10 Movie Threequels That Redeemed Their Franchise

9. Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

Thor Ragnarok
Paramount Pictures

Is Dark Of The Moon the best sci-fi blockbuster of all time? No, far from it. But, as far as redeeming a franchise goes, this threequel managed to pull off a gargantuan miracle in the wake of arguably one of the worst sequels of all time.

Just reading the words 'Revenge Of The Fallen' conjures up memories of bad plotting, racially iffy 'comic relief' and big, clunking Transformer balls. This is how traumatising the sequel was to cinemagoers, who went into the movie still giddy from the Spielbergian delights of the original.

To bring the franchise back on track damage limitation was most certainly required, and credit has to be given to helmer Michael Bay in crafting a follow up that although overlong, puts Optimus Prime at centre stage and includes some impressive set pieces with Shia LaBeouf's Sam Witwicky zipping in-between the action, looking like he's enjoying himself a bit more than before.

Solid and safe most certainly saved the day for the Transformers franchise with with Dark Of The Moon pleasing critics (for the most part) and pulling in a higher worldwide gross than its predecessors.

Contributor
Contributor

Shaun is a former contributor for a number of Future Publishing titles and more recently worked as a staffer at Imagine Publishing. He can now be found banking in the daytime and writing a variety of articles for What Culture, namely around his favourite topics of film, retro gaming, music, TV and, when he's feeling clever, literature.