When making a sequel to a movie is trickier than it might seem, because the audience’s expectations and pressure are much higher: if the original film introduced a popular character, they need to return; if it ended with a major conflict, the sequel needs to show what happened afterward; and if something worked, there is a good chance the studio will try to do it again. However, not every production follows this logic, and some have simply decided to go in a completely different direction, making it very difficult to watch them and believe they were actually supposed to be sequels.
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It is possible to make a much longer selection of examples, but this list features 4 of the most significant ones, considering the success of their originals. Have you watched any of them?
4)300: Rise of an Empire
When it comes to blending war and fantasy, few movies have done it as memorably as 300, but it did get a sequel that nobody remembers quite as much as the original. And that’s partly because the setting shifts from Sparta to the sea. In 300: Rise of an Empire, instead of following Leonidas and his soldiers, the movie puts the Athenian general Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) at the center of the war against the Persians, while Artemisia (Eva Green) commands Xerxes’s (Rodrigo Santoro) powerful fleet. It is not exactly a direct continuation, considering that King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) is already dead and the entire battle is already over, so the idea was basically to open up the frame and look at the events from another point of view.
The sequel’s story takes place before, during, and after the events of 300, so the movie can revisit the Battle of Thermopylae without having to tell the same story all over again. And although Zack Snyder didn’t direct it, it keeps pretty much all of the aesthetics that made the first one stand out, with heavily stylized violence, slow motion, and scenes that look like a graphic novel. The big difference is that Rise of an Empire turns one desperate battle into a much larger war, with different characters and fronts. In a way, it’s not a completely disconnected sequel, but it certainly is not just “more 300.”
3) The Butterfly Effect 2
A classic that many people remember because its plot is simply mind-blowing, The Butterfly Effecttells the story of Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) trying to go back to his own past to prevent the traumatic events of his childhood from destroying his life, but its sequel almost seems to forget about this protagonist altogether. Few people even know that this movie got a follow-up, but The Butterfly Effect 2 follows Nick Larson (Eric Lively), another man who discovers he can alter the past and uses this ability to try to improve his life after a tragedy. The problem, as you would expect, is that every change creates new consequences, and Nick ends up trapped in a cycle of trying to fix one thing only to find out that something else has gone wrong.
Of course, the structure is obviously based on the same idea as the first movie, but basically everything else was changed: new protagonist, new characters, new story, and a more conventional approach to time travel. The original used this concept to build a very disturbing psychological thriller about trauma and guilt, while the sequel prefers to play around with the classic “what if I could change this?” idea. If you stop to think about it, that is a huge difference for a new installment, especially because there is no narrative connection to Evan. Because of that, The Butterfly Effect 2feels more like a new thriller using the same premise than a true sequel. It’s not particularly interesting (just like the third installment, which also existed).
2) American Psycho 2
Every now and then, some films come along and prove that sometimes it is better not to mess with a winning formula. American Psycho is a landmark, to the point that everyone is still waiting for a reboot and ignores (or does not even know about) the sequel it got. And, in fact, calling American Psycho 2 a sequel is almost a matter of semantics, since it has much more in common with an independent movie than with Patrick Bateman’s (Christian Bale) story. This time, the main character is Rachael Newman (Mila Kunis), a criminology student who wants to build a career in the FBI and is willing to eliminate anyone who gets in her way — yes, literally eliminate them. And here is the strangest part: the movie was not originally written as American Psycho 2.
In reality, the script was for a project called The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die, with no connection to Patrick or Bret Easton Ellis’ universe. Only later did the story receive elements from American Psycho to turn it into a sequel, including an appearance by Bateman at the beginning. That is why anyone who tried to watch it probably found it so detached from the first film, which was a satire about Wall Street, consumerism, and the obsession with status and appearance; American Psycho 2is basically a college slasher about an ambitious young woman who kills her competitors. It is such a big change that it feels like the movie’s title is only there to attract a bigger audience.
1)Halloween III: Season of the Witch
One of the biggest horror franchises with several installments is Halloween, but not every movie managed to work very well. Still, perhaps out of all of them, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is one that is pretty difficult to defend. Okay, some people liked it, but if you look at the entire saga, you will see that it barely makes any sense simply because Michael Myers is not part of the story. The film follows doctor Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins), who begins investigating the mysterious death of a man found with one of the Silver Shamrock masks, a company that is producing millions of masks for Halloween. It is then revealed that those masks are part of a plan involving technology, an ancient ritual, and the intention of killing children.
At first, this seems like a completely absurd choice for a franchise that had just introduced Michael as its main villain, but this was actually deliberate: Halloweenwas supposed to become an anthology, with each movie telling a different story connected to the holiday. The problem was that nobody bought the idea, because after two films featuring the serial killer, what many people really wanted was to see him. That is why Season of the Witch is kind of the “weird sequel” of the entire franchise (even though it eventually became a cult favorite). In the end, it’s a good example of a weak attempt to change the formula, especially when it did not even need to.
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