Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton from Twister are upcycled into Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in Twisters. Illustration by Javier Jaén.
Desperate to get butts back into seats after the pandemic, Hollywood went all-in on established intellectual property, cementing the trend toward sure-thing spectacles that began with the rise of streaming. Since 2020, 16 of the 20 highest-grossing releases have been sequels, prequels or requels (aka reboots).
But when Joseph Campbell told us there was only one plot, the hero’s journey, he didn’t mean it had to be the same hero on the same journey. Screenwriters fear artificial intelligence, but will computer-crafted films be more derivative than what the studios are churning out now? Do we need more aliens, apes or kung fu pandas?
Trick question! In fact, some of the easy, formulaic escapes coming our way are great—and much appreciated, even by a critic like me. That’s what summer is for, right? Popcorn now, politics later. Here’s how the good ones work.
First of all, many sequels that excel don’t overthink it; they just give you more of what you loved the first time. Let’s call this the world-is-ending-again strategy. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with Indiana Jones. Just find another ancient relic and throw some more Nazis at him. The story is more or less the same—but the stakes are probably a wee bit higher. James Bond has to catch an even more sinister master crook; Woody and Buzz get abandoned yet again; the drivers in The Fast and the Furious have to drive a bit faster and more furiously.
And another thing: Sequels are better when they can stand on their own. Each Scream is a scream even for people who’ve never screamed. There’s no need to multiply the multiverse, forcing myriad versions of our heroes into endlessly convoluted and exponentially more dangerous encounters. (Ahem, Marvel.)
Really great sequels, however, dare to change it up. This is the deeper-and-darker strategy. Star Wars enthralled us with a ragtag crew beating impossible odds; The Empire Strikes Back busted apart those archetypes to reveal a fraught, complicated family. Terminator 2: Judgment Day flipped the script entirely: The cyborg villain from the first film (Arnold Schwarzenegger) fights that creepy morphing-metal man alongside the film’s human heroes.
Cineastes will tell you The Dark Knight, released in 2008, is the best sequel of all time. (Just don’t tell The Godfather Part II.) Batman (Christian Bale) returns to battle the Joker, an agent of chaos brought to horrifying life by Heath Ledger in his final role, but quickly falls into a moral quagmire of his own. Without ever mentioning the decade’s current events, director Christopher Nolan managed a cutting critique of America’s failing war on terror. It made a billion dollars worldwide.
The highest-risk, highest-reward route is the start-from-scratch strategy. This could mean a genre shift: Ridley Scott’s Alien was peak sci-fi horror; James Cameron’s Aliens was peak sci-fi action. Thor: Ragnarok, the third in the series, remade the comic book god as deadpan comic. Denis Villeneuve’s magnificent Blade Runner 2049 drew more from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey than from Scott’s ’82 original. (Although Harrison Ford does turn up. And it’s awesome.)
George Miller, who conceived and directed the terrific 1980s Mad Max trilogy, departed from his playbook for 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. The earlier films had an unsettling low-budget grit; the reboot went big and beautifully bad, featuring Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy in what’s essentially a gripping two-hour chase. Fury Road made $380 million worldwide and won as many Oscars (six) as Godfather II.
Mel Gibson in the original ‘Mad Max.’ Source: Entertainment Pictures/Alamy.
How are 2024’s many sequels shaping up? Dune: Part Two continued where Villeneuve left off in his mesmerizing Dune (itself a “reboot” of David Lynch’s 1984 camp disaster, it wisely started from scratch). The sequel, charting the descent of Paul (Timothée Chalamet) into near madness, definitely goes deeper and darker. It’s the biggest movie so far of 2024, grossing $712 million globally by the end of May. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, with Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, made a disappointing $65 million worldwide in its first weekend. Still, Miller makes stunning action ballets, and this Fury Road prequel is deeper and darker— and also weirdly funny.
Villeneuve and Miller are sci-fi auteurs; the first is a master of slow cinema, the second a genius of Grand Guignol. If you haven’t yet seen these—in an honest-to-God theater—do.
Anya Taylor-Joy pulling a Gibson 45 years later in ‘Furiosa.’ Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
Filmgoers craving comfort food have flocked to Kung Fu Panda 4, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. The latest Ghostbusters, excoriated by the critics, still earned $200 million globally in its opening weekend. And even jaded old me bought a ticket for this weekend’s opening of Inside Out 2, the film Pixar Animation Studios is banking its rebirth on. What can I say? I can’t resist a hypersaturated guide to living with schizophrenia (I mean, childhood in America). These films all follow the hallowed it-sold-tickets-last-time strategy.
Two others on my pre-release leader board: A Quiet Place: Day One (opening on June 28) stars Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o in the third installment of John Krasinski’s fabulous don’t-make-a-sound horror series. A prequel in a different setting (Manhattan) with a new director (Michael Sarnoski), Day One is almost starting from scratch. As long as they stick with the core concept—getting a few hundred people to sit in terrified silence for two hours—they’ll score.
And then there’s MaXXXine (opening on July 5), Ti West’s X threequel. These gory, retro-slasher satires from A24 start from scratch every time, transporting the exquisitely sly Mia Goth into a new (yet connected) character in a new decade of film history. Each one has also been deeper and darker—and delightful.
Long live the sequel. Thanks to climate change, this is likely to be the hottest summer in history. Might as well spend a few cool hours with a hero we trust battling a villain who isn’t real.