Back to the Future, Jaws, Halloween, Jurassic Park, Home Alone, Scream, The Matrix, Die Hard, Pirates of the Caribbean, what do all these movies have in common? They definitely peaked with movie one. There may have been a few enjoyable or even outright great sequels, but the first time out the gate was when the topic at the center was put to the best use. It’s rare that we get a The Godfather Part II, Aliens, or Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which are widely seen as rivals to their predecessor’s quality. But these next franchises are kind of like those aforementioned T-800, gangster, and Xenomorph movies in that there was stuff beyond the original that was also great.
Videos by ComicBook.com
In fact, the movies down the line were even better than the movie that kicked off the series. We’re not necessarily saying that every single subsequent movie is an improvement (though that is sometimes the case) but, if you average it out, it’s a saga that undoubtedly consistently improves as it progresses.
3) The Wolverine Trilogy
X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a notorious trainwreck so it’s not exactly surprising that the spinoff trilogy only got better as it went along. But few could have predicted just how massive a jump in quality there would be between film one and film two.
The key to the incline in quality was bringing James Mangold on board. Fortunately, he then returned for Logan after knocking The Wolverine out of the park and the result was an even more thematically heavy superhero adventure with real stakes. It’s nice to have Hugh Jackman back as the character, but Logan truly was the send-off Wolverine deserved.
2) Mission: Impossible
As mentioned in the intro, it’s not always a case of these franchises getting incrementally better with each subsequent installment. For instance, Mission: Impossible II is the nadir of the series. But from there is was a pretty consistent uptick in quality.
Mission: Impossible III was a step in the right direction, but it was then Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol that said, “This is how we carry this franchise forward from here on out.” And indeed, they did, because the following four movies all felt tonally quite similar to Ghost Protocol. And, while it peaked with the sixth movie, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, it’s not as if the subsequent two movies were even particularly weak. Three was better than two, four was better than three, five was better than four, and six was better than five…this was an escalation, and an impressive one at that.
1) John Wick
The John Wick franchise has gotten better with each installment for one reason: its mastering of world-building. Seriously, what franchise has established a simple premise and built a world around that premise as well as this IP?
The most impressive thing is we don’t know all that much more about the title character at the end of John Wick: Chapter 4 than we do at the beginning of the original. But we do know just how elaborately constructed his world of assassins is. We know there are wildly different factions who all have their own ways of carrying out assignments yet still operate under the same code. And we know that, if you break that code, say by tending to business on the property of a specific hotel, you put yourself at risk of catching a bullet. It’s so well thought out that you can’t help but find yourself get gradually pulled deeper and deeper into its version of the world we live in.
