Sequelitis

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No wonder Jack Douglass said in the 5th Royalty Free Christmas Songs episode that those films were "kind of like they just killed Santa again".
"What many people don't talk about regarding franchises is that if one fails at any point, even if the first one was highly praised, then it'll ruin the reputation of everything where not only the botched sequel or sequels, but also the once beloved original end up being looked down upon and its entire legacy gets thrown into the bargain bin."
— AniMat, ["Top 10 Worst Animated Films of the 2010 Decade"[1]]


"Much like a turd that refuses to flush, this franchise just refuse to just fuck off! There are not one, but two movies that are already been filmed, one of which to be due to release this year! You know what, bring it on. If they're going to milk that teat for all it's worth, then I'm going to milk that teat for all it's worth."
— Cynical Reviews, [The After Sequel is Even More Stupid and Toxic]


Sequelitis, also called Rebootitis, is a common recurrence in media for sequels and reboots to not be as good as the original material. Often this occurs due to running out of ideas. It is not always the second film, however, and sequelitis may occur further down the line. Many adaptions of previous works may suffer from this if the work has a poor grasp of the source material. Also it will all ended up in a cliffhanger which lead to sequel baiting.

Notable Offenders

Notable Exceptions

  • Toy Story
  • Ice Age (pre-Continental Drift)
  • Pokemon Films
  • An American Tail II: Fievel Goes West
  • Star Wars (original trilogy)
  • Most Marvel Cinematic Universe sequels
  • The Lego Movie
  • Cars (except Cars 2)
  • Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy
  • The Lord of the Rings trilogy
  • The Hobbit trilogy
  • The Incredibles
  • Pirates of the Caribbean (pre-On Stranger Tides)
  • Looney Tunes direct-to-video films (2000, 2006, 2015) (depending on your view)
  • Tom and Jerry direct-to-video films (2001-2016) (depending on your view)
  • Scooby-Doo direct-to-video films (1998-present) (depending on your view)
  • Finding Nemo/Finding Dory
  • A Goofy Movie/An Extremely Goofy Movie
  • Frozen
  • Stitch! The Movie/Leroy and Stitch (depending on your view)
  • Cinderella III: A Twist in Time
  • The Return of Jafar/Aladdin and the King of Thieves (depending on your view)
  • Indiana Jones (pre-Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)
  • Thomas and Friends (The Adventure Begins)(sometimes)
  • How to Train Your Dragon
  • Kung Fu Panda
  • Shrek (except for Shrek the Third)
  • Captain Underpants
  • Angry Birds
  • King Kong (2005)
  • Looney Tunes: Back in Action
  • The Rescuers Down Under
  • The Hunger Games
  • Harry Potter
  • The Jungle Book (2016)
  • Persona 3 The Movie (1-4)
  • SpongeBob SquarePants movies
  • Rugrats movies (except for Rugrats Go Wild)
  • The Wild Thornberrys Movie
  • Dora and the Lost City of Gold
  • Pete's Dragon
  • Maleficent (2014)
  • Cinderella (2015)
  • Madagascar
  • Hotel Transylvania (except Transformania)
  • 12 Angry Men
  • Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution (2019)
  • Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019)
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (1999 OVA and 2020 movie)
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid (live-action film series, except The Long Haul)
  • Wonder (2017)
  • Horton Hears a Who! (2008)
  • Where the Wild Things Are (film)
  • The Little Prince (film)
  • The Croods
  • Gone with the Wind (film)
  • An Inspector Calls
  • The Lion King II: Simba's Pride/The Lion King 1 1/2
  • Paddington
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • Curious George
  • Jurassic Park
  • Winnie the Pooh
  • A Star is Born
  • It
  • The Mummy
  • Animal Crossing: The Movie
  • The Wizard of Oz
  • King Kong Vs Godzilla (remake)
  • King Kong (2005)
  • Monsters Inc./Monsters University
  • Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (depending on your view)
  • Despicable Me (except the prequel, Minions)
  • Jumanji
  • The original James Bond films
  • Casino Royale films (James Bond reboot films)
  • The original Pink Panther films (1963-1978) except for Inspector Clouseau
  • The Dark Knight trilogy
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
  • The Magic Roundabout Movie (Original UK dub)
  • Wreck-It Ralph/Ralph Breaks the Internet (depending on your view)

Why This Idea Sucks

  1. As said above, reboots, adaptations, remakes and especially sequels can end up having a poor grasp of the source material. And also, which can causes the worst results like Flanderization, story changing, character removal, character race changing, and voice and cast changing.
    • For example, Disney has been remaking some of their classic films for a new audience, but most of the time these remakes fail at capturing the charm of the original and what made it so good in the first place and would sometimes flanderize characters from the original. For example, Mulan was turned from a character with flaws that you can relate to and a character who wanted to honor her family, to Mary Sue who has no flaws and has no emotion and who had superpowers when she was young. Another example is The Heffleys from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book and movie series, who in most of the books and the previous movie adaptations, went from being a relatable, enjoyable, and good family, to behave in a nonsensical, annoying, frustrating, and stupid manner in The Long Haul and animated movie 2021 (therefore unnecessarily based on the first book which is 58 mins long), till animated of Rodrick Rules cam 2022.
  2. Sometimes, lore established in previous films can be ignored, thus creating major plot holes. A great example is Ralph Breaks the Internet, where all the rules established in Wreck-it Ralph were broken in favor of advancing the story and in Minions, they have been on Earth since start of the history during the beginning, around for a long amount of time and Gru just so happens to find them, despite that Gru and Dr. Nefario manufactured and created them himself in the first Despicable Me movie.
  3. In remakes, content from the source may be cut due to runtime, which can sometimes make the film more confusing if the content was important. It even replaces certain scenes with more inferior scenes in some cases.
    • Even characters can be cut out of the movie. For example, Pépe le Pew was cut out of the upcoming movie Space Jam: A New Legacy, due to SJWs accusing Pépe of normalizing rape culture and stereotyping french people, which isn't true as he was already cut before the controversy started, despite the movie having actual rapists left in through inclusion of several A Clockwork Orange characters. Furthermore, Li Shang being cut in Mulan 2020 and replaced with two new characters because of the #Metoo movement, which angered the LGBTQ+ community.
  4. Sometimes, films do not need a sequel, as the previous film wrapped up the narrative perfectly. This can often make ending scenes lose their impact. In some cases, these sequels only exist to push more of them through sequel baiting.
    • The Star Wars sequel trilogy is an example of this. Return of the Jedi was the perfect way to end the series because the war was finally over and the Rebels were done fighting, but in the sequel trilogy, there is another war, which makes the sequel trilogy feel like a carbon copy of the original trilogy. In addition to that, for some reason, the writers decided to revive Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker, which makes the original trilogy even less impactful because it implies that the years of the Rebels fighting against the Empire was all for nothing.
  5. Additionally, if all of the films are part of a larger narrative, if one of the films is bad, it can ruin the whole series, if there is no other external canonical source material, due to plot holes and continuity errors.
    • To make matters even worse, some sequels or reboots will kill the franchise due to being very bad or failing at the box office, in some cases, a franchise may be permanently killed, never to receive another installment again.
  6. Sometimes it feels like a certain movie only gets a sequel just for money and not for making a movie.

Redeeming Qualities

  1. Sequels and reboots, when done right, thankfully would avoid most of these problems as stated above (see "Notable Exceptions" above).
  2. Most sequels also help expand on the narrative of the originals, as well as giving explanations to certain plot details which were not revealed in the previous film, even if the expanded narrative isn't a good one.
  3. Some reboots actually managed to save the franchise due to the final films of the original franchise not doing so well; a good example of such is how Batman Begins successfully saved the Batman franchise after the last film in the original Batman franchise, Batman & Robin, was so poorly-received that it effectively killed said franchise.
  4. Some of these reboots actually take a fresh, new approach of retelling the story which are different from the original films, hence enabling them to stand on their on as their own thing and feel different and independent from their respective original films, even if these new approaches aren't a good one.

How To Make Sequels, Adaptions, Reboots, and Remakes Memorable

  1. If you make a sequel, adaption, and reboot good. Beware the flanderizations, character race changing, wild story changing, character removal, and voice changing (depending on the view) because your own studios will be go downhill/be in decline because of it.
  2. Don't ignore the fans' and viewers' attention for what they like about the sequels, adaption, reboot, and remakes for a movie and tv shows because they are not tricksters and don't do any goof messed ups.
  3. If you adapted books, video games, and comics as a movies and tv shows. Try to change a story a little because changing too much can ruined a movie and tv shows or sometimes you can attached plot because you don't want the fans and the viewers to get disappointed.

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  1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUaylWegJBk
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