What Is a Sequel? 10 Sequels Better Than the Original

A sequel is a film, book or show that continues a story after an earlier one ends. The Empire Strikes Back picks up after Star Wars. Top Gun: Maverick picks up 36 years after Top Gun.

Sequels have a reputation for being worse than the films they follow. This guide covers what a sequel is, the types of sequel from legacy sequels to requels, and 10 exceptions: sequels better than the original. For stories that go backwards, read what is a prequel.

What is a Sequel?

A sequel is a work that follows an earlier one and continues its story. The word comes from the Latin sequi, “to follow”. Merriam-Webster traces it in English to the 15th century, when it first meant a consequence.

That is the sequel meaning in film too. The characters, the world or both carry on from the first film. Studios mark sequels with a number (Terminator 2), a subtitle (The Empire Strikes Back), or sometimes the same title again (Scream, 2022).

Is Part 2 a Sequel?

Usually, yes. But some “Part Two” films are the second half of one story. Dune: Part Two (2024) adapts the second half of Frank Herbert’s novel. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011) finishes the last book, which was split across two films (here is where the Harry Potter films were shot). Both are sequels on the release calendar and halves of one story on the page.

Types of Sequel

Film writers use a lot of words for sequels. These are the ones worth knowing, with one film each.

Direct Sequel

A direct sequel picks up the same story with the same characters. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) rejoins Luke, Leia and Han on the ice planet Hoth.

Standalone Sequel

A standalone sequel keeps the hero but tells a new story you can follow without the first film. Mad Max 2 (1981) sums up Max’s past in a short opening narration, then starts fresh.

Legacy Sequel

A legacy sequel returns decades later, with the original stars handing over to new ones. Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) are the best known. Matt Singer at ScreenCrush coined “legacyquel” in 2015, and “legacy sequel” is now the common term.

Requel

A requel is part reboot, part sequel. New leads take over, legacy characters come back, and the title often repeats. Scream (2022) names the idea on screen, when Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) explains it to the other characters.

Soft Reboot

A soft reboot resets a series but keeps one thread to the old one. Star Trek (2009) recast the crew and brought back Leonard Nimoy’s Spock to connect the two.

Spiritual Successor

A spiritual successor has a new story and new characters but the same spirit. Richard Linklater called Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) a “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused (1993).

Threequel and Trilogy

What comes after a sequel? In a numbered series, the third film, sometimes called a threequel. Three connected films make a trilogy. Return of the Jedi (1983) completed the first Star Wars trilogy, and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) closed Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

Spin-off

A spin-off takes a side character or idea and gives it its own story. Puss in Boots (2011) spun off from Shrek 2. On TV, Better Call Saul spun off from Breaking Bad, and it tops our list of prequels that work on their own.

Sequel vs Reboot vs Remake

What is a reboot? It restarts a series from scratch and ignores what came before. A remake retells one film. A sequel carries on.

	Sequel	Reboot	Remake
What it does	Continues the story	Restarts the series	Retells one film
Keeps the old story?	Yes	No	No
Example	Aliens (1986)	Batman Begins (2005)	The Departed (2006), from Infernal Affairs (2002)

A new adaptation of the same book is none of these. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune (2021) is not a remake of David Lynch’s Dune (1984). Both adapt Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel.

Why Studios Keep Making Sequels

The audience already knows the title, so the marketing is half done. In 2024, 8 of the 10 highest-grossing films worldwide were sequels, from Inside Out 2 to Deadpool & Wolverine, counting each film’s full worldwide gross.

That makes sequel movies safe bets for studios, not always good films for audiences. The 10 below cleared the bar by changing something the first film took for granted.

Every good sequel passes one test. Something changes for the hero.

Not the budget. Not the size of the villain. The hero.

Aliens turns Ripley from survivor into protector. Terminator 2 turns the killing machine into a guardian. The Godfather Part II turns Michael into his father, then takes him further than his father ever went.

If the honest answer is “nothing, but bigger”, you are writing a remake with a new number on it.

10 Sequels Better Than the Original

These 10 sequels count down to the one that beat a Best Picture winner. For each, you get the gap between the films, what the sequel changed, and one thing to steal for your own work.

10) Shrek 2 (2004)

Shrek 2 took the joke of the first film and aimed it at Hollywood.

• Sequel to: Shrek (2001)
• Gap between films: Three years
• What it changed: The swamp became Far Far Away, a kingdom styled on Hollywood
• What to steal: Put your hero in the one place they cannot fit in.

The first Shrek mocked fairy tales. The sequel sends Shrek to meet Fiona’s parents in Far Far Away, complete with a sign on the hill in the style of the Hollywood sign, and turns the jokes on celebrity. Puss in Boots makes his debut here and later gets his own spin-off.

It was the top film of 2004 worldwide, with $929 million in its first release. And no, Shrek is not from Disney. DreamWorks made it.

9) Before Sunset (2004)

Before Sunset uses the gap between films as its story.

• Sequel to: Before Sunrise (1995)
• Gap between films: Nine years, on screen and off
• What it changed: One night in Vienna became about 80 minutes in Paris, told close to real time
• What to steal: If your cast has aged, make the story about it.

Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) met for one night in Vienna in the first film. Nine years later, Jesse is in Paris reading from a novel about that night at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop. Céline walks in.

The film follows them in close to real time until his plane leaves. The screenplay by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke earned an Oscar nomination. It ends in Céline’s flat, with a waltz and a flight Jesse may not catch.

8) Mad Max 2 (1981)

Mad Max 2 is where the Mad Max look was born.

• Sequel to: Mad Max (1979)
• Gap between films: Two years
• What it changed: A small revenge thriller became a desert war film, on a budget more than ten times bigger
• What to steal: Save your biggest set piece for the last reel.

Released in the US as The Road Warrior, the sequel moved Max into a wasteland where fuel is worth killing for. The first film cost about A$350,000 to 400,000. The sequel cost A$4.5 million, and George Miller spent it on the road.

The finale is a chase across the desert with Max driving a fuel tanker and a gang of raiders attacking it. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia names Max Aspin as stunt coordinator. One shot kept a real accident: stuntman Guy Norris was meant to jump his motorbike over a car, hit it instead and broke his leg.

The tanker chase is a stunt team’s dream brief.

A sequel buys you trust. The audience already knows this world is deadly, so you can skip the setup and go straight to the road.

What makes the chase work is geography. You always know where the tanker is, where Max is, and who is closing in.

And the crash that went wrong stayed in. You can feel the difference between a planned hit and a real one, even if you cannot say why.

7) Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Top Gun: Maverick is the model for the legacy sequel.

• Sequel to: Top Gun (1986)
• Gap between films: 36 years
• What it changed: The cocky pilot became the teacher, training the son of the friend he lost
• What to steal: Let the old hero pay a debt from the first film.

Tom Cruise returns as Maverick, sent to train young pilots for a near-impossible mission. One of them is Rooster (Miles Teller), son of Goose, whose death in Top Gun still haunts Maverick. Val Kilmer returns as Iceman for one scene. The callbacks are there, from the motorbike on the runway to a game on the beach, but the story is about guilt.

Navy pilots flew the F/A-18F jets from the front seats while the actors rode in the back and ran the cameras. The film grossed $1.496 billion worldwide and was nominated for Best Picture. See where Top Gun: Maverick was filmed and where the original Top Gun was filmed.

6) Aliens (1986)

Aliens turned a haunted-house horror film into a war film.

• Sequel to: Alien (1979)
• Gap between films: Seven years. In the story, Ripley drifts in space for 57
• What it changed: One alien became hundreds, and the lone survivor became a protector
• What to steal: Change the genre, keep the hero.

Ridley Scott’s Alien was slow and quiet, one creature hunting a crew in the dark. James Cameron sent Ripley back with a unit of Colonial Marines and made an action film. At its heart, though, is Ripley’s bond with Newt, a girl who survived the colony alone.

Sigourney Weaver was nominated for Best Actress, rare for a science fiction film. The film won Oscars for Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects. Scott later went back to the start with Prometheus, which is on our prequel list.

5) Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Terminator 2 turned its own villain into the hero.

• Sequel to: The Terminator (1984)
• Gap between films: Seven years
• What it changed: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s killer came back to protect John Connor
• What to steal: Use the audience’s memory of the first film against them.

In 1984 the Terminator was the monster. In 1991 James Cameron sent the same model back as a guardian, and gave the villain role to the liquid-metal T-1000 (Robert Patrick). Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) went from waitress to fighter.

Its budget, reported at $94 to 102 million, made it the most expensive film ever made up to then. It won four Oscars: Makeup, Sound, Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects. We compare the two films scene by scene in The Terminator vs Terminator 2.

4) Dune: Part Two (2024)

Dune: Part Two is a sequel on the calendar and the second half of one book on the page.

• Sequel to: Dune (2021)
• Gap between films: Two years and four months
• What it changed: Paul went from exile to leader, and the film shows what that costs
• What to steal: Split a story where the hero’s goal changes.

Denis Villeneuve’s film covers the second half of Frank Herbert’s novel. Paul rides a sandworm for the first time. Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) fights in a black and white arena on Giedi Prime, a planet under a black sun, shot with an infrared camera.

It grossed about $715 million worldwide and had five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. It won Sound and Visual Effects.

3) The Dark Knight (2008)

The Dark Knight made a superhero sequel into a crime film.

• Sequel to: Batman Begins (2005)
• Gap between films: Three years
• What it changed: The villain became the story, and the hero became a question
• What to steal: Let the villain test the hero’s rules, not his fists.

Heath Ledger’s Joker has no origin and no plan he will admit to. Ledger won Best Supporting Actor after his death, the second posthumous acting Oscar after Peter Finch. The interrogation room scene, where Batman beats him and loses, is the film in one room.

Christopher Nolan shot about 20 to 30 minutes on IMAX cameras, a first for a feature film. Chicago stood in for Gotham (here is where The Dark Knight was filmed), which also puts it on our list of iconic movies filmed in Chicago.

2) The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The Empire Strikes Back ends its middle chapter with the heroes losing.

• Sequel to: Star Wars (1977)
• Gap between films: Three years
• What it changed: Han is frozen, Luke loses a hand, and the villain turns out to be his father
• What to steal: Let the middle chapter end on a defeat.

George Lucas handed the directing to Irvin Kershner and let the story go dark. The rebels lose Hoth, the heroes split up, and the film ends with no victory at all.

Then there is the reveal. The line is “No. I am your father”, not “Luke, I am your father”, which is a well-known case of the Mandela effect. To protect the twist, the script the cast saw said Obi-Wan killed Luke’s father. Kershner told Mark Hamill the real line shortly before they filmed the scene.

You can watch that scene here:

1) The Godfather Part II (1974)

The Godfather Part II is the first sequel to win Best Picture.

• Sequel to: The Godfather (1972)
• Gap between films: Two years
• What it changed: It tells two stories at once: Michael’s reign after the first film, and young Vito’s rise from 1901
• What to steal: Cut between two timelines until they rhyme.

Francis Ford Coppola cut between Michael (Al Pacino) tightening his grip in the 1950s and his father arriving in New York as a boy and building the family. The father’s rise and the son’s fall play side by side, which makes it a sequel and a prequel in one.

It won Best Picture at the 47th Academy Awards in April 1975, one of six Oscars from 11 nominations. Robert De Niro won Best Supporting Actor as young Vito, the role that won Marlon Brando Best Actor for The Godfather (which Brando turned down). They were the first pair to win Oscars for playing the same character. See our full list of Academy Award winners.

FAQs About Sequels

The Final Cut on Sequels

A sequel carries a story forward, and that is the easy part. The hard part is giving the audience a reason to come back that is not just more of the same.

Every film on this list changed something. Ripley became a protector. The Terminator became a guardian. Michael Corleone became his father.

Here is the test for your own sequel: if you can describe it without the word “bigger”, it might deserve to exist.

For the other direction, read what is a prequel. To build your characters so they can change across more than one story, start with character development and our screenwriting guide. And if you are shooting your own follow-up, our filmmaking starter kit covers the gear.