10 Movie Sequel Villains Far Scarier Than The Original

Villains in movies can be a tough one to get right. 99% of the time the audience knows that the hero is going to overcome their rival, but there still needs to be enough of a threat posed that there is at least a bit of doubt. The protagonist has to struggle to overcome the fight, otherwise what is the point?

And after winning the day in the first instance, if a hero is lucky enough to return for a sequel, there has to be a bigger and badder threat for them to face, right? Stakes have to be raised.

Take a look at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Director Jeff Rowe is already looking forward toward the sequel, and has plans to make the villain of the piece, Shredder, far more scary than Superfly, but how often does this actually happen? How often does a villain up the ante in terms of fear and intimidation in a franchise's sophomore release?

This list is looking purely at villains from sequels, and sequels only. Not threequels, fourquels, or any other kind of "quels", we're talking about times when the villainous stakes were raised in a franchise's second outing, so you won't see Thanos or Mission: Impossible's Owen Davian here, but instead a giant ape, a cannibal, a dragon, and more.

Adonis Creed was given quite the tall order when he had to follow in the footsteps of the iconic Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) in 2015. The spin-off was outstanding and wildly successful, but there was certainly room for improvement in the antagonist role.

Michael B. Jordan's character came up against "Pretty" Ricky Conlan, played by real-life professional boxer Tony Bellew. In a franchise like this, where Rocky lost two of his three fights against Carl Weathers' Apollo Creed, and the latter was killed in the ring by Dolph Lundgren's Ivan Drago, audiences truly couldn't have known whether Adonis would win or not.

Ultimately, he lost his fight against Conlan on a split decision, but went toe to toe, down to the wire with the boxer widely regarded as the best in the world. The only way to top such an opponent was to bring in Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu) for the sequel, which was a stroke of genius. What could make for more of a test than fighting the son of the man who killed his father?

The psychological warfare aside, Drago was a much scarier prospect in the ring than Conlan, even without taking into account the history between Drago and Creed. He may have ultimately won, but you could argue this was more of a fight for Creed than Conlan ever was.