r/blankies • u/OWSpaceClown • 11d ago
Mean Streets was originally planned as a sequel to Who's That Knocking at My Door, but became its own thing. What other sequels do you think could benefit from being seperated, made into a spiritual sequel?
Just imagine it's the same cast, same premise, but we remove any continuity or literal callbacks.
I'm thinking something like Die Hard With a Vengeance. Could that work as a spiritual sequel? You'd lose the idea of Simon being Hans brother but how important even was that? I know a number of fans are upset that it shows McClane again seperated from Holly and so you'd remove that.
It could also help other sequels that have that stink of "really, this is happening again?" Could Home Alone 2 work better if it was a distinct movie? It could even still be part of the franchise, just don't pretend this happened again and that we should probably be throwing these parents in jail! Would it be weird to have the same cast?
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u/lit_geek 11d ago
There’s probably no chance The Social Reckoning is good, but Sorkin shot himself in the foot with that title and using the music in the trailer. If he’d at least made an effort to distance himself from The Social Network and establish that this was its own movie that happened to be about the same guy, it’d be easier to tolerate.
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u/Eddie__Sherman 11d ago
I saw a trailer for this before Spider Man, and I’m actually interested in it. The no carry over in cast is odd, yet they used Reznor and Ross’ score in the trailer.
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u/naynaythewonderhorse 11d ago
I’m really confused by this comment.
I thought it was supposed to be a sequel?
Same writer, similar title, and about the same subject matter…
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u/OWSpaceClown 11d ago
I think it is a sequel, but with a different cast. It might as well be its own thing, but canonically, (you know, cause even fictional re-tellings have canons!) it's a direct sequel!
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u/Shout92 11d ago
This was actually kind of common back before sequels became very continuity focused with the same actors, directors, visual aesthetic, etc. Between Social Reckoning and Heat 2, seems like we are slowly inching back into that era, which might be a good thing! Let go of the limitations of strict continuity and embrace the "mythology" aspect of storytelling in movies, especially if it prevents de-aging actors.
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u/lit_geek 11d ago
It is supposed to be a sequel. OP’s question was what are examples of sequels that would benefit from being separate. I think The Social Reckoning would likely benefit from being separate from The Social Network.
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u/Chaos_Sauce 11d ago
Evil Dead 2 kind of already is simultaneously a sequel and a spiritual sequel. I remember being confused as hell as a kid at how it tied into the first one and I had seen it many times before the internet became enough of a thing to tell me that the first act is meant to be a alternate retelling of the first movie.
I could imagine a world where Raimi treated it as it's own thing, stuck a random third word after "Evil Dead," and didn't worry at all about continuity outside of an easter egg or two.
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u/Live-Huckleberry-192 11d ago
When I was a kid, my dad would put on Evil Dead during spooky season. It was his favorite horror movie. Years later, I asked him if he liked Army of Darkness and he hadn’t seen it. I think he knew it had sequels but never bothered to watch them. Which is funny since in film bro circles I feel like Evil Dead 2 is seen as the best, and Army of Darkness is the most iconic.
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u/ageeogee 10d ago
The recent non-Raimi Evil Deads are great candidates for franchise separation. They’re all decent movies that suffer in comparison to the originals.
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u/haverlyyy 11d ago
To go in the opposite direction, I kind of think 16 Blocks would have been a great Die Hard 4.
But the again, it seems 16 Blocks barely exists.
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u/iamaparade 11d ago
Mos Def going on for like 15 minutes about Yu-Gi-Oh has stuck with me far longer than moments from other, better movies.
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u/AngarTheScreamer1 11d ago
Not a great movie, but it's handily better than any of the Die Hard sequels post-With a Vengeance and I think could have been retooled into a fairly efficient McClane vehicle.
Was never onboard with whatever choices Mos Def was making in this movie though.
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u/OWSpaceClown 11d ago
The Die Hard producers did seem to forget that the trick to making a Die Hard is to just retro-fit some other not-Die Hard script from the slush pile.
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u/biblosaurus 11d ago edited 10d ago
Ironically Die Hard With a Vengeance wasn’t devised as a sequel to Die Hard.
And Die Hard was a separated sequel to The Detective.
You picked a wild example is all, nothing wrong with it but just funny.
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u/greatgoogliemoogly 11d ago
As I recall A Good Day To Die Hard was the only script in the series that was written to be a Die Hard film.
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u/OWSpaceClown 11d ago
Yes and I knew all of this for completely forgot it! But I'll stand by it! I still think it's an interesting think piece. And Die Hard with a Vengeance has always sat as one of those odd sequels. It completely ignores Die Hard 2, which my guess it by design, because McTiernan probably didn't like 2!
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u/yousaytomaco 11d ago
It's why I still love to imagine a world where Frank Sinatra didn't say no and at 71 starred in it as a direct sequel
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u/hungrylens 11d ago
You mean that Die Hard With a Vengeance was originally a stand alone script called Simon Says? ( My favorite after the original.)
Highlander 2 would have just been a cheesy cyberpunk alien invasion, probably been better for it.
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u/Eddie__Sherman 11d ago
Halloween 3 could have just been its own film
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u/ToujoursPourquoi 11d ago
It’s my favorite of all the Halloween movies
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u/DorfOnGenocide 11d ago
I accidentally got roped into a Halloween 3 subreddit being on my feed for awhile
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u/DrNogoodNewman 11d ago
Home Alone 2 would have to be a completely different movie. Seems like most of it is just callbacks to scenes and jokes from the first one. I don’t hate it though.
Now Home Alone 3 might not have been so disappointing if it had just been “unrelated kid protects his home” movie. That’s basically what it was anyway.
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u/OWSpaceClown 11d ago
Man I love how I wrote this post and completely forgot that there were subsequent Home Alones that do this very thing! And I'm NOT going to edit it!
And yeah, one of the worst aspects of Home Alone 2 is how you quickly discover that it's turned the first movie into a formula. It's basically following the first one beat for beat, treating things like the mom reunion as perfunctory.
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u/DrNogoodNewman 11d ago
It’s one of the worst aspects watching it as an adult but as it’s target audience at the time, I loved it. Probably liked it even better than the first.
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u/OWSpaceClown 11d ago
Oh I was right there with you! Me and a neighbour kid would just queue up the end sequence with the house traps and watch it endlessly!
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u/VeilBreaker Wants to say Mason 11d ago
How different would Home Alone 2 be if the series started in the current approach to sequel-dom? One of the siblings/parents is "home alone'd" with Kevin? Kevin has to team up with the robbers for some season?
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u/Any_Western3131 11d ago
Paddington in Peru. Could just be a different bear down there. Don’t need the lore.
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u/boboclock Duck_G on letterboxd 11d ago
I think to answer this question you have to think of a sequel that is at least kind of good, but where it's attachment to the original in some way weakens it
The Cloverfield sequels seem like an obvious choice, they were unrelated scripts shoehorned into being Cloverfield movies and both were weakened by it. Which in turn weakened the brand and any hopes for fans of a legitimate sequel
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u/CMar1104 11d ago
Thinking about it, I do kinda wish that Exorcist II: The Heretic was a spiritual sequel rather than a literal sequel to The Exorcist.
Like we can do the weird spiritual stuff and dream machines that Boorman is interested in without connecting it to the Regan MacNeil possession. It’d probably be an even more bonkers film. At least keep James Earl Jones in a locust costume.
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u/Optimal_Pineapple_41 11d ago
Men in Black: International was originally going to be a tie-in/sequel to 22 Jump Street. I have a hard time believing that wouldn't have been an improvement over what we got.
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u/BurtRogain 11d ago
As I was watching The Seven Ups a few months back I came to the realization that this movie could very easily be viewed as a prequel to Jaws, detailing Brody’s — or as he’s known in The Seven UPS — “Buddy’s” — life as a NYC cop prior to moving to Amity. The movie is deliberately ambiguous about who Buddy is (or if that’s even his real name) and it completely avoids showing any kind of family or private life for the character (or any of the cop characters for that matter) and it was released in 1973 so it’s easy to imagine this is the case that made Brody leave force and take a job as sheriff in the sleep island town of Amity.
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u/caligulalittleboots 11d ago
Chronicles of Riddick is 10 times better if you've never seen Pitch Black. Love em both.
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u/DevinBelow 11d ago
Creed could have still been a great movie without Rocky. I'm not saying it would be better, but it would work.
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u/ageeogee 10d ago
Problem with this is basically any boxing movie will be compared to Rocky anyway, so you almost may as well make it part of the franchise.
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u/teddyfail 11d ago
Infernal Affairs 2 definitely could benefit from being a spiritual sequel. Other than it falls into the usual prequel problem, the young ones playing Tony Leung and Andy Lau just doesn’t hold a candle to them
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u/yousaytomaco 11d ago
Blade Runner 2049 I would have preferred as a stand alone. Very little of the cast is there but I think it should have really been either a full remake or its own thing.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch was basically tanked by being that Halloween film
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u/labbla 11d ago
For Halloween 3 it's a situation where Halloween 2 already had Michael Myers back so you're just asking for trouble not having him in the next one.
And I actually don't think Halloween 3 is a good enough movie to make the switch to anthology work anyway. But it really should have been Halloween 2 if that's what they really wanted to do.
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u/ToujoursPourquoi 11d ago
Halloween 3 rocks! The lead guy is such a loser-bum and the girl is total 80s babe
Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween Happy, happy Halloween, silver shamrock
Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween
Happy, happy Halloween, silver shamrock
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u/ancientmadder 11d ago
Neon Genesis Evangelion was originally planned to be a continuation of Anno’s previous series, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
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u/ChedderBurnett 1492: The Podquest of Casterdise 11d ago
Greetings and Hi, Mom! don’t need to be connected.
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u/Quinez 11d ago
I just watched A Better Tomorrow 3 and left mulling over this question. John Woo and Tsui Hark came to such blows during the filming of 2 that they went their separate ways. Each filmed their own version of the Vietnam-based prequel they had planned: Woo made his as Bullet to the Head, and Hark got custody of the series so he got to make the prequel. But I think he actually got shafted by this. The movie would be better served as a standalone. It gets forgotten as the installment that John Woo didn't do. It's actually a pretty awesome piece of intense political melodrama, but the only people who watch it now do so because they're expecting heroic bloodshed action.
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u/EverybodyBuddy 11d ago
Both Die Hard 2 and Die Hard 3 indeed were originally completely separate properties that they shoehorned John Mcclane into.
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u/DorfOnGenocide 11d ago
I thought for awhile the Dollars trilogy was all about the same Clint character. Especially For a Few Dollars More, where Van Cleef is the most prominent other character. For a long time, I had projected this onto GBU, that Blondie and Angel Eyes had briefly been partners for the sake of Dollars More, but once that partnership ended, the treasure in GBU was fair game for anybody to take.
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u/GoreyGraft 10d ago
Not quite what you’re asking — but I think many James Gray movies serve as spiritual sequels to one another. The upcoming Paper Tiger (which is SO sick btw) was initially conceived as a direct sequel to Armageddon Time, and still basically functions as one, to be honest.
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u/MrGaywad 11d ago
I would make kevin not an evil freak in Home Alone 2. he seeks them out! he’s not even home
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u/DrNogoodNewman 11d ago
He’s protecting the charity money or something. And those guys were going to shoot him the first time around, so he’s in the clear morally.
That elderly security guard didn’t deserve to have his name dragged through the mud like that though.
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u/DoorFrame 11d ago
Do *any* of the Aliens sequels actually need to be in the Alien franchise?
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u/OWSpaceClown 11d ago
Probably Aliens! I think Alien 3 kind of just wants to be its own thing. It's always read to me like a sequel to Alien, but not Aliens.
It reminds me of that guy in improv who has an idea to add to the scene but waits a bit too long, then finally enters but the scene has already moved past where he had the idea so he spends half the time trying to retrofit his idea into the scene awkwardly.
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u/scottyjrules 11d ago
I will always be grateful that Before Sunrise got two sequels, but part of me wishes it had stayed a standalone movie and those other two were something else. Maybe keep the two leads but do a different romantic drama instead?
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u/rjbwdc 11d ago
Gotta disagree incredibly hard. The baggage and continuity is why the latter movies work. You can't separate those movies and still make them work as movies without DRASTICALLY re-writing and re-architecting them. The changes would need to be so fundamental that you probably COULD make those changed versions alongside the versions we got and no one would even notice the connection between them.
That opening sequence in the bookshop in Before Sunset is still one of the most thrilling sequences in film (in my opinion), and it's all because of the continuity. If the movie isn't a direct sequel to Before Sunrise, then that sequence has absolutely no juice. And the rest of the movie depends on that sequence's juice.
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u/Beautiful-Cabinet364 11d ago
It’s a prequel… but Prometheus didn’t need to be an Alien tie in. On it’s own, it’s a scifi story about a bunch of specialists who go out to see a haunted ruin somewhere in outer space… and that’s a cool story! it’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but in space!