20 Greatest Direct Sequels Ever Made
Electric Boogaloo just missed the cut.
The 'difficult second album', 'sophomore slump' or 'second year blues'; whatever you want to call it, the phenomenon is found everywhere across all forms of society. Whether it be in education, sports, the music industry, television or the movie business, the evidence is there to support the theory that things aren't always better the second time around.
Hollywood in particular has become increasingly complacent when it comes to following up a successful property. In an effort to cash in on something popular, sequels are often rushed out as fast as possible in an attempt to capitalize on the first movie's success with seemingly little regard given to actually making something decent.
It is this practice which results in abominations like Staying Alive, Teen Wolf Too, Speed 2, Alien vs Predator: Requiem and many, many, many more crimes against cinema. Movies so bad that you can almost feel your retinas burning as you watch the flaming dumpster fire unfold.
On the other side of the coin, there are plenty of fantastic sequels too. When the creative team actually puts the effort in to match, or even surpass the original, then the results can often be spectacular.
While the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road, Logan and Casino Royale have shown that franchises can right the ship after one (or more) minor stumble, the weight of expectations can often make it much more difficult to directly follow a good movie with a great one.
20. Dawn Of The Dead
George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead reinvented the horror genre back in 1968, creating the definitive screen version of zombies that still permeate pop culture to this day, and went on to influence filmmakers from Wes Craven and John Carpenter all the way to the Blumhouse productions that dominate big-screen horror today.
As well as being a classic of the genre, Night would go on to spawn a loosely-connected franchise that would continue for over forty years. The first sequel, 1978's Dawn of the Dead, became just as influential as its predecessor and is arguably a better movie to boot.
Horror movies weren't exactly known for their subtext at the time, but Dawn's commentary on materialism and 1970s society as a whole added unexpected thematic depth to a movie that quickly became regarded as one of the greatest entries in the history of the genre.