Sequels don’t have a great reputation. For every The Godfather Part II, there are dozens of Look Who’s Talking Toos. Lately, though, the reputation of sequels has improved with the critical successes of Blade Runner 2049, Dune: Part Two, and Twisters.
Still, there are sequels made a long time ago that never got the love they should’ve received when they were first released. To correct this historical injustice, Digital Trends has compiled a list of the five most underrated sequels that are not only great to watch, but are even better than the original movie that spawned them.
5. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Friday the 13th movies are generally considered inferior when compared to their horror movie franchise brethren, and while I like them, I won’t argue they are of the same caliber as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or even Scream. Still, for what they are, they are quite good, and Friday the 13th Part 2 stands among the best of the bunch.
Sure, it’s hard not to given the competition, but Part 2 has everything that makes the franchise so effective: gruesome kills (that butcher knife to the head still gets me), great atmosphere, and genuinely likable characters. As Ginny, actress Amy Steel is the franchise’s best Final Girl, and her climactic battle with Jason, who is wearing a white burlap sack in this one, is so memorable that future installments make it a point to reference it or rip it off. It’s also the only Friday the 13th movie that is even remotely scary.
4. Predator 2 (1990)
You can have your Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse “The Body” Ventura macho jungle movie; I’ll take a pissed-off Danny Glover fighting aliens in a crime-ridden L.A. any day. Predator 2 is a ballsy sequel, in that it’s an almost completely different movie than the first one. In this one, we get a besieged group of dedicated cops who must deal with red tape bureaucracy, a suffocating heat wave, and a violent turf war between two rival drug cartels. Oh yeah, there’s a Predator skulking throughout the city, too.
Predator 2‘s intriguing setup is complemented by its terrific cast, which includes Bill Paxon, María Conchita Alonso, and Gary Busey, whose mere presence in a movie during this era is enough to guarantee a good time. The sequel also gives surprisingly complexity to the titular alien hunter, who, as we find out at the end, is more than just a mindless killing machine.
3. Ghostbusters II (1989)
I’ve never understood the vitriol this sequel was subjected to when it was first released and that it still gets to this day. But I’m a very vocal defender of it, and have always preferred it over the much-praised original. And while I love Ghostbusters, it doesn’t have a river of pink slime that feeds off of NYC’s bad vibes. It doesn’t have a main villain who is stuck in an old painting and possesses mousy Peter MacNicol to do his bidding. (When MacNicol appears as a ghostly Mary Poppins in drag, the movie achieves a brief moment of camp nirvana.) And it doesn’t have a slime-controlled Statue of Liberty walking down Fifth Avenue while all of New York cheers on.
This is a weird, wacky movie, one that dares to give poor Ernie Hudson something to do, sex up Annie Potts, make French bread pizza a successful aphrodisiac, and let Rick Moranis get his freak on. Plus, it contains one of Bill Murray’s funniest performances ever. This is a sequel that keeps on giving, which cannot be said for any of the franchise’s reboots or the 2024 follow-up Frozen Empire.
2. Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
I can already hear your outrage at suggesting Die Hard with a Vengeance is better than Die Hard. Well, cry me a river; it’s better in almost every way, and is one of the best action movies of the 1990s. It honors the great tradition of gritty, NYC-set action thrillers like The French Connection and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by teaming John McClane with another everyman, Samuel L. Jackson’s Zeus Carver, to play a twisted game of Simon Says across the five boroughs.
And what a game it is! From making John wear a sign on his chest with a racist slur on it deep in Harlem to having our heroes try to find a bomb in one of the city’s elementary schools, the movie’s villain, Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons), is a baddie for the ages. The third Die Hard movie never lets up, and is the tensest, most visceral movie in the long-running action movie franchise.
1. Alien 3 (1993)
Listen, I love Alien and Aliens as much as the next nerd, but you know which Alien movie made me gasp, shudder, hoot, holler, and, yes, cry, all in the space of two hours? Alien 3. It’s probably the most daring summer blockbuster ever. Why? Well, it kills off most of the survivors from the previous film, shaves its leading lady’s hair off, is set on a dank and depressing world filled with derelict prisons, and asks you to root for reformed rapists and murderers. Has any other major franchise ever done that? Would they even dare now with so many merchandising deals and product placements at stake?
Unlike the first two movies, Alien 3 is all about Ripley. She’s the star here, not the working-class Nostromo crew from Alien or the tough-talking, joke-cracking marines from Aliens. The movie begins and ends with her emotional journey, which is a gradual acceptance of her own demise. Heavy, huh? The ending, which transforms Ripley into a Christlike figure, is at once deeply satisfying and unrelentingly bleak. That’s the magic of Alien 3; it shows you there’s beauty in the unlikeliest of places, even in a threequel that its own director has disowned for years.
