These 12 movie sequels better than the original disprove the notion that the first movie is always the best.
Before We Begin
We’re only writing today about the No. 2 film in a series — not the third or fourth or whatever. The second film is crucial because if it doesn’t prove that the original’s story is worthy of expansion, any potential franchise can die right there, having taken one too many bites of the apple. A bad sequel can even make you like the original less.
So the following movie sequels better than the originals — which made us appreciate the first film even more — are especially praiseworthy.
The Godfather Part 2 (1974)
Lots of people think it’s impossible to choose between the first two Godfather films, and we hear them. But we place Part 2 slightly above Part 1 because of the incredible backstory of Vito Corleone (played here by Robert De Niro). And because the grim interplay between Michael (Al Pacino) and Fredo (John Cazale) is so devastating.
For what it’s worth, it received six Oscars compared to three for the original — including a best director Oscar that the Academy gave Francis Ford Coppola for the second film, but not the first. And they both won Best Picture.
If you prefer the first Godfather, we’re not going to argue with you. Both films are as close to perfect as a film can get.
Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior (1981)
After the first Mad Max showed the collapse of society, Mad Max 2 — released in the U.S. as The Road Warrior — could devote itself entirely to imagining life in a wasteland. Director George Miller and young star Mel Gibson delivered a grotesque, vicious, grounded war where gasoline is more valuable than human life.
With a much higher budget than Miller had for Mad Max, it could indulge in the stunning set pieces that the Mad Max films have become known for — and that Miller perfected in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. He sets out to at least rival the previous films with the upcoming Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Aliens (1986)
Ridley Scott’s Alien is excellent — one of the best sci-fi and horror movies ever made.
It’s astonishing that Aliens improves on it, but it does. James Cameron, taking over for Scott, puts Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) at the center of the story from the start — the original Alien does a bit of a bob-and-weave before establishing her as the heroine, helping establish the final-girl horror tradition — and her relentless fight for survival when all hopes seems lost is incredibly compelling.
Alien has a cold, less-is-more brilliance, but Aliens suggests that sometimes more is more — and was the first films to demonstrate what a genius James Cameron has for sequels. He’s also responsible for the next film on our list of sequels better than the originals.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Another of the greatest sequels ever made. As we’ve previously noted, the original Terminator — a relatively low-budget movie that had only modest box office returns, before finding a vast home audience.
Judgment Day turned everything up. Sarah Connor, a terrified waitress in the first Terminator, is now a hardened warrior trying to save her son and prevent the apocalypse. And Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 is back not as an unstoppable killing machine, but as a reluctant hero.
The actions sequence are stupendous, Robert Patrick is brilliant as the shape-shifting T-1000, and the film has more emotion than anything else James Cameron has ever made, with the possible exception of Titanic. It’s a titanic achievment.
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1981)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a return to the Star Trek universe after the cancellation of the beloved TV series, was fine. It’s a little slow and short on action, and got mixed reviews, but at least our old friends were back.
But Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, is magnificent. It’s truly scary — Chekov and Terrell and the eel larvae in their ears? Egads — and the stakes are high. Khan — making a welcome return from the series — is a foreboding, vicious villain with a legitimate axe to grind after the killing of his wife, which he of course blames on Captain Kirk.
Then the kicker — Spock dies! He dies in a way that feels irreversible, and actually stays dead awhile. (Not too long, of course: Star Trek needs him.) The death gives Wrath of Khan gravity and real stakes. Star Trek is beloved by intellectuals, but this one is sensationally emotional — and an obvious choice on any list of movie sequels better than the originals.
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
The Empire Strikes Back is the reason people love the Star Wars saga as much as they do — and much of the credit goes to the recently departed James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader.
The wonderful first Star Wars is kind of a kid’s movie: a fun, plucky, wonderfully inventive, tongue-in-cheek space caper and crowd pleaser that deserved its massive box office. But The Empire Strikes Back is about growing up.
Easy decisions are often the wrong ones. Everyone is constantly calculating current sacrifice against future reward. And just when things start to seem simple, they become incredibly, impossibly messy.
It also contains the flat-out best reveal of any movie, ever. If you saw it as a kid, in a theater, as I did, without knowing what was coming in Cloud City, then you know what it’s like to have a story viscerally and completely explode your simple childish beliefs.
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
This is one of the best superhero movies ever made, because of the serious questions it asks about what it takes to be a hero. Can Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) be the savior of New York City as Spider-Man, and also carve out a small measure of happiness with Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst)? Director Sam Raimi doesn’t make it easy.
But in the film’s greatest moment, after a stunning subway battle with Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), Peter learns that he doesn’t always have to save the city. Sometimes the city can save him. It’s one of the most obvious choices of the many superhero sequels better than the originals.
X2: X-Men United (2003)
The first X-Men was fine. It set up the characters and gave them black leather costumes that looked credible and not too comic-bookish to mainstream audience not yet fully ready to embrace the Marvel Universe — a situation that would soon change.
X2 raised the stakes dramatically, going apologetically full X-Men with a storyline inspired by the Chris Claremont-authored graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills.
X2 embraced that the X-Men comics have always been about: prejudice. The mutants of the X-Men face an unrepentant anti-mutant bigot, Colonel William Stryker (an icily great Brian Cox), and see their world so upended that they need to align themselves with their arch enemy, Magneto (Ian McKellan) to save Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart).
It is the X-Men movie that feels the most like Claremont’s X-Men comics, and that’s the highest compliment we can give.
Paddington 2
The original Paddington is a sheer delight, but Paddington 2 is one of the most universally beloved films of our present century. The continuing story of a Peruvian bear living with the the Brown family in London, this edition of the Paddington saga finds the lovable bear caught up in a mistaken-identity crime caper that lands him behind bars.
For a time, it was the best-reviewed film on Rotten Tomatoes, not that that should mean much of anything. Just watch for yourself and we’re confident you’ll be charmed by our favorite marmalade-chugging little gentleman.
A third story in the series, which will take Paddington back to Peru, is in the works.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
The first Captain America was terrific and inspiring: the story of a skinny kid from Brooklyn named Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) who was desperate to serve his country and stop the rise of fascism.
The Winter Soldier, though, took things in a wildly different direction, invoking the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s to tell a story of corruption from within. Steve Rogers, it seems, thawed out into a world much more complicated than the one he left behind.
And the chemistry between Cap and the Black Widow aka Natasha (Scarlett Johansson, above with Evans) was crackling, which is almost never the case in a Marvel movie. An easy choice for our list of sequels better than the originals.
The Dark Knight (2008)
As good as Spider-Man 2 and X-2 are, The Dark Knight is better. And like all Christopher Nolan movies, it gets better on repeat viewings. It’s a shoe-in for our list of sequels better than the originals — and the original, Batman Begins, was outstanding.
The film follows a terroristic villain named The Joker (Heath Ledger) who — you only realize on the second or third or tenth viewing — is the opposite of the spontaneous, disorganized madman he appears to be. He enlists Art of War tactics (Sun Tzu wrote, “All warfare is based on deception”) to trick the citizens of Gotham into believing he’s making it up as he goes along. In his most telling line, he asks, through macabre clown makeup, “Do I look like a guy with a plan?”
No, he doesn’t — but he is. It doesn’t quite succeed, but it does turn one of Gotham’s greatest heroes into a villain while turning the other into a pariah.
It takes all the themes of Batman Begins — can one good person bring justice? — and inverts them to show how one bad person can make, in the words of Michael Caine’s Alfred, “the world burn.”
At least for a little while.
Dune 2 (2024)
We liked Dune: Part One. Dropped in both theaters and on HBO Max during pandemic times, it didn’t get the unveiling it deserved, but Denis Villeneuve’s desert planet epic, based on the Frank Herbert novel, was nonetheless an assured, gorgeous achievement.
Dune: Part 2, however, is one of the most impressive movies we’ve ever seen. It has a pacing all its own, an understated certainty in its universe-building, and the best performance in the young careers of Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, two actors who, to be honest, we didn’t totally get until now. Dune 2 exposed the problem: their characters up until this point have been too small. They were made for bigger things.
Recent movies love to impose shaky, vague metaphors on modern political events, but Dune 2 does better — it recognizes a reality where justifications shift like the sands. You could deconstruct it for years, and we’re confident people will. And it looks and sounds and feels so overwhelming that you’ll feel like you’ve actually lived — and lost — on the planet Arrakis.
It’s the latest film on our list of movie sequels better than the original. And time will tell, but we also think it’s one of the greatest.
Liked This List of Movie Sequels Better Than the Originals?
You might also like our list of Sequels No One Needs to See, or this list of the 11 Must-See Movies of 1984, featuring the original Terminator and an Indiana Jones sequel that didn’t quite make our list.
Also let us know if you think Gremlins 2 belongs on the list of sequels better than the originals. We’re torn.
Main image: The Empire Strikes Back.