10 Recent Movie Sequels NOBODY Expected To Be Good
It's a miracle these movies weren't trainwrecks.
Sequels are of course the lifeblood of the film industry, with Hollywood keen to spin almost every hit movie off into as many follow-ups as audiences will willingly throw down money to see.
And while many great sequels find clever ways to extend the original story or otherwise justify their existence, sometimes there's just the overpowering feeling that a cynical, creatively bankrupt dud is on the way.
Sequels are hard to make, so most of them aren't great and plenty of them aren't good - though studios will typically try to conceal this as much as possible pre-release.
Yet these 10 movie sequels all seemed destined to flop with critics if not also audiences, enough that few had expectations for them above sheer mediocrity.
But as it turned out, each of these cinematic follow-ups exceeded expectations.
Far from the trainwrecks most were anticipating, these movies ranged from passable entertainment to genuinely great sequels in their own right.
Hell, in a few instances they even laid claim to arguably being the best of the franchise - quite the result for a project that seemed doomed to fail on paper...
10. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
Belated sequels to beloved comedies have an atrocious batting average, and so it was incredibly easy to believe that Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F was set to be an abject misfire.
Releasing direct to Netflix a full 30 years after the risible Beverly Hills Cop III put the series on ice, and long since Eddie Murphy's A-lister status evaporated, ensured it was near-impossible to expect anything above mediocrity.
The fact that the film was also the feature debut of director Mark Molloy only furthered the iffy feeling that many fans had about Axel F, only for it to deliver solidly above expectations.
No, this wasn't a Top Gun: Maverick-tier surprise, but it did deliver a decades-later follow-up which retained the R-rated wit of the first two films, with Murphy slipping effortlessly back into the title role that made him a star.
Though there's an inherent fan service appeal to seeing Murphy share the screen with original co-stars Judge Reinhold, the late John Ashton, Paul Reiser, and Bronson Pinchot once again, Axel F is surprisingly restrained on the nostalgia-bait front, instead functioning as an earnest update which does its material and characters firm justice.