5 Sequels That Came Out 20 Years Later (And Were Actually Worth The Wait)

The Previous Movie: Return Of The Jedi (1983)

The Belated Sequel: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

The Gap: 33 years

OK, so technically there were the prequels in the mid-naughties which came sixteen years after Return Of The Jedi and ended ten years before The Force Awakens, but those weren’t advancing the story of Luke Skywalker and Episode VII hype had been building long before Lucas put pen to paper on Episode I, so this definitely counts.

The notion of an Episode VII had existed ever since the first Star Wars – Lucas has talked endlessly about how he’d cut down his original draft for The Star Wars into nine or twelve parts (depends on when you ask him) before moving ahead with the original film – and had at first planned to have the run of Star Wars go from Episode IV to Episode IX. When he instead wrapped things up with Return Of The Jedi in 1983, any hope of a Part 7 was nixed and seemingly buried when the prequels repositioned the saga as the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker.

Rumours of a sequel trilogy of course persisted, but nothing came of them until Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, releasing Star Wars: The Force Awakens (née Episode VII) in December 2015. Not quite living up to thirty-two years of fan expectation (there’s some odd pacing issues, especially near the end of the second act), it was still a phenomenal achievement, making you as excited for the future of the franchise as it did pay homage to the past.

Were any other belated sequels worth the wait? Shout out any we missed down in the comments.