10 Movie Sequels That Should Have Been Prequels

With writers and directors alike growing increasingly content with working on sequel after sequel after yet another sequel, the film industry has become somewhat stagnant of late. At least, that€™s the argument floated by those growing tired of Hollywood's lack of originality, and it€™s fair to an extent, though in reality this so-called obsession with sequels is nothing new. In fact, sequels have been around as long as the movie itself. The Keystone Cops put out no less than a dozen films between 1912 and 1917 and Universal€™s genre-defining monster movies dominated the 1930s and 1940s, with Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man all getting a number of instalments. This multi-film tradition is alive and well in modern moderns and has been seized upon by film makers of pretty much every genre, from huge ensemble actioners to family-friendly fantasy. It€™s a trend that doesn€™t look like stopping any time soon, though what the powers that be are yet to realise is that sometimes taking a step backwards is the best way to move forwards. It is easy to take the chief protagonists from a successful film and dump them into a new (or slightly tweaked) situation, though there are ways to expand on profitable characters without inflicting two hours of de-ja-vu on the audience. If the resurgence of the superhero genre has taught us anything it is that we all love a good origins story. The one thing more interesting than what happened next is what happened to get us here in the first place, and, as you're about to see for yourself, opportunities to explore the backgrounds of memorable characters are usually passed over in favour of an easy sequel...