10 Movie Sequels Way Better Than They Had Any Right To Be

John McTiernan is one of my personal favourite filmmakers ever, and maybe the finest action director of all time. 1987's Predator kicked off a run of repeat bangers (give or take one Medicine Man here or there) that has since gone unmatched in that genre. McTiernan's grasp on and willingness to deconstruct action ended up printing legend, cementing icons, redefining convention, and generating immortal imagery.

While Predator is his finest work - the greatest action film of all time, in fact - Die Hard was more impactful. The former was no less introspective when it came to deftly and entertainingly interrogating genre archetypes, but the latter led to a host of imitators that relished both the "all-in-one-night" scenario and the everyman qualities of Bruce Willis' John McClane. Die Hard itself afforded continuity to these tropes with the Renny Harlin-directed Die Hard 2, which was again set at Christmas, and had McClane taking on a group of criminals in one location.

While Harlin's film is still a fine sequel, it lacked the tower-exploding originality of McTiernan's original. With that in mind, when McTiernan was announced as director for the third Die Hard film, Die Hard with a Vengeance, it should have been a foregone conclusion that he would return the series to the lofty heights of its debut. And while it is very much the case that Die Hard with a Vengeance equals the original in just about every metric, its success was far from guaranteed.

You could make the argument that of course, a McTiernan movie would be great. But even setting aside the script issues and it being his comeback moment following the unjust failure of Last Action Hero, I think we take for granted just how impressive it is that McTiernan was able to make the third installment in the franchise so original, so reinvigorating, and so resonant, taking a buddy cop premise, only running it through his oft-imitated yet rarely-matched formula. It's a testament to McTiernan's mastery of genre that Vengeance rarely feels imitative, and to his eye for character that he was able to push McClane to new emotional depths.

The scene where John is told the true identity of "Simon" is possibly the high point of Die Hard as a series. McTiernan leverages the weight of the original film to extract added emotional intrigue and peril - the secret sauce in his deliciously nineties blockbuster of a burger.

This same revelation could have been a total misfire, however. How often have we seen sequels return to the scene of the original film only to come stuck completely? McTiernan, though, makes it work. Partially because the preceding mystery is so compelling, but also because it makes sense for John as a character. When we meet him in Vengeance, he's in complete freefall. He doesn't care about himself or really anyone else. Now, he has to care. He has to matter. That brief flashback to Hans' death at Nakatomi serves as a lightning bolt to us the audience and to John, and exemplifies the genius of McTiernan's approach to action.