Top Ten Sequels Better Than the Original

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5. Dawn of The Dead (1978)

The Godfather of zombie films. George A. Romero presented us with the second installment of his amazing zombie franchise. Off the back of the brilliant Night of the Living Dead, he brought us another group of survivors trying to evade hordes of the undead by going to the local shopping mall. This really set the bar for what a great zombie film could and should be. Romero helped push the boundaries for what one could portray in film, offering up (for the time) incredibly realistic depictions of flesh eating. The decade in-between Night and Dawn also allowed him to do more on a visual level. The filmmaker’s underlying social commentary, particularly on how dependent society has become on materialistic things, topped it all off.

4. Spider-Man 2

Sam Raimi is at it again. Hot off the heels of the hugely successful Spider-Man film of 2002, Raimi had the daunting task of following it up with something that gave the people what they wanted and expanded on the cinematic universe he started. Enter Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), struggling with his dual identity when a new villain, Dr. Octopus (greatly played by Alfred Molina), comes to town. The sequel had more heart to it than the previous and the combat choreography had been vastly improved (the train-top fight scene remains a massive standout). The extended edition has a few deleted scenes thrown back in that make the fight scenes even longer and better.

3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

James Cameron first introduced us to the cybernetic organism that is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Terminator back in 1984. He didn’t speak much, but he didn’t need to. He would kill you and not even emote. In the high-octane sequel, the action tripled in scale and awesomeness. Ground was broken with this film, it showed the world a new menacing liquid terminator and it also showed us CGI, or rather, what CGI could do. It looked incredible and still does to this day. It gave us bigger explosions, more personality, a faster pace and one of the best send-off lines to date.

Fun fact: O.J. Simpson was originally considered for the roll of The Terminator but no one believed he could portray an emotionless killer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eajuMYNYtuY&spfreload=10

2. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back

George Lucas, the name that everyone knows, created the amazing world that is Star Wars. It first began with A New Hope in 1977 and was continued in the epic space opera, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Where the first film introduced us to the world, this one explored it. Giving us rich characters, deep stories, one of the biggest movie twists in cinematic history and leaving us on a massive cliffhanger, The Empire Strikes Back has it all. Realistically, it started going downhill after this one, making it basically the best of seven.

Fun fact: The first film was originally written to be a stand-alone movie; the trilogy came after the massive success.

1. The Dark Knight

We finally reach our number one! Really, it could have been any one of the films on this list, but it just had to go to the perfect Christopher Nolan epic, The Dark Knight. This movie was not only a great superhero film; it was a great film overall. When Nolan gave us 2005’s Batman Begins, we were blown away that a gritty, realistic Batman could be depicted in this way. Expectations were exceedingly high for the follow-up, and did he deliver. At first fans were worried about Aussie Heath Ledger being cast as the clown prince of crime, but when the first trailer dropped, so did our jaws. He gave us a joker that made your skin crawl. Where Jack Nicholson gave us a fun joker reminiscent of Cesar Romero’s, Ledger gave us an unhinged, manic villain that did more than match the intensity of Christian Bale’s Caped Crusader. This was a much bigger film in every way. One standout scene would be Nolan flipping an 18-wheeler in the middle of a street – for real. He is known for his love of practical effects, and for that, and this phenomenal picture as a whole, we are eternally grateful.