Over the past several months I’ve discussed at length about sequels, remakes and reboots. I’ve gone over good sequels, bad sequels and varying qualities of reboots/remakes. But there is a group of films out there that deserves a special mention: Movies that deserved a sequel. For this particular list, I will be talking about movies that needed a sequel, but never got one for one reason or another. I will not be including movies that have established franchises, so you won’t be see any Star Wars or Star Trek on this post. Movies that deserved BETTER sequels is a post that I will get into soon, because it’s just as relevant, but for now, we will be focusing on those movies that could have used an extension or two. Now, the main reason why some of these movies never got sequels is due to one major factor: Money. They didn’t pull in enough money in the box-office for movie studios to re-visit. I will also not be including direct-to-video sequels. These are going to be about big-screen movies. Now, these are some of the movies that I personally enjoyed a great deal, so let’s see what we’ve got here:
The Rocketeer
Of all the superhero movies that I’ve seen, this one is one of the most underrated. Directed by Joe Johnston and released in the summer of 1991, The Rocketeer was an absolute blast of a movie. With an all-star cast including Bill Campbell, Alan Arkin, Terry O’Quinn, Jennifer Connelly, and Timothy Dalton as the villainous Neville Sinclair, it was an amazing and original adventure movie. Set during the late 1930’s, The Rocketeer was an old-fashioned kind of movie, the kind they don’t make anymore. The acting was great all around. It was exciting, romantic and funny. It’s just a shame that the audiences never really took to it. It’s not surprising as 1991 had some major-league sluggers in the field with Terminator 2 and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. When The Rocketeer ended, it left it open for the possibility of a sequel, and had it earned enough money, we would have gotten one. But something happened that few people would have expected: The movie garnered a massive following despite its lackluster box-office performance. Apparently, when they screened the film during the film’s 20th anniversary, fans dressed as the character lined up for blocks. It was about this time that Disney started thinking about the idea of a sequel, and it looks we might actually get one. Details are scarce at this point, but apparently, the film is going to be another period piece set six years after the events of the first movie. I’m all for it, although I wish it didn’t take 20 years for it to happen.
Willow
Willow is a movie that I truly wished had a legitimate big-screen sequel. Now, some of you may not know this, but some years after the film’s release, there were novels based on that particular universe that nobody read. It was a trilogy that saw Elora Dannon grow into a teenager. I personally never read the books. I wasn’t particularly interested. I WAS interested in the universe that the film had established, but never re-visited. It was a movie with some surprisingly dark tones to it. Visually, it was spectacular. You also had the acting talents of Warwick Davis, Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley, Billy Barty, Jean Marsh, and Kevin Pollak. It had the right amount of humor, romance and excitement to make it an epic fantasy adventure. Val Kilmer’s Madmartigan stole the show with as a wise-cracking master swordsman. It was extraordinary how Warwick Davis and Val Kilmer bounced off each other. The acting was great. The story was good and the action was amazing. It just didn’t connect with audiences or critics who railed against the film and Ron Howard for the supposed emphasis on special effects over everything else. Charlatans and heathens, I tell you.
David Lynch’s Dune
Now, THIS is a real shame. The initial plan was to have Dune as the first film in a trilogy detailing the exploits of Paul Atreides and his children. However, during production, the suits at Universal Pictures didn’t particularly care for the idea of a 3+ hour film, so they forced David Lynch to cut some rather important material out. Considering how dense Frank Herbert’s novel was, it came as a surprise to fans of the book, that a lot of what they were expecting was not to be found. For the rest of the audience, it was a confusing mess of a movie. But for those of us who did understand what was going and and DIDN’T read the book, we got a very solid and visually spectacular science fiction epic with some really big-name actors including Patrick Stewart, Jurgen Prochnow, Freddie Jones, Virginia Madsen, Jose Ferrer, Linda Hunt and Kyle MacLachlan.
Dredd
This one bothers me, because despite the amount of praise that the 2012 film got with Karl Urban as Judge Joseph Dredd, it failed to ignite the box-office. Considering that people were still trying to forget the disaster that was Sylvester Stallone’s take on the character, it wasn’t really a surprise that people stayed away. It’s too bad, Karl Urban makes for a more convincing Dredd than Sly ever did, and not once did you ever see his face. Yeah, it was definitely violent and gory, but the film stayed true to the roots of the comic book character. Karl Urban clearly loves the character, and he’s willing to put on the helmet again, but it seems that a full-blown theatrical sequel may not happen after all, despite multiple conversations. HOWEVER, there is a possibility that the character might be getting a series on Netflix, which I think would be appropriate. Considering the amount of scrapes and battles the character gets into throughout the comics, a Netflix series would probably be the best option.
Well, that’s my list for movies that I felt deserved sequels but didn’t get them, at least not yet.