What makes a good sequel?

I'm doing an essay on sequels and what makes them both financially successful and successful with it's audience. Any ideas and opinions would be greatly appreciated!

There's far less risk with a sequel, or a reboot/remake, because of the brand recognition, so they're worth spending the money to produce. As to what makes a sequel "good," that's determined before you ever saw it: Did the production meet or exceed its goals with this project? If it's a comedy, is it fresh? Is it funny? Then, yeah, it's a good sequel, a good comedy ... a good movie. There's so much marketing that goes into Hollywood movies now, more than ever. They don't want to take chances, they want a sure thing. But whether all of that green-lighting, promotion and brand-recognition pays off is still up to the audience.

What I love about Hollywood is that even now, there are still surprising pictures, when all of these crap movies are being pushed on us, where it's fresh, original and ultimately influential. But movies like that are not the norm, because people don't have the money to go see everything. Given the choice between a movie they've never heard of, or another movie about characters they already love, they're probably going to go with what they know. It's not a guarantee, but it's a very safe bet. Besides which, the studios already own the rights to past titles and franchises, that people still remember, or heard about, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to just sit on those, to preserve the purity of what was released previously. And part of that is nostalgia, which also involves passing that onto their children. So, sequels are a good idea, they can go on for decades, even ... same cast and everything and remain profitable.

1. Don't rehash the first movie.

You wouldn't believe how many sequels do this. Rehashing the first movie just doesn't work unless you call attention to it.
Good movies that rehash: 22 Jump Street
Bad movies that rehash: Jaws 2, Grown Ups 2, The Hangover Parts II and III, etc.

People don't want the same crap over and over again. The point of a sequel is to grow and develop existing characters while introducing new elements to further the mythos.

Good examples: Aliens, Evil Dead II, Scream II, The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek II

Thanks, these were really helpful

Financially, using an existing property like a series of popular books, comics, or movies seems to work. The audience is already there as are the stories. Another consistent trick is making each film co-depend on the one before and the one after. This ensures you get your audience back. Aiming them at children and young adults seems to work best.

Quality wise, hire a good director, writer, and actors. That's a general predictor of quality for all movies. Have your sequels be natural extensions instead of shoehorned in. That calls back to the existing property point, yet some series still fail there. Building a "cinematic universe" as well as including smaller, tangential stories has been working lately with Ant Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Minions. Mixing it up will ensure the longevity of your franchise by preventing audience fatigue due to predictability or being exposed to the same thing over and over.

Just some thoughts. Not an expert.

It should stand alone as a movie.


The usual pattern of franchises is the following: in the first movie we get to know characters and we have mystery about the situation they find themselves in. We get thrilling situations as characters are not used to the change that is happening in their lives. We get to experience a new world for the first time. We get continuous revelations about something. And at the end there is usually action sequence where heroes defeat villains. Because we weren't exposed to intense action for the entirety of a movie, the action we get is rewarding and brings a conclusion to up hill struggle we have been immersed in.


In sequels we know characters and they are accustomed to their new established position after first movie. There is no mystery about the world. There is no thrill because of big change. So one way to make a sequel interesting is to have good story that might as well be stand alone movie. The problem with sequels is that often all we get is lots of action which is boring if there's nothing else to it.


Examples of underwhelming sequels are: both "The Matrix" sequels, both "Iron Man" sequels, both "The Hunger Games" sequels, "Thor: The Dark World", "Insurgent".


Examples of good sequels:
- "Mad Max 2". Max finds himself in a situation where he has to help people escape. We get new situation: good people cornered in an enclave by bad people with drama and thrill because of that.
- "Die Hard 2". It repeated everything that made first "Die Hard" good: McClane cornered in an airport fighting terrorists and going against disbelief of airport security staff at the same time. It also had his wife and other people in danger of airplanes crashing. Other sequels relied on chases and were less thrilling.
- "Terminator 2". Lots of new and interesting circumstances were established in Terminator 2. It maintained emotional element required to make action meaningful.


Having known characters running around and dishing it out for entire movie (what would have been just a small part of first movie) isn't interesting.

A good sequel needs to be set up by the ending of the first film and should not rehash the first film. My criteria for a good sequel are detailed in my review of The Dark Knight Rises.

I'd love to see what conclusions you draw from this. I could also say "don't rehash the first one" but there may be occasions when that happened and the film was still successful.

I don't know whether Taken 2 did well but it comes to mind on being, I think, a poor sequel. It was nowhere near as good as the first one because it simply extended the original in a similar way to Quantum of Solace. I haven't seen the third film yet.

Instead of just rehashing what was done before, good sequels expand upon the ideas, themes, and characters of the first film. Take Empire Strikes Back for example.

We see more of the Empire with the Emperor, new ships, and motivations for their actions.
Luke begins training to become a Jedi.
Han and Leia develop a romantic relationship
The Force is further explained through Yoda
It's what, like the ONLY movie so far that doesn't have Tatooine in it? We see more of the universe.

Bad sequels fail because they stay too close to the first. Nobody likes watching reruns.

I know people are gonna hate me for this...but it's too strong

__________________
Overall...[Rocket_Sam]

This is a prime example of why you should always type out the title in text rather than just rely on a hotlinked image.

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

You don't see it? I'll write it up for you then:
DEEZ NUTS!!!

How droll. Anyway, the image is actually showing up now.

You're right, not having Tatooine in it makes it a big plus.