Sequelitis

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An example of sequelitis.

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. However, It is not always the second film, 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.

Notable offenders

Notable exceptions

  • The Toy Story films
  • Ice Age sequels (pre-Continental Drift)
  • 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 film series (original trilogy, 2003-2007)
  • Looney Tunes direct-to-video films (2000, 2006, 2015)
  • Tom and Jerry direct-to-video films (2001-2016)
  • Scooby-Doo direct-to-video films (1998-present)
  • Finding Nemo/Finding Dory
  • A Goofy Movie/An Extremely Goofy Movie
  • Stitch! The Movie/Leroy and Stitch
  • Cinderella III: A Twist in Time
  • The Return of Jafar/Aladdin and the King of Thieves
  • 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)
  • The SpongeBob SquarePants movies
  • Dora and the Lost City of Gold
  • Pete's Dragon
  • Maleficent (2014)
  • Cinderella (2015)
  • Madagascar
  • The Godfather trilogy
  • 12 Angry Men
  • Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution (2019)
  • Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (movie)
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (1999 OVA and 2020 movie)
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid (film series, except The Long Haul)
  • Wonder (2017)
  • Horton Hears a Who? (2009)
  • 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 Chapter Two
  • The Mummy
  • Animal Crossing: The Movie
  • The Wizard of Oz
  • King Kong Vs Godzilla (remake)
  • King Kong (2005)
  • Monsters Inc.
  • Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway
  • 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)
  • The Dark Night Trilogy
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
  • The Magic Roundabout Movie (Original UK dub)
  • Smile 2

Why It Sucks

  1. As said above, reboots, adaptations, and remakes (and sequels sometimes) can have a poor grasp of the source material, resulting in things like character Flanderization and derailment.
    • 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 flanderized 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 behaving in a nonsensical, annoying, frustrating, and stupid manner in The Long Haul movie.
  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 the start of 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 is 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 Space Jam: A New Legacy, due to political activists accusing Pépe of normalizing rape culture and stereotyping French people, which isn't true as he was already cut before the controversy started, and that is also hypocritical because the movie itself has actual rapists left in through inclusion of several A Clockwork Orange characters. Furthermore, Li Shang was 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 were 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.

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 for certain plot details that were not revealed in the previous film, even if the expanded narrative isn't a good one.
  3. Some reboots 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 Batman (1989) the original ''Batman'' franchise, Batman and Robin, was so poorly-received that it effectively killed said franchise.
  4. Some of these reboots take a fresh, new approach to retelling the story which is different from the original films, hence enabling them to stand on their own as their own thing and feel different and independent from their respective original films, even if these new approaches aren't a good one.

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