20 Sequels That Brilliantly Fixed Past Mistakes

2017's Murder on the Orient Express wasn't all that great. Star and director Kenneth Branagh did strong work both in front of and behind the camera, but it was ultimately a rushed murder mystery that wasted the rest of the cast and, worst of all, it was a pointless movie. It added nothing to the story, which had been adapted far better on multiple occasions.

As such, it was easy to assume that 2022's Death on the Nile - long-delayed thanks to Covid and also the controversies surrounding lead actor Armie Hammer - would be another rote, ultra-faithful adaptation that failed to justify its existence, as, much like Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile has been adapted well on multiple occasions. Actually, it was much better than expected. 

As well as being a fun and excellently acted murder mystery at large, Death on the Nile made an effort to play around with the source material. It finds new, darker meanings in the story and also makes significant changes that'll have caught fans of the book off guard. Not all of these changes worked, but the thought definitely counted for something.

2023's A Haunting in Venice took this even further by delivering a deliberately loose adaptation of a lesser-known Poirot novel and rendering it in a radically different way, so lessons were definitely learned from the first instalment. If 20th Century Studios do indeed decide to do more of these, then that'd be no bad thing.