It was widely believed for many decades that, with very few exceptions, sequels were always inferior to the original. And to be fair, there was something to that. For most of Hollywood history, sequels were given less time, less money, and less creative attention than their predecessors. Most of them were out to capitalize as quickly and cheaply as possible upon the existing zeitgeist in a cynical attempt to eke out a quick buck.
But times have changed and sequels now, more than ever, often turn out just as good as the original. Or better. Or at least really danged fun. Hollywood is in the sequel business, as much as or more than anything, so they get to soak up all the resources. Which can be an especially big boon for the action genre, since bigger is often better as far as shootouts, explosions and sword fights are concerned.
We've taken a look at the history of the genre and we've emerged with our picks for The 15 Best Action Movie Sequels, which wasn't easy, dang it. We gave ourselves two rules: 1. No prequels (that'd be a different list), and 2. Only one sequel per franchise, which sounds like it would make our lives easier, but actually made it a lot harder to pick just one film from a lot of these franchises.
Martin Brest's blockbuster "Beverly Hills Cop" was a comedy that sometimes remembered it was an action movie. Tony Scott flipped that script, and made a stylish, powerhouse action movie that sometimes remembered it was funny. Eddie Murphy returns as Axel Foley, a Detroit cop who returns to Beverly Hills to stop a crime ring with impeccable taste in sunglasses after they shoot his old pal, Captain Bogomil (Ronny Cox). "Beverly Hills Cop 2" is as slick as a 1980s action movie gets, and somehow successfully converts the adorable goody-two-shoes Det. Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) into an unlikely badass, on par with Charles Bronson, without ever forgetting he's still a total dork.
When Christopher Nolan rebooted the world's most popular superhero franchise with "Batman Begins," it was critically acclaimed, but only a modest hit. But when he returned with "The Dark Knight," and reimagined the Joker as a brilliant and enigmatic anarchist played by Heath Ledger, audiences flocked to the theaters. "The Dark Knight" solidified Nolan's credibility as a blockbuster filmmaker, and successfully translated the world of costumed crimefighters into a semi-plausible, somewhat grounded modern mythology. The legacy of "The Dark Knight" has been somewhat complicated, with many filmmakers trying and failing to recapture that magic. But the original remains as impeccably crafted and compulsively watchable as ever.
Robert Rodriguez burst onto the scene in 1992 with the micro-budget action classic "El Mariachi," starring Carlos Gallardo as a wandering musician who gets mistaken for a deadly criminal. In the (comparatively) big-budget studio sequel, Antonio Banderas takes over the lead role, now wandering the mean streets of Mexico on a mission of endless revenge against the criminal underworld that killed his lady love. "Desperado" combines Rodriguez's breathless cinematic enthusiasm with the indie crime comedy tropes of the 1990s and the balletic action of the Hong Kong "gun fu" genre, crafting a spectacular medley of slick action, oddball comedy and -- thanks to the unbelievable on-screen chemistry of Banderas and his co-star, Salma Hayek -- staggering sexual chemistry.
The original 1978 kung fu classic, starring Jackie Chan and directed by the legendary Yuen Woo-ping, remains one of the best kung fu comedies ever made. The sequel might be even better. Chan stars as Cantonese historical hero Wong Fei-hung, who tries to fight off a British criminal enterprise that's smuggling Chinese artifacts out of the country. And he's gotta do it while trying, and failing, to keep a promise to his father that he won't engage in any drunken boxing -- a.k.a. the art of getting totally blasted and using the altered equilibrium and unpredictable movements to supercharge your kung fu. "Drunken Master II" wasn't released in the United States until 2000, under the title "Legend of the Drunken Master," but it was worth the wait. Jackie Chan's fight scenes don't get much wilder, more elaborate or funnier than this.
Choosing the best "Fast and Furious" movie is pretty easy -- it's "Fast Five," dang it -- but the best sequel is "Fast & Furious 6," which picks up everything the fifth installment laid down and drives away with it at impossible speeds. Michelle Rodriguez returns as Letty, who's not only back from the dead, but has amnesia and is working with the bad guys, in a plot point ripped right out of a daytime soap opera. It's about family, as always, but it's also about cars with ramps built into the front -- a gag possibly swiped from an old Carrot Top routine -- and fighting a frickin' tank. It's also got one of the best lines in action movie history, which confirms once and for all that this franchise has abandoned reality in favor of cartoon logic: "How did you know there'd be a car there to break our fall?" As though cars broke falls, and not every bone in your body.
The man in the hat was back, and arguably better than ever. "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" begins with the hero's origin story -- played as a teenager by the late, great River Phoenix -- before sending the adult version on a mission to find his missing father and, while he's at it, the Holy Grail. Harrison Ford has swagger to spare, and Sean Connery plays gloriously against type as a mild-mannered nerd, and together they kill Nazis aplenty and solve exciting ancient puzzles. Some fans think "The Last Crusade" is too jokey, but the balance between action and comedy is impressively even, and there's more emotion in this third installment than all the others combined. It's long-since supplanted the racist "Temple of Doom" as the best sequel in the series, and it's got a convincing case for being the greatest overall film in the whole series.
After the original, relatively grounded original "John Wick" -- about a former hitman who gets back into the game after criminals killed his dog -- the franchise spiraled into an elaborate, exaggerated mythos with more rules than "Magic: The Gathering." All the sequels are exciting, but the one that has the most to offer fans of the straightforward original and fans of the wacky world building is "John Wick: Chapter 3," which finds Keanu Reeves' unstoppable hero fighting every assassin in New York -- which seems, by any conservative estimate, to be about a third of the whole city -- before traveling the world to solve his problems, teaming up with Halle Berry and her man-eating dogs to fight the bad (well, worse) guys and come out on top. For a few minutes anyway. "Parabellum" has some of the most breathless action ever filmed, and that's saying something.
There are no bad "Lone Wolf and Cub" movies, and choosing between the sequels is a nightmare, but it's hard to beat "Baby Cart in the Land of Demons" for thrilling samurai action. The fifth installment in the hit action series, based on the same manga that inspired knockoffs like "Road to Perdition" and "The Mandalorian," finds the traveling assassin Ogami Itto (Tomisaburo Wakayama) and his young son Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikaway) forced to fight a series of duels, with every slain opponent revealing a new piece of his latest assignment. It culminates in one of the most thrilling and incredibly edited sword fights in cinema history. But again, you can't go wrong with any film in this franchise. (The same can be said for "Zatoichi," to the extent that we couldn't narrow down just one Zatoichi film for this list; they're all so damn good.)
Our self-imposed rule that we could only include one sequel per franchise might as well be called the "Mad Max" rule, because "Mad Max II: The Road Warrior" and "Mad Max: Fury Road" are two of the best sequels ever produced in any genre. We gotta give "Fury Road" the edge though. Both films have game-changing action sequences, with car chases that put almost every other film to shame (before or since), but the emotional heft of "Mad Max: Fury Road" outclasses the grim determination of "The Road Warrior." Plus, only one of them has a flame-throwing guitar soloist riding into battle on a roving platform of towering amps. You just can't compete with that.
We're on record as saying "Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation" is the best "Mission: Impossible" movie, and our opinion has not changed. But again, the question isn't what's the best overall film, it's what's the best sequel, and "Fallout" has that honor in the bag. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has to deal with the aftermath of "Rogue Nation," as the villainous Syndicate remains at large despite their leader's arrest, and so he must engage in even more feats of acrobatic insanity to save the world and wrap up his various subplots. "Mission: Impossible -- Fallout" may have overshot the mark a little, since it does such a great job of concluding the franchise that the two "Reckoning" films that followed -- films which were specifically designed to do that same thing -- felt unnecessary.
There are a lot of great James Bond movies. There are also a lot of stinkers. But one of the best was also, for many years, one of the most notorious. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was the first film in the Eon series without Sean Connery (not counting the made-for-TV and then the satirical "Casino Royale" movie), and many fans never forgave it for that. George Lazenby takes over the title role, and he doesn't have the Connery version's edge -- or his raging misogny -- but he does have a wry sense of humor, a convincing action demeanor and a convincing love story with arguably the best "Bond Girl" ever, Countess Tracy di Vicenzo, played by the impeccable Diana Rigg. The great Telly Savalas takes over as Bond's arch-nemesis Blofeld, who's picking up the pieces after Bond blew up SPECTRE at the end of "You Only Live Twice." Exciting, enjoyable, and in the film's unforgettable conclusion, surprisingly intense.
Akira Kurosawa's samurai classic "Yojimbo" is one of the filmmaker's most influential films, which is no small feat, but his equally brilliant sequel often gets overlooked. "Sanjuro" stars Toshiro Mifune as a wandering samurai who stumbles into a corrupt town, where the idealistic young men trying to save their community make terrible decisions that will get everyone killed if our hero can't fix their mistakes. "Sanjuro" is a great action movie about why action movies are bad, actually, since the hero has to constantly explain to his fans why they've learned all the wrong lessons from tales of daring-do. It all ends with one of the most incredible samurai duels in history, which pisses the hero off to no end, since it should have been completely unnecessary.
The first "Spider-Man" movie proved that superhero movies could be four-quadrant, universally-appealing blockbusters, convincing the whole film industry to double down on the genre for over two decades and counting. The second "Spider-Man" proved that they could also improve with every passing film. "Spider-Man 2" finds Tobey Maguire's hero stretched to the breaking point, sacrificing so much of himself to be a hero that even his heroism is falling apart. When he tries to engage in some much-needed self-care, his personal life improves, but the dastardly Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) runs amok in the city, uncontested. Some of the best character work in the whole superhero genre is right here, with a dynamic cast acting out an intense tale of inner turmoil, and Sam Raimi's trademark virtuosity brings all the action to life with camera angles and edits that make most modern superhero movies look half-assed.
James Cameron's "The Terminator" was a sci-fi horror movie with action trappings, in which an evil cyborg and a human hero travel back in time to fight over a woman's right to reproduce. The sequel still has its scary moments, but it's firmly in action territory. "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is another time travel story except this time Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played the villain the first time around, gets to be the hero, teaming up with the chosen one John Connor (Edward Furlong) and his mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton), who turned herself into a human terminator to keep him safe. The villain this time is a liquid metal shapeshifter played by Robert Patrick, a concept that seems familiar now but was mind-blowingly unique when James Cameron came up with it over three decades ago. "T2" was a major step forward in visual effects, but it's also one of the best damned sequels ever, repeating but improving and expanding on everything that made the first installment great.
"Top Gun: Maverick" is slick. Impossibly slick. So slick you may not care that it's shameless propaganda that completely rejects the point of the original movie, which is that the hero needed to grow up and be a team player to achieve greatness. "Maverick" is all about how everyone else needs to grow down and be more like Tom Cruise's hero, who hasn't learned a thing in decades, but is exactly who America needs to take down the anonymously evil country that wants to destroy us, in an action sequence that's literally just the Death Star run. But you know, it's easy to be cynical about "Top Gun: Maverick" -- and it's reasonable too -- but Joseph Kosinski still films the living hell out of this thing, giving it polish and class which seem utterly alien to the modern-day action genre. Action movies don't get much more muscular and shiny. Or narcissistic and fascistic. But whatever, we guess.