10 Movie Franchises That Surprisingly Got Better

5. Blade Runner

The original Blade Runner is such a monument of the sci-fi genre, such a high-point for Hollywood's fusion of thrills and thoughtfulness, that fans quite rightly expected its belated sequel, Blade Runner 2049, to be a solid, respectful addendum to the original story and nothing more.

Fans and critics were shocked, then, when Denis Villeneuve's visually jaw-dropping epic was released to rave reviews, with many deeming the film flat-out better than the original.

And they're right - the plot and characters are far more interesting, it's got a less problematic approach to women and dispenses with the original's goofiness (there's no backflipping Daryl Hannah, for one).

Basically, it's a more compelling and visually robust iteration on its predecessor, and achieves the rarest of things by improving upon a solid gold (if certainly flawed) masterwork.

While Blade Runner can only barely qualify as a franchise and it's highly unlikely we'll ever see a third movie, pretty much nobody expected the sequel to top the original, even with the inscrutable Villeneuve at the helm.