32 movies that actually deserve a sequel
Jan. 31, 2024Because sometimes, one movie just isn’t enough
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The best movies don’t need to inspire sequels. But sometimes, the best stories can’t be contained to just one movie. So, what are the few movies that actuallydeservea sequel?
Ever since movies like The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day changed the game, movie sequels have become shorthand to imply both epic successandan audience’s continued investment in a story being told.
But many times, the movies that actually deserve sequels the most are the ones that don’t get that chance. Whether it’s due to over-inflated budgets or bad marketing, some movies fail to attract the right amount of moviegoers to warrant sustained interest.
But that doesn’t mean the movie is actually bad. In fact, it might mean that the movie is so good, no one knew what to expect from it until it was just too late. From standalone superheroes to experimental sci-fi tentpoles, here are the 32 movies that actually deserve a sequel.
For all its artificial visual effects, Warcraft had a surprising amount of heart. While the movie struggled to handle the unwieldy lore of the popular Warcraft video game franchise, director Duncan Jones still delivered an engaging high fantasy epic about the foolishness of war and the bravery it takes to overcome ego and prejudices for the sake of a better future. Despite the worldwide recognition of the Warcraft brand, the film suffered critical damage at the box office, although its strong performance in China made it the highest-grossing video game movie ever at the time. Years after its release, fans now hope for a return to Azeroth.
At once a throwback to sci-fi pulp adventuresandan innovative piece of filmmaking that foreshadowed VFX-heavy tentpoles, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a cult classic celebrated for its boundless imagination and unfulfilled franchise potential. Set in an alternate 1930s, a reporter (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) hires an old flame, the dashing pilot “Sky Captain” (Jude Law) to investigate the whereabouts of missing scientists. With its arresting art deco designs and its original universe teeming with more stories to tell, it’s maddening that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow failed to take off with audiences. Financially, the movie underperformed, grossing just $58 million against an estimated (and disputed) budget of $70 million. If there was any movie that should have launched a dozen sequels and spin-offs by now, it’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
To be clear, Van Helsing (from director Stephen Sommers) is not a very good movie. But the mere premise of a crossbow-wielding Van Helsing – played by a masculine Hugh Jackman – is simply too good to not try again. As a tribute to the Universal Monsters (before ill-fated attempts at a shared universe), Van Helsing entertains as an empty calorie creature feature that sacrifices horror and suspense in the name of spectacle and pizzazz. While the movie’s underwhelming commercial performance stopped any movement for a sequel, Hugh Jackman deserves more than one bad shot at a truly killer idea.
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As one of the most popular movies ever from action movie maestro John Woo, his 1992 heroic bloodshed feature Hard Boiled was (and still is) his most popular Hong Kong-produced film before spending the rest of the 1990s in Hollywood. Basically a mixture of Die Hard with The Departed, it’s bizarre that Hard Boileddidn’tturn its slick protagonist, Inspector Tequila (Chow Yun-fat) into an enduring action movie hero. While an official sequel did happen through a video game – John Woo’s Stranglehold, released in 2007 – Hard Boiled, and Inspector Tequila, deserve so much better.
Between her seismic hit Mad Max Fury Road and her recurring role in the Fast & Furious franchise, Charlize Theron starred in her own John Wick-esque action movie, the rollicking and stylish Atomic Blonde. Despite its box office success and positive reviews from critics, the movie did not immediately ignite a new cinematic franchise. While there have been talks of a sequel, including rumors that Netflix would be the main distributor, the project seems to be on ice indefinitely.
While Shane Black’s laid-back detective comedy The Nice Guys was mostly ignored during release, it has slowly amassed a cult following of die-hard fans who admire the chemistry of co-stars Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. Though the film wraps up its story and the arc of its characters remarkably well, the simple fact is that Gosling and Crowe pack too much dynamite for one movie. That the first movie ends with the official formation of their detective agency is an easy springboard for new cases, new stories, and new laughs.
In an era just before Marvel and DC weaponized their maximum potential, there was a slew of original – and often subversive – movie superheroes. In 2008, Will Smith used his own superheroic star power in Hancock, where Smith stars a crude, alcoholic superhero whose discovery of another “super” like him complicates his life. While the movie’s second half is way overcooked with a complex backstory reveal, the first half is A-plus stuff, with Smith hilariously flying around L.A. and making a total mess of it all. If the superhero genre is jam-packed with sequels, there’s no superhero more deserving of another chance than Hancock.
Despite a gross of $212 million worldwide and several Oscar nominations including for Best Picture, production costs for Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the world still weighed too heavily for 20th Century Fox to immediately greenlight a sequel. That’s a shame, because all these years later, the Russell Crowe-led war epic is still celebrated for its handsome period design and stirring high seas action. That the movie was also based on the first in a series of 20 novels by author Patrick O’Brian means Master and Commander had all the makings for a new Hollywood franchise, and that it simply hasn’t become one is enough to shiver one’s timbers.
While Dracula Untold failed to sink its teeth into critics, there have been some renewed appreciation for this superhero-esque retelling of Dracula, which reimagines the famous vampire identity as an “alter-ego” of the real-life historical figure Vlad III (also known as Vlad the Impaler). In a time when the rest of Hollywood was catching on to Marvel’s cinematic universe strategies, there was a brief moment in time where Dracula Untold was to be the first chapter in a new shared universe of monster movies. Eventually, none of those plans panned out. But Dracula Untold’s unique ending, where Dracula continues living in the 21st century, makes a sequel not only plausible, but exciting to speculate over.
Originating as a passion project of producer James Cameron, the live-action Alita: Battle Angel – an adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s manga, directed by Robert Rodriguez – has become a cult favorite due to its impressive visual effects, sympathetic characters, and wholly unique science fiction setting. Though the movie has been supported by fan-led campaigns on social media (under the hashtag #AlitaArmy) and Cameron insisting that more Alita movies are in development, it remains to be seen if Alita: Battle Angel can in fact be the next sci-fi juggernaut or if its prospects are doomed for the scrap heap.
In the aftermath of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Hayden Christensen emerged as a budding action star in the sci-fi movie Jumper, based on the 1992 novel and directed by Doug Liman. While a “superhero” movie about a man who commands one specific superpower – the ability to teleport anywhere in the world – Jumper leaps free from any pre-existing intellectual property parameters and expectations for shared universe spin-offs. That ironically makes Jumper more qualified for the modern franchise treatment than anything else. (It also helps that it’s just a solid action movie to boot.) Even after all these years, Jumper’s simple but intriguing premise means there’s still so many more places it can go.
Once upon a time, Alec Baldwin was a movie superhero. In 1994, the 30 Rock star portrayed the pulp superhero The Shadow in a big budget (then a whopping $40 million) production that tried to modernize the 1930s icon. Though The Shadow failed to grab audiences and critics by the shirt collar, the movie has over time earned admiration as a gem of superhero cinema before the industry actually figured out how to make them guaranteed box office winners. Under the direction of Highlander’s Russell Mulcahy, The Shadow actually looks and feels like you’re watching a noir comic unfold before your eyes. While a sequel has never been entertained, a reboot or a sequel could see The Shadow lurk in the dark hearts of a new generation.
Disney held its fingers crossed when Gore Verbinski took on bringing The Lone Ranger to the big screen, hoping his Pirates of the Caribbean magic could work again. Despite the presence of Johnny Depp (whose role as the Native sidekick Tonto actually drew criticisms), Verbinski’s movie was simply too big, too bloated, and too expensive for audiences to want to giddy up to the movies for. Still, The Lone Ranger was a bombastic Western epic for modern times, and the timelessness of The Lone Ranger means there’s still so many places for his story to gallop.
As is the case with most cult classic bombs in the 21st century, Andrew Statnon’s epic sci-fi disaster John Carter was just too expensive for any box office gross to support. Still, that hasn’t tarnished the way audiences actually loved John Carter. An adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars – the first in a literary series – John Carter delights as a maximalist sci-fi spectacle. Although Disney had every hope for John Carter to launch a new franchise, its failure was so disastrous for the studio that by the next year, it owned Star Wars. Though audiences today would welcome a John Carter sequel, Disney surrendered the rights to Burroughs’ novels, making any possibility of a deserving sequel non-existent.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
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