saved From Extinction By Sequels

Forgot that one, didn’t you? Maybe it was the decades long gap between films. Maybe it was the wholesale overhaul of the cast. Whatever the case, 2015’s adrenaline-fuelled thrill ride Fury Road managed to take the Mad Max brand, which had at this stage been somewhat tainted by the kid-friendly Tina Turner sound-tracked third instalment Thunderdome, and return it to its gritty, intense roots.

The third instalment wasn’t awful by any means, but it took the series in a softer direction antithetical to the tone of the first flick, a barely-even-sci-fi gritty revenge thriller.

Fusing social commentary with balls-to-the-wall action, Fury Road combined the ambitious world building of The Road Warrior with the low-dialogue, high-impact approach of the unrelentingly tense first film in the series. The resulting instalment was a gripping chase movie punctuated by brief and effective character vignettes, a stellar sci-fi which rose above the dystopian rabble and reminded decades of pretenders to the throne how it’s done.

Returning helmer George Miller’s closer for the franchise was every bit as fast-paced and brutally brilliant as the first two film’s best moments, and the flick won over both audiences and critics upon its arrival in multiplexes in 2015.