10 More Sequels That Totally Ruined The Previous Movie's Ending
These sequels unpicked what came before.
It's no secret that movie sequels are a tough nut to crack, because it's rarely as simple as simply giving the audience more of what they enjoyed the first time around.
Filmmakers generally want to find a way to justify another film from a story perspective and do more than simply rehash prior successes.
But it's also depressingly common for sequels to kick off by undoing the previous film's ending.
Though it absolutely can work when it feels narratively justified, it often ends up feeling like a cheap, even lazy way to get the band back together for another go-around.
While sequels can rather gently undo what happened at the end of the first film, that couldn't be further from the truth for these sequels, each of which unpicked the previous film's ending in a fashion so aggressive you could almost believe they hated it.
In some cases it might've felt like a necessary evil to justify the movie's existence, though in most instances fans were simply left wondering how there wasn't another way to set the sequel up.
Did these movies really need to undermine so much of what was so beloved the first time around?...
10. Arthur Isn't The REAL Joker - Joker: Folie à Deux
2019's Joker ended by seemingly cementing Arthur Fleck's (Joaquin Phoenix) transformation into the Clown Prince of Crime as we know him, and it was quite understandably assumed that sequel Joker: Folie à Deux would continue to follow this lead.
However, Todd Phillips' hugely polarising, expectation-defying sequel didn't merely take the bold step of being a musical - it also rubbished the very idea of Arthur being the real Joker at all.
A sequel apparently made solely to flip the bird at anyone who enjoyed the first film, Folie à Deux concludes with Arthur renouncing his Joker persona and taking full responsibility for the crimes he committed in the previous movie.
And if that's not enough, the final scene sees Joker stabbed to death by a fellow prison inmate who carves a smile onto his own face and is very blatantly implied to be the "real" Joker.
So, despite the first film so brilliantly convincing audiences to buy into Arthur as the Joker, the sequel pulled a violent 180 and tossed it all in the trash.