Can you improve on perfection? These nine sequels – including The Empire Strikes Back – did just that. Photo / Lucas Films
Can you improve on perfection? These nine sequels – including The Empire Strikes Back – did just that. Photo / Lucas Films
Can you improve on perfection? No, but you can improve on Star Wars – as our critic’s pick of Hollywood’s finest follow-ups shows
Inside Out 2 has proved Pixar’s salvation, reversing the studio’s floundering commercial fortunes and becoming its highest-grossing film so far ($1.2 billion and counting). It’s not only the company’s best film in years – at least since Onward (2020) – but one of its best sequels ever, managing to reinvent the original recipe in an ideal way, with tasty new ingredients. Here’s our run-down of the other instances when furthering a franchise produced something just as special, if not even more so.
9. Babe: Pig in the City (George Miller, 1998)
From the moment when Farmer Hoggett tumbles down the well at the start, this flings itself away from the cosy pastoral idyll of the first Babe and announces itself as something else – specifically, a Mad Max film with a talking pig. With Miller stepping up to direct, and relocating the story to a scary metropolis where no one has Babe’s back, it’s defiantly, rebelliously unsafe. Amazing set pieces lie in wait, such as life-or-death chases around canal paths, and the incineration of a vaudeville circus, with chimps ducking for cover. Miller’s vision is undeniably traumatic, but also unforgettable.
Where to watch: Apple TV Store, Google TV or YouTube
Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) met a decade earlier as backpackers in Vienna, for one night only. Nine years later, Linklater had them collide again in Paris, when a chance reunion at a book signing leads them into another day’s walk-and-talk, as it starts to sink in just what they may have been missing. This time, the actors and Linklater worked together on the Oscar-nominated screenplay. Headed towards a heart-in-mouth stunner of an ending, with the catching of an imminent flight serving as the ticking clock, it’s one of the all-time-great movies about seizing your romantic destiny.
Where to watch: Netflix, Apple TV Store, Google TV, YouTube or Neon Rentals
7. Paddington 2 (Paul King, 2017)
Everyone’s favourite ursine Peruvian immigrant left his debut in such a warm and happy place, it requires truly dastardly machinations to land him behind bars and power this one up. The prime mover is Hugh Grant, as deliciously self-absorbed theatre stalwart Phoenix Buchanan, who needs a serious injection of cash, amid Shakespearean ovations to his own wigs. The trick is that prison suits Paddington: his understated melancholy makes him even more adorable as a wronged captive – plus accidental style inspiration (the pink stripes!) never fails him. It’s as hard to resist the film overall as it is Grant’s showcased villain in particular. King proves, in cahoots with new co-writer Simon Farnaby, that the crackpot inspiration that powered his first one was no fluke. Roll on Paddington 3, and goodness knows what chaos.
In Paddington 2, the lovable bear was upstaged by Hugh Grant as Phoenix Buchanan.
6. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)
James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) was a hard act to follow in every way. The only person one might have trusted to do so was James Whale, who was thankfully talked around by Universal, even if he initially worried he’d squeezed the idea dry. His instincts – to go for broke and make the second one “a hoot” – pay off majestically here. It’s the best example of a sequel as smart, fundamentally fond self-parody. Elsa Lanchester’s lightning frizz in the title role is the starting off point for everything outre Whale wanted to say in a deeply witty conversation with the first film, tongue gleefully in cheek.
Where to watch: Apple TV Store, Google TV, YouTube
5. The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass, 2004)
Doug Liman had pulled back The Bourne Identity (2002) – a notoriously troubled shoot – from the brink of chaos, and saved the leading-man career of Matt Damon while he was at it. But it took Paul Greengrass to push the series to its apex: namely, this sensational second one. Directing showcases hardly come more fully formed: the risks it took with shaky cam and whipcrack editing would change the way action movies functioned for the next decade. Beyond this, Tony Gilroy’s script wove conscience beautifully into the story, and Damon hobbled his way through it with previously unguessed grit. The Moscow chase is astonishing.
Where to watch: Apple TV Store, Google TV, YouTube, Neon Rentals
4. Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010)
No knocking the fantastic Toy Story 2 (1999), which was originally planned as a straight-to-video stocking-filler until Pixar seized a chance to push the boat out. But great threequels are so much rarer, and this (with token apologies to Peter Jackson) might be the best ever made. It gets better on every pass because the screenwriting is so resonant: what happens when putting childish things behind means abandoning old friends? The prison-escape conceit in Sunnyside Daycare was perfect, the incinerator true nightmare fuel until they hold hands to brave it – and every new character earned their place.
Where to watch: Disney+, Apple TV Store, Google TV, YouTube
Toy Story 3 is praised for its resonant screenplay and emotional depth.
3. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Non-inclusion would be heretical for Coppola’s wildly ambitious extension of his peerless epic, a film that regularly tops such lists, even if The Godfather (1972) stands the tallest. Choosing to deepen it two ways was the great feat of this screenplay, ushering us both forward and backward to amplify the Corleone family saga. The uncanny rise of Don Vito (De Niro, deadly and shrewd) makes the paranoid legacy of his son Michael (Pacino) stand in ever sharper relief. The fratricide – as a ring-fencing of the latter’s business interests, no less – still shocks like an ice bath.
The Godfather Part II uniquely deepens the original film by exploring the Corleone family’s past and present.
Where to watch: Apple TV Store, Google TV, YouTube, Neon Rentals, AroVision
2. The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
Is it better than Star Wars (1977)? Arguing the toss over that could take us all day, but they are very much in the same galaxy of quality, unlike any of the others. The key was Irvin Kershner’s darkly seductive direction, but also the confidence of the script to leave us lost in space, bereft of resolution. All the performers raised their game for it – the Han/Leia bond really blossoms – and here’s when we met Yoda, whose whole section on Dagobah is magical; and when Luke finds out who his father is. Moments hardly come more mythic, or “to be continued” endings more steeped in despair.
Where to watch: Disney+, Apple TV Store, Google TV, YouTube
Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back.
1. Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
Let’s start with the most elegant sequel title ever – this time it’s plural, and exponentially so. All credit to James Cameron for masterminding an expert pivot in genres, from sci-fi-chamber-horror to breathless war movie in space, with the best cast he ever assembled. Sigourney Weaver becomes the fully fledged action heroine cinema had always been waiting for.
Deeply respecting the lore laid down by Ridley Scott and his screenwriters, Cameron saw all the possibilities for adding more of his own and delivered a palpitatingly tense journey to the motherlode that could hardly be improved upon.
Where to watch: Disney+, Apple TV Store, Google TV, YouTube
