10 Movies That Are Basically One Big Apology

Though 2002's action-thriller xXx was a stonking box office success to the tune of $277.4 million, star Vin Diesel ended up backing out of the 2005 sequel, State of the Union, because he disliked the script.

And so, the follow-up made the ill-advised decision to kill off his protagonist, Xander Cage, replacing him with Ice Cube's new hero, Darius Stone.

xXx 2 was a colossal critical and commercial failure, making barely half its $113 million budget back at the box office, attributed to not only Diesel's absence but its awful script - penned by regular Hollywood punching bag Simon Kinberg - flat direction, and hideous visual effects.

Though it seemed like the once-promising IP was deader than dead, 12 years later the belated threequel xXx: Return of Xander Cage finally arrived.

Beyond retconning Cage's apparent death and bringing Diesel back into the fold, the third movie is basically a big-budget homage to early 2000s action movies, while being just self-aware enough not to irritate.

While State of the Union felt like a straight-to-video knock-off that somehow tripped and fell into cinemas, Return of Xander Cage was the ludicrously, stupidly entertaining sequel the original deserved all along.