9 Routine Things Movies Do To Set Up The Sequel

8. Bring Back a Long-Dead Character at the Last Second

Perpetrator: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Sometimes it's a villain, sometimes it's a side-kick, and admittedly, sometimes it can be pretty awesome. Because as much gyp as I give the sequel to PofC: DMC, how they shot the scene (Bloom and Knightley reportedly didn't know Rush would be entering the scene as Barbossa, making their reactions real) does get a thumbs up from me. But it does return to the question of "Is anything sacred in movies?" When characters are brought back so flippantly (as in, they're brought back for the sake of driving a plot, but how they return is shruggable), it really dilutes the intensity for the rest of the sequels. In the example of Barbossa, when he returns all-out in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, it's much more difficult to fear for the character's life when he's already been brought back once. Is there anything more annoying than, say, when "the killer" of a horror movie gets to disappear for safety from being "dead?" Wait.