10 Insane Changes Movie Sequels Made
You can't accuse these sequels of just doing the same thing again.
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00:00 Now, Hollywood quite understandably loves making sequels, because the safest bet a studio
00:05 can make is just producing more of the same successful thing, right? Well, not all sequels
00:09 are merely content to just rehash the same hit formula again and again, and sometimes
00:13 they do something so specifically insane, you have to wonder quite what the hell they
00:18 were thinking. So let's take a look at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and
00:21 these are 10 Insane Changes Movie Sequels Made.
00:25 10. Luke and Leia Are Actually Siblings 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. Now, this would be all well and good, except for the fact that the sequel
00:43 Return of the Jedi reveals that Luke and Leia are siblings, making that cheeky kiss seem
00:48 considerably more disgusting in retrospect. It's even more questionable given that,
00:52 after learning the news, Leia tells Luke "somehow I've always known", in turn making the
00:56 unfortunate implication that Leia knew on some level that she was macking on her brother
01:01 at the time. 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. But as widely mocked as the familial
01:13 twist is, the franchise has weathered it pretty damn well considering. Imagine how social
01:17 media would react to a movie sequel inadvertently introducing incest in this day and age.
01:22 9. From a Bus to a... Boat?
01:25 Speed 2 – Cruise Control
01:27 Speed is one of the greatest action films of the 90s, a thrilling white-knuckles spectacle
01:32 in which LAPD bomb disposal officer Jack attempts to stop a commuter bus from dropping below
01:37 50 mph and triggering a bomb planted by a terrorist. Speed's phenomenal box office
01:42 success ensured that a sequel was fast-tracked into production, and just three years later,
01:46 Speed 2 – Cruise Control was released. Though it was unfortunate that Keanu Reeves opted
01:50 not to return, being switched out for Jason Patrick as a new character, what truly killed
01:54 the sequel was the absolutely deranged 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. And while a runaway
02:07 cruise liner is no laughing matter, it nevertheless lacks the frantic urgency of a bus that is
02:12 rigged to blow, further unaided by the sequel's unintentionally comic, low-energy subtitle
02:17 – Cruise Control.
02:18 Rehashing the original concept again would surely have turned out much better than this,
02:22 and at least not cost Fox an eye-watering $160 million to produce.
02:27 8. 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. But in a wildly
02:40 unexpected break from the formula, Pitch Perfect 3 took a sharp left turn into spy-comedy caper
02:45 territory for a large chunk of its runtime. The musical elements remain, yes, but the
02:49 story is considerably more outlandish than its predecessors, with the Bellas eventually
02:53 being reinvented as quasi-secret agents who face off against a moustache-twirling, megalomaniacal
02:58 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. One suspects the filmmakers
03:09 wanted to make fun of increasingly desperately ridiculous sequels, but without much in the
03:13 way of accompanying wit or humor, it just felt embarrassingly flat.
03:17 7. Steve Trevor Returns in Deeply Problematic Fashion – Wonder Woman 1984
03:24 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. Ultimately, Steve is resurrected
03:36 after Diana makes her wish with the Dreamstone. And while it would have been absolutely fine
03:40 and dandy for Steve to just materialise out of thin air, Jenkins misguidedly made the
03:44 whole scenario twistedly problematic. As it turns out, Steve is instead brought back to
03:48 life in the body of another man. And given that Diana and Steve appear to have sex after
03:52 this, it opens up a whole unpleasant can of worms about consent and what happened to the
03:56 man's consciousness while his body was effectively being hijacked. Jenkins naturally attempted
04:00 to downplay the criticisms, but considering it could have easily been avoided by simply
04:04 having Steve come back to life out of nowhere, it felt like Jenkins truly set herself up
04:08 to fail with a totally unnecessary controversy. It's not even the worst thing in the movie,
04:12 but it is perhaps the most needlessly gross subplot in any major film from recent years.
04:17 6. Nunchucks Become Sausages – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 – The Secret of the Ooze
04:24 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 maximised the potential box office
04:36 returns with family audiences. As such, the sequel's approach to violence was considerably
04:40 toned down, and that was perhaps best exemplified by a memorable sequence at the start of the
04:44 movie where Michelangelo fights with sausage links instead of nunchucks. This was in part
04:48 a reaction to the first film being cut in the UK to remove nunchucks and other offensive
04:52 weapons, with the filmmakers understandably assuming that something as silly as sausage
04:56 nunchucks would be considerably more palatable to the trigger-happy senses. Ironically,
05:00 though, the UK's BBFC ended up cutting the sausages from the sequel as well, with the
05:04 hilariously patronising non-logic that the average child wouldn't be able to tell the
05:08 difference between the sausages and actual nunchucks.
05:11 5. Macy's Mother is... herself? Jurassic World Dominion
05:17 Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom was a boatload of crazy in its own right, namely when it
05:22 introduced human cloning to the franchise by revealing that young Macy Lockwood was
05:25 a clone of Benjamin Lockwood's daughter Charlotte. But because this apparently wasn't
05:29 strange and unnecessary enough of a plotline for a Jurassic Park movie, the recent follow-up
05:33 Jurassic World Dominion gave Macy's origin story a quasi-retcon that somehow went even
05:38 more unhinged. In the film, Dr. Wu explains to Macy that she wasn't only Charlotte's
05:42 clone, but Charlotte also actually gave birth to Macy via asexual conception, effectively
05:47 making Macy both Charlotte's clone and daughter. It's a completely bizarre, head-scratching
05:52 revelation that only saddles poor Macy with more character baggage that, even more bafflingly,
05:56 doesn't have any sort of substantial payoff by the film's end. Making Macy a clone was
06:00 surely odd enough, but randomly giving her a convoluted new origin story where Charlotte
06:04 gave birth to her own clone? What's the end point here? Who was this for?
06:08 4. 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
06:18 Macaulay Culkin outsmart two dim-witted thieves with an array of ingenious traps. Though we
06:22 as viewers relished to see Harry and Marv get repeatedly fooled by Kevin, the level
06:26 of violence largely remained within the bounds of slapstick territory. And while the sequel
06:30 largely followed the same formula, director Chris Columbus made one notable change outside
06:34 of the new setting, and that was majorly upping the ante of violence on display. There's
06:38 a markedly meaner streak to Kevin's traps in Home Alone 2, and it's poor Marv who
06:43 gets the wince-inducing brunt of it. He's hit in the head with bricks four times, suffers
06:47 a nasty electrocution, falls large 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. And this isn't
06:56 to say that Home Alone 2's violence isn't funny, because it definitely is, but the playful
07:00 pratfalls of the first film are largely substituted out for genuinely gnarly impact shots like
07:05 we're rarely subjected to in family-friendly cinema. It certainly didn't hurt the sequel's
07:09 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 300 years
07:32 back to 1986 to locate two humpback whales which can respond to an alien probe's signal
07:38 and reverse its destructive effects on Earth. Yep. A film almost certainly written by cocaine,
07:44 The Voyage Home is nevertheless an undeniably inventive and entertaining Trek sequel, like
07:48 most even-numbered entries. Albeit one that takes the series in a deeply weird direction
07:52 that could have so easily fallen flat.
07:54 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
08:05 and heading off on their honeymoon, but the sequel categorically undoes this happy ending
08:09 in fittingly absurd fashion. Austin Powers' The Spy Who Shagged Me opens up with Austin
08:13 and Vanessa still on their honeymoon, just as Vanessa is revealed to have been a murderous
08:17 fembot all along and being controlled by Dr. Evil. After attacking Austin, she self-destructs,
08:22 leaving Austin momentarily distraught before euphorically realising that he's single
08:26 once more. It's of course played 110% for laughs, but still comes as a genuine surprise
08:30 considering how legitimately great Myers and Hurley's chemistry was in the first film,
08:35 and that audiences expected to see them together throughout this sequel. It's a great gag
08:39 though, so perfectly satirises the James Bond franchise's revolving door policy for female
08:43 characters. Further in that vein, Hurley was replaced as Austin's love interest by Heather
08:47 Graham's Felicity Shagwell for the rest of the film.
08:51 This Time, It's Personal
08:53 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. The
09:08 Revenge also popularised the infamous tagline "This Time, It's Personal", which might
09:13 have worked were the film positioned as a campy, tongue-in-cheek comedy, but as a serious
09:16 attempt at a horror movie, absolutely not. It was quite a leap from the more straight-laced
09:20 terror of the first three films, and silly enough that the movie's novelisation attempted
09:24 to rationalise the shark's vengeance quest as, get this, the result of a voodoo curse
09:28 placed on it by a witch doctor who was a bone to pick with the Brody family. Oh yes, that
09:33 actually happened. But the movie itself makes no inference to this, and simply decides to
09:37 have the shark intentionally target those who killed its forebears. As the plot of a
09:41 sequel to a film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, that is especially demented.
09:46 And there we go my friends, those were 10 insane changes that movie sequels made. I
09:50 hope that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in
09:52 the comment section below. As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram
09:56 at RetroJ but the O is a zero, hope to see you over there. But before I go I just want
10:00 to say one thing, hope you're treating yourself well with love and respect my friend because
10:03 you deserve all the best things in life alright, and do not let anything or anyone else tell
10:07 you otherwise. I want you to go out there and absolutely smash your life goals today,
10:10 because I believe in you and you need to believe in yourself as well. As always I've been Jules,
10:13 you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon.
10:16 (upbeat music)