10 Movie Franchises That Got Better With Each Film

4. Harold & Kumar

After the stoner comedy had laid dormant for a long time, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle came along and resurrected it with its gleeful combination of typical stoner humour and expectation-defying comedy. Any time a stereotype comes along, it is summarily subverted to our surprise and profound enjoyment. John Cho and Kal Penn made for a pair of incredibly likeable leads, and had us desperate for a follow-up. The sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, was decidedly more ambitious than the original, positioning itself as a political satire, mocking the U.S. government's racial profoling policies while still not getting away from the bong hits and gratuitous nudity that made the previous movie a hit. Bonus points for the George W. Bush "cameo", that insane Grape Soda scene, and Rob Corrdry as the hilariously douchey Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. And of course, what's a great way to give a third movie a novel boost? That's right, 3D! A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas also benefits from giving the stoner duo a seasonal garnish, leading to a comedy quite unlike anything ever seen before. Danny Trejo plays Harold's father-in-law, there's a Wafflebot, a bag of cocaine gets shot into the air in slow-motion set to "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas", Neil Patrick Harris comes back from the dead, a baby does cocaine (and loves it), and a bunch of scenes totally make fun of the whole 3D gimmick ("It's gonna make Avatar look Avatarded!"). Fingers crossed that the much-discussed Harold and Kumar Get Droned actually gets made some day.