10 Insane Changes Movie Sequels Made
You can't accuse these sequels of just doing the same thing again.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Hollywood, quite understandably, loves making sequels, because the safest bet a studio can
00:05 make is just producing more of the same successful thing, right?
00:08 Well, not all sequels are merely content to just rehash the same hit formula again and
00:12 again, and sometimes they do something so specifically insane, you have to wonder quite
00:17 what the hell they were thinking.
00:18 So let's take a look at them as arm jewels.
00:19 This is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Insane Changes Movie Sequels Made.
00:24 10.
00:26 Luke and Leia are actually siblings
00:28 Star Wars Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
00:31 In the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia famously plants a rather
00:36 passionate lip-lock on Luke Skywalker, in an attempt to prove to Han Solo that she doesn't
00:40 love him.
00:41 This would be all well and good, except for the fact that the sequel Return of the Jedi
00:44 reveals that Luke and Leia are siblings, making that cheeky kiss seem considerably more disgusting
00:49 in retrospect.
00:50 It's even more questionable given that, after learning the news, Leia tells Luke "somehow
00:54 I've always known", in turn making the unfortunate implication that Leia knew, on
00:58 some level, that she was macking on her brother at the time.
01:01 In reality, this awkward change is simply the result of George Lucas not sufficiently
01:05 planning the Star Wars trilogy out, as Luke and Leia weren't intended to be siblings
01:09 during the production of The Empire Strikes Back.
01:11 But as widely mocked as the familial twist is, the franchise has weathered it pretty
01:15 damn well considering.
01:16 Imagine how social media would react to a movie sequel inadvertently introducing incest
01:20 in this day and age.
01:22 9.
01:23 Box to a...boat?
01:25 Speed 2 – Cruise Control
01:27 Speed is one of the greatest action films of the 90s.
01:30 A thrilling white-knuckles spectacle in which LAPD bomb disposal officer Jack attempts to
01:35 stop a commuter bus from dropping below 50 mph and triggering a bomb planted by a terrorist,
01:40 Speed's phenomenal box office success ensured that a sequel was fast-tracked into production,
01:45 and just three years later, Speed 2 – Cruise Control was released.
01:48 Though it was unfortunate that Keanu Reeves opted not to return, being switched out for
01:51 Jason Patrick as a new character, what truly killed the sequel was the absolutely deranged
01:56 decision to slow things down way down.
01:59 Rather than simply repeat the bomb-on-the-bus scenario again, perhaps with multiple buses
02:03 this time, the screenwriters opted to shift the action to a cruise ship.
02:06 And while a runaway cruise liner is no laughing matter, it nevertheless lacks the frantic
02:10 urgency of a bus that is rigged to blow, further unaided by the sequel's unintentionally
02:15 comic low-energy subtitle, "Cruise Control".
02:18 Just rehashing the original concept again would surely have turned out much better than
02:22 this, and at least not cost Fox an eye-watering $160 million to produce.
02:27 8.
02:28 It's Randomly a Spy Movie – Pitch Perfect 3
02:31 The first two Pitch Perfect movies delivered exactly what everybody expected – frothy,
02:35 silly musical comedy centered around a quirky cast of cappella singers.
02:39 But in a wildly unexpected break from the formula, Pitch Perfect 3 took a sharp left
02:43 turn into spy comedy caper territory for a large chunk of its runtime.
02:47 The musical elements remain, yes, but the story is considerably more outlandish than
02:51 its predecessors, with the Bellas eventually being reinvented as quasi-secret agents who
02:55 face off against a moustache-twirling, megalomaniacal villain, Fat Amy's criminal father, Fergus.
03:00 It even culminates in an epic explosion on a boat, which is surely the last thing that
03:04 anybody expected to see in a Pitch Perfect movie of all things.
03:08 One suspects the filmmakers wanted to make fun of increasingly desperately ridiculous
03:11 sequels but were that much in the way of accompanying wit or humor it just felt embarrassingly flat.
03:17 7.
03:18 Steve Trevor Returns in Deeply Problematic Fashion – Wonder Woman 1984
03:23 When it was first announced that Wonder Woman's love interest Steve Trevor would be returning
03:27 in the sequel despite heroically dying in the first film, fans were rather intrigued
03:31 to see how writer-director Patty Jenkins would pull it off.
03:34 Ultimately, Steve is resurrected after Diana makes her wish with the Dreamstone.
03:38 And while it would have been absolutely fine and dandy for Steve to just materialize out
03:41 of thin air, Jenkins misguidedly made the whole scenario twistedly problematic.
03:46 As it turns out, Steve is instead brought back to life in the body of another man.
03:50 And given that Diana and Steve appear to have sex after this, it opens up a whole unpleasant
03:54 can of worms about consent and what happened to the man's consciousness while his body
03:57 was effectively being hijacked.
03:59 Jenkins naturally attempted to downplay the criticisms, but considering it could have
04:02 easily been avoided by simply having Steve come back to life out of nowhere, it felt
04:06 like Jenkins truly set herself up to fail with a totally unnecessary controversy.
04:10 It's not even the worst thing in the movie, but it is perhaps the most needlessly gross
04:14 subplot in any major film from recent years.
04:17 6.
04:18 Nunchucks Become Sausages – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 – The Secret of the Ooze
04:23 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 – The Secret of the Ooze is considerably goofier and more
04:28 cartoonish than its grittier predecessor, likely in an attempt to combat complaints
04:32 that the first film was a bit too edgy and in turn maximized the potential box office
04:36 returns with family audiences.
04:37 As such, the sequel's approach to violence was considerably toned down, and that was
04:41 perhaps best exemplified by a memorable sequence at the start of the movie where Michelangelo
04:45 fights with sausage links instead of nunchucks.
04:47 This was in part a reaction to the first film being cut in the UK to remove nunchucks and
04:51 other offensive weapons, with the filmmakers understandably assuming that something as
04:55 silly as sausage nunchucks would be considerably more palatable to the trigger-happy senses.
04:59 Ironically, though, the UK's BBFC ended up cutting the sausages from the sequel as
05:04 well, with the hilariously patronizing non-logic that the average child wouldn't be able
05:08 to tell the difference between the sausages and actual nunchucks.
05:11 5.
05:12 Macy's Mother is... herself?
05:15 Jurassic World Dominion
05:17 Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom was a boatload of crazy in its own right, namely when it
05:21 introduced human cloning to the franchise by revealing that young Macy Lockwood was
05:25 a clone of Benjamin Lockwood's daughter Charlotte.
05:27 But because this apparently wasn't strange and unnecessary enough of a plotline for a
05:31 Jurassic Park movie, the recent follow-up Jurassic World Dominion gave Macy's origin
05:35 story a quasi-retcon that somehow went even more unhinged.
05:39 In the film, Dr. Wu explains to Macy that she wasn't only Charlotte's clone, but
05:42 Charlotte also actually gave birth to Macy via asexual conception, effectively making
05:47 Macy both Charlotte's clone and daughter.
05:49 It's a completely bizarre, head-scratching revelation that only saddles poor Macy, with
05:53 more character baggage that, even more bafflingly, doesn't have any sort of substantial payoff
05:58 by the film's end.
05:59 Making Macy a clone was surely odd enough, but randomly giving her a convoluted new origin
06:03 story where Charlotte gave birth to her own clone?
06:05 I mean, what's the end point here?
06:06 Who was this for?
06:08 4.
06:09 From Slapstick Violence to Brutal Violence - Home Alone 2 Lost in New York
06:14 The first Home Alone was a phenomenal success, primarily due to the fun of watching young
06:17 Macaulay Culkin outsmart two dim-witted thieves with an array of ingenious traps.
06:22 Though we as viewers relished to see Harry and Marv get repeatedly fooled by Kevin, the
06:26 level of violence largely remained within the bounds of slapstick territory.
06:29 And while the sequel largely followed the same formula, director Chris Columbus made
06:33 one notable change outside of the new setting, and that was majorly upping the ante of violence
06:37 on display.
06:38 There's a markedly meaner streak to Kevin's traps in Home Alone 2, and it's poor Marv
06:42 who gets the wince-inducing brunt of it.
06:44 He's hit in the head with bricks four times, suffers a nasty electrocution, falls large
06:49 distances numerous times, and is hit by many other objects.
06:52 He would have been dead several times over, is what we're trying to say.
06:55 And this isn't to say that Home Alone 2's violence isn't funny, because it definitely
06:59 is, but the playful pratfalls of the first film are largely substituted out for genuinely
07:03 gnarly impact shots like we rarely subjected to in family-friendly cinema.
07:07 It certainly didn't hurt the sequel's popularity any, though.
07:11 Time Travel and Humpback Whales – Star Trek IV The Voyage Home
07:16 Star Trek III The Search for Spock resurrected Spock through rather silly circumstances,
07:20 but the fourth film said "hold my beer" and took things to a whole level of insanity.
07:25 Star Trek IV The Voyage Home is most commonly remembered as "the one with the whales",
07:29 because the plot revolves around – wait for it – the Enterprise crew travelling
07:32 300 years back to 1986 to locate two humpback whales which can respond to an alien probe's
07:37 signal and reverse its destructive effects on Earth.
07:40 Yep.
07:41 A film almost certainly written by cocaine, The Voyage Home is nevertheless an undeniably
07:45 inventive and entertaining Trek sequel, like most even-numbered entries, albeit one that
07:50 takes the series in a deeply weird direction that could have so easily fallen flat.
07:55 Vanessa Was a Fembot All Along – Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me
08:00 The first Austin Powers film ends with Austin and Vanessa saving the day, getting married,
08:04 and heading off on their honeymoon, but the sequel categorically undoes this happy ending
08:08 in fittingly absurd fashion.
08:10 Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me opens up with Austin and Vanessa still on their
08:14 honeymoon, just as Vanessa is revealed to have been a murderous fembot all along and
08:18 being controlled by Dr. Evil.
08:20 After attacking Austin, she self-destructs, leaving Austin momentarily distraught before
08:24 euphorically realizing that he's single once more.
08:26 It's of course played 110% for laughs, but still comes as a genuine surprise considering
08:31 how legitimately great Myers and Hurley's chemistry was in the first film, and that
08:35 audiences expected to see them together throughout this sequel.
08:38 It's a great gag, though, so perfectly satirizes the James Bond franchise's revolving-door
08:42 policy for female characters.
08:44 Further, in that vein, Hurley was replaced as Austin's love interest by Heather Graham's
08:48 Felicity Shagwell for the rest of the film.
08:51 This Time, It's Personal – Jaws – The Revenge
08:55 Because the third Jaws film going the 3D route apparently wasn't daft enough, Jaws – The
08:59 Revenge decided to make the killer great white shark actually sentient, implying that it
09:03 targeted the Brody family in an act of revenge for their prior shark-killing actions.
09:08 The Revenge also popularized the infamous tagline "This Time, It's Personal",
09:12 which might have worked were the film positioned as a campy, tongue-in-cheek comedy, but as
09:16 a serious attempt at a horror movie, absolutely not.
09:18 It was quite a leap from the more straight-laced terror of the first three films, and silly
09:22 enough that the movie's novelization attempted to rationalize the shark's vengeance quest
09:26 as, get this, the result of a voodoo curse placed on it by a witch doctor who has a bone
09:30 to pick with the Brody family.
09:32 Oh yes, that actually happened.
09:33 But the movie itself makes no inference to this, and simply decides to have the shark
09:37 intentionally target those who killed its forebears.
09:40 As the plot of a sequel to a film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, that is especially
09:45 demented.
09:46 And there we go my friends, those were 10 insane changes that movie sequels made.
09:49 I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in
09:52 the comment section below.
09:53 As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram @retroj but the O is
09:57 a zero, hope to see you over there.
09:59 But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
10:01 Hope you're treating yourself well with love and respect my friend, because you deserve
10:04 all the best things in life alright, and do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise.
10:07 I want you to go out there and absolutely smash your life goals today, because I believe
10:10 in you, and you need to believe in yourself as well.
10:12 As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
10:15 you soon.
10:16 (upbeat music)