Sequels: Hollywood can’t live without ’em, and they can’t ever figure out the right way to make ’em. Do you repeat what you made before? Do you totally mix it up? Do you bring back the old cast? Does the old cast want to come back? (Can you even afford the old cast? Do you replace the young cast with younger, cheaper versions? Will the old cast retire, then come back, possibly as Doctor Doom?) There are so many questions.
One way that a sequel can distinguish itself from its predecessor — to entice audiences to the theater with more of something like they like, but delivered in a novel way — is to shift its characters and story from one genre to another. A humble road movie might turn into a globe-trotting espionage story. A quirky time-travel story could morph into a comic western. A chilling sci-fi horror story can grow into an epic action tale. A terrifying children’s toy powered by advanced artificial intelligence might turn into a wisecracking robot superhero.
As you are about to see, these are not hypothetical examples. They are just a few of the films contained in our list of 15 famous sequels that took their franchises in drastically different directions from their predecessors. In some cases, the shifts were wildly successful, turning popular films into iconic movie series. In others, they took all of their audience’s goodwill about their material and flushed it down the toilet. But hey: There’s always the next sequel (or reboot) to try a new genre. Maybe this will be the one that sticks for good!
Sequels That Switched Genres
These sequels continued their predecessor’s stories while totally changing their genres.
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