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You can't accuse these sequels of just doing the same thing again.
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00:00Now, Hollywood quite understandably loves making sequels, because the safest bet a studio can make
00:05is just producing more of the same successful thing, right? Well, not all sequels are merely
00:10content to just rehash the same hit formula again and again, and sometimes they do something so
00:14specifically insane you have to wonder quite what the hell they were thinking. So let's take a look
00:19at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Insane Changes Movie Sequels Made.
00:2410. Luke and Leia Are Actually Siblings Star Wars Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
00:30In the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia famously plants a rather
00:36passionate lip lock on Luke Skywalker, in an attempt to prove to Han Solo that she doesn't love him.
00:41Now, this would be all well and good, except for the fact that the sequel Return of the Jedi reveals
00:44that Luke and Leia are siblings, making that cheeky kiss seem considerably more disgusting
00:49in retrospect. It's even more questionable, given that after learning the news,
00:53Leia tells Luke, somehow I've always known, in turn making the unfortunate implication that
00:58Leia knew on some level that she was macking on her brother at the time.
01:01In reality, this awkward change is simply the result of George Lucas not sufficiently
01:05planning the Star Wars trilogy out, as Luke and Leia weren't intended to be siblings during
01:09the production of The Empire Strikes Back. But as widely mocked as the familial twist is,
01:14the franchise has weathered it pretty damn well considering. Imagine how social media would react
01:18to a movie sequel inadvertently introducing incest in this day and age.
01:21Number 9. From a bus to a boat? Speed 2 Cruise Control
01:26Speed is one of the greatest action films of the 90s, a thrilling white-knuckle spectacle in which
01:32LAPD bomb disposal officer Jack attempts to stop a commuter bus from dropping below 50 miles per hour
01:38and triggering a bomb planted by a terrorist. Speed's phenomenal box office success ensured that
01:43a sequel was fast-tracked into production, and just three years later, Speed 2 Cruise Control was
01:48released. Though it was unfortunate that Keanu Reeves opted not to return, being switched out for Jason
01:52Patrick as a new character, what truly killed the sequel was the absolutely deranged decision to
01:57slow things down, way down. Rather than simply repeat the bomb-on-the-bus scenario again, perhaps
02:02with multiple buses this time, the screenwriters opted to shift the action to a cruise ship. And
02:06while a runaway cruise liner is no laughing matter, it nevertheless lacks the frantic urgency of a bus that
02:12is rigged to blow, further unaided by the sequel's unintentionally comic low-energy subtitle Cruise
02:17Control. Just rehashing the original concept again would surely have turned out much better than this,
02:22and at least not cost Fox an eye-watering $160 million to produce.
02:27Number 8. It's Randomly a Spy Movie
02:29Pitch Perfect 3
02:30The first two Pitch Perfect movies delivered exactly what everybody expected. Frothy, silly musical comedy
02:36centred around a quirky cast of cappella singers. But in a wildly unexpected break from the formula,
02:42Pitch Perfect 3 took a sharp left turn into spy comedy caper territory for a large chunk of its
02:46runtime. The musical elements remain, yes, but the story is considerably more outlandish than its
02:51predecessors, with the Bellas eventually being reinvented as quasi-secret agents who face off against
02:56a moustache-twirling, megalomaniacal villain, Fat Amy's criminal father, Fergus. It even culminates in an
03:02epic explosion on a boat, which is surely the last thing that anybody expected to see in a
03:06pitch-perfect movie of all things. One suspects the filmmakers wanted to make fun of increasingly
03:11desperately ridiculous sequels, but without much in the way of accompanying wit or humor,
03:15it just felt embarrassingly flat.
03:17Number 7. Steve Trevor Returns in Deeply Problematic Fashion
03:21Wonder Woman 1984
03:23When it was first announced that Wonder Woman's love interest Steve Trevor would be returning in
03:27the sequel despite heroically dying in the first film, fans were rather intrigued to see how writer-director
03:32Patty Jenkins would pull it off. Ultimately, Steve is resurrected after Diana makes her wish
03:37with the Dreamstone. And while it would have been absolutely fine and dandy for Steve to just
03:41materialize out of thin air, Jenkins misguidedly made the whole scenario twistedly problematic.
03:46As it turns out, Steve is instead brought back to life and the body of another man. And given that
03:51Diana and Steve appear to have sex after this, it opens up a whole unpleasant can of worms about
03:55consent and what happened to the man's consciousness while his body was effectively being hijacked.
03:59Jenkins naturally attempted to downplay the criticisms, but considering it could have
04:02easily been avoided by simply having Steve come back to life out of nowhere,
04:06it felt like Jenkins truly set herself up to fail with a totally unnecessary controversy.
04:11It's not even the worst thing in the movie, but it is perhaps the most needlessly gross subplot
04:14in any major film from recent years.
04:17Number 6. Nunchucks Become Sausages
04:20Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 The Secret of the Ooze
04:23Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 The Secret of the Ooze is considerably goofier and more cartoonish
04:29than its grittier predecessor, likely in an attempt to combat complaints that the first
04:32film was a bit too edgy and in turn maximized the potential box office returns with family
04:37audiences. As such, the sequel's approach to violence was considerably toned down, and that
04:41was perhaps best exemplified by a memorable sequence at the start of the movie where
04:44Michelangelo fights with sausage links instead of nunchucks. This was in part a reaction to
04:49the first film being cut in the UK to remove nunchucks and other offensive weapons, with the
04:53filmmakers understandably assuming that something as silly as sausage nunchucks would be considerably
04:57more palatable to the trigger-happy senses. Ironically, though, the UK's BBFC ended up
05:02cutting the sausages from the sequel as well, with the hilariously patronizing non-logic
05:06that the average child wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the sausages and
05:10actual nunchucks.
05:12Number 5. Macy's Mother Is Herself?
05:15Jurassic World Dominion
05:17Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom was a boatload of crazy in its own right, namely when it introduced
05:22human cloning to the franchise by revealing that young Macy Lockwood was a clone of Benjamin
05:26Lockwood's daughter Charlotte. But because this apparently wasn't strange and unnecessary
05:30enough of a plotline for a Jurassic Park movie, the recent follow-up Jurassic World Dominion
05:34gave Macy's origin story a quasi-retcon that somehow went even more unhinged. In the film,
05:39Dr. Wu explains to Macy that she wasn't only Charlotte's clone, but Charlotte also actually
05:43gave birth to Macy, but it was a bizarre, head-scratching revelation that only saddles poor Macy with more
05:54character baggage that, even more bafflingly, doesn't have any sort of substantial payoff
05:58by the film's end. Making Macy a clone was surely odd enough, but randomly giving her a
06:02convoluted new origin story where Charlotte gave birth to her own clone? I mean, what's
06:06the end point here? Who was this for?
06:074. From Slapstick Violence to Brutal Violence
06:11Home Alone 2 Lost in New York
06:13The first Home Alone was a phenomenal success, primarily due to the fun of watching young
06:18Macaulay Culkin outsmart two dim-witted thieves with an array of ingenious traps. Though we as
06:22viewers relish to see Harry and Marv get repeatedly fooled by Kevin, the level of violence largely
06:27remained within the bounds of slapstick territory. And while the sequel largely followed the same
06:31formula, director Chris Columbus made one notable change outside of the new setting, and that was
06:35majorly upping the ante of violence on display. There's a markedly meaner streak to Kevin's
06:40traps in Home Alone 2, and it's poor Marv who gets the wince-inducing brunt of it. He's hit in the
06:45head with bricks four times, suffers a nasty electrocution, falls large distances numerous
06:50times, and is hit by many other objects. He would have been dead several times over,
06:54is what we're trying to say. And this isn't to say that Home Alone 2's violence isn't funny,
06:58because it definitely is. But the playful pratfalls of the first film are largely substituted out for
07:03genuinely gnarly impact shots like we rarely subjected to in family-friendly cinema. It
07:08certainly didn't hurt the sequel's popularity any, though.
07:103. Time Travel and Humpback Whales – Star Trek IV The Voyage Home
07:15Star Trek III The Search for Spock resurrected Spock through rather silly circumstances,
07:20but the fourth film said, hold my beer, and took things to a whole level of insanity.
07:25Star Trek IV The Voyage Home is most commonly remembered as the one with the whales, because
07:29the plot revolves around, wait for it, the Enterprise crew traveling 300 years back to 1986 to locate
07:34two humpback whales which can respond to an alien probe signal and reverse its destructive effects
07:39on Earth. Yep. A film almost certainly written by cocaine, The Voyage Home is nevertheless an
07:45undeniably inventive and entertaining Trek sequel, like most even-numbered entries, albeit one that
07:50takes the series in a deeply weird direction that could have so easily fallen flat.
07:542. Vanessa Was a Fembot All Along – Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me
08:00The first Austin Powers film ends with Austin and Vanessa saving the day, getting married,
08:05and heading off on their honeymoon, but the sequel categorically undoes this happy ending in
08:09fittingly absurd fashion. Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me opens up with Austin and Vanessa
08:14still on their honeymoon, just as Vanessa is revealed to have been a murderous fembot all
08:18along and being controlled by Dr. Evil. After attacking Austin, she self-destructs,
08:22leaving Austin momentarily distraught before euphorically realizing that he's single once
08:26more. It's of course played 110% for laughs, but still comes as a genuine surprise considering how
08:31legitimately great Myers and Hurley's chemistry was in the first film, and that audience is expected
08:36to see them together throughout this sequel. It's a great gag though, so perfectly satirizes the
08:40James Bond franchise's revolving door policy for female characters. Further in that vein, Hurley was
08:45replaced as Austin's love interest by Heather Graham's Felicity Shagwell for the rest of the film.
08:501. This Time It's Personal
08:53Jaws The Revenge
08:54Because the third Jaws film going the 3D route apparently wasn't daft enough, Jaws The Revenge
08:59decided to make the killer great white shark actually sentient, implying that it targeted
09:04the Brody family in an act of revenge for their prior shark-killing actions. The Revenge also
09:09popularized the infamous tagline, This Time It's Personal, which might have worked were the film
09:14positioned as a campy, tongue-in-cheek comedy, but as a serious attempt at a horror movie? Absolutely not.
09:19It was quite a leap from the more straight-laced terror of the first three films, and silly enough
09:23that the movie's novelization attempted to rationalize the shark's vengeance quest as,
09:26get this, the result of a voodoo curse placed on it by a witch doctor who has a bone to pick with
09:31the Brody family. Oh yes, that actually happened. But the movie itself makes no inference to this,
09:36and simply decides to have the shark intentionally target those who killed its forebears. As the plot of
09:41a sequel to a film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, that is especially demented.
09:45And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 insane changes that movie sequels made. I hope that you
09:50enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comment section below.
09:53As always, I've been Jules, so you can go follow me over on Instagram at RetroJ,
09:57but the O is a zero. Hope to see you over there. But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
10:01Hope you're treating yourself well with love and respect, my friend, because you deserve all the
10:04best things in life, alright? And do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise. I want you to go
10:08out there and absolutely smash your life goals today, because I believe in you, and you need to believe in
10:12yourself as well. As always, I've been Jules. You have been awesome. Never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon.
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