10 Movie Franchises That Surprisingly Got Better
4. Universal Soldier
Though 1992's Jean-Claude Van Damme-starring actioner Universal Soldier is an undeniable cult classic, few would call it a genuinely good movie: it's charmingly stupid and a fun "switch your brain off" romp.
Despite the film's box office success, a sequel wasn't hastily assembled, and production company Carolco went bankrupt in 1995.
The rights to the IP were eventually sold, though, and two TV movies were released in 1998 without the involvement of Van Damme or co-star Dolph Lundgren. Unsurprisingly, both films were panned by the fanbase.
The series returned to cinemas with 1999's Universal Soldier: The Return, which with a budget roughly double that of the original, hoped to reinvigorate the franchise's theatrical potential. But because casting wrestler Bill Goldberg opposite Van Damme was never going to be a good idea, the film flopped with, well, everyone.
The franchise then went dormant for a decade before it was resurrected on home video, with Universal Soldier: Regeneration, which brought Van Damme and Lundgren back into the fold and opted to ignore every prior movie beyond the original.
With fans having a baseline of gutter trash to draw their expectations from, it was a genuine surprise that the movie turned out pretty well, scoring the best reviews of the series to date (that is to say, still very mixed).
And while Regeneration could've been a mere fluke, 2012's follow-up Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning topped it yet again, very nearly creeping into Fresh territory on the Tomatometer and actually getting a limited theatrical release.
It certainly helped that in addition to Van Damme and Lundgren, the film also starred martial arts maestro Scott Adkins, and the directorial style took on an unexpectedly surreal, even horrific tenor.
A reboot is currently in the works, but given the series' tawdry origins and dumpster fire of a follow-through, it's impressive that it was salvaged from the trash heap so many years later.