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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1148 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026

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Why do you think it is impossible to create good Terminator and Predator sequels past part 2 (I stand firm that predator 2 is underappreciated)

Because the more sequels you add to any franchise, the more it gets diluted. You have your novel idea, that's the first movie. You have questions arising or undeveloped plot points from the first movie, that's your second. Maybe you can get a third out of it, but from that point on, you're just trapped in Flanderization (see all the slasher movie/horror movie franchises which run out of ideas until they're at the point of "for the fifteenth time, the dead serial killer is resurrected but this time in, uh, spins wheel of fortune space!")

I tend to avoid sequels for this reason. I think some of it is, for me, that the world building in a brand new story is really interesting, but sequels either drag along accumulated baggage of the world (Marvel of late has done poorly on this), or lazily skip over any new exposition within the narrative (this script was originally an episode for another TV show). Both end up being detrimental to the story as a whole. And sometimes you start running into the structural contradictions woven into the environment.

I think successful sequels have to do something to transcend the original story. Terminator 2 and Aliens both subvert the genre from horror to action movie IMO successfully. The Empire Strikes Back is a very different movie than Star Wars. But that isn't a guarantee of success: IMO all the Jurassic Park sequels fall short of the original in emphasizing "dinosaur eats humans" action over the original's balance with philosophical science fiction questions.

The Empire Strikes Back is a very different movie than Star Wars.

To be fair, that falls into the category of "second in a trilogy", which is narratively and structurally different from "sequel". At least, it should be, but writers are often hacks.

To be more precise, Star Wars is a two-part trilogy, where the original movie is made as a standalone, and its outstanding success results in two sequels made back-to-back that are better understood as two halves of one big movie than as two separate movies (The Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean are also good examples).

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