People always love watching their favorite characters return to the big screen but sequels are always a gamble. Sometimes they are worth the wait but sometimes they are disappointing. Sequels that undercut characters are the worst because they just undo any growth or maturation a beloved hero went through to become the hero that the character is, neglecting the careful work that was put in the first film creating those characters. In this article, we have compiled 5 instances when movie sequels randomly undercut popular characters.
1) Alien 3
Newt (Carrie Henn) and Hicks (Michael Biehn) both are great characters, especially Newt, as fans loved the almost a mother-daughter relationship she had with Ripley.
It was very disappointing to see that, Newt and Hicks who are survivors of so many near-death experiences in the previous movie, die immediately without any lines, that too off-screen.
2) RoboCop 2
The first movie is all about Alex Murphy’s humanity winning out in the end, as the film ends with him saying his name. Apparently, that’s not the case in RoboCop 2 as any progress that he made is gone to repeat the process in the sequel. He seems to be all machine now.
3) Dumb And Dumber To
The first movie was a sweet comedy about two well-intentioned guys who just want to belong, but the second movie took a turn as the same guys are now mean-spirited. The two become unlikable in the second movie as they are intentionally assh*les to people, like when Lloyd puts his feet on Harry’s parents’ dinner table and makes fun of Mrs. Dunne’s accent, or when they interrupt a science conference to berate the speaker.
4) Star Wars: The Last Jedi
A lot of fans did not like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the huge discrepancy in the critics’ and audience score of The Last Jedi on Rotten Tomatoes support that statement. Luke’s rejection of the Jedi ways after Ben (Adam Driver) destroys the temple is inconsistent with the character. Even Mark Hamill, who played Luke, said “Jedis don’t give up,” and didn’t hold back voicing his distaste for his character’s reversion during The Last Jedi press circuit.
A lot of instances in the movie certainly changed the perception of Luke which also erodes much of the heroism he’d earned in his younger years.
5) Shanghai Knights
In the first movie, Shanghai Noon, Roy O’Bannon, a hedonistic outlaw who is just a bit selfish and immature, teams up with Chon Wang to take down his former colleagues in banditry and a corrupt sheriff. The ending of the movie is great, we got to see a newly appointed lawman O’Bannon who decided that it’s time to shelf his outlaw name and go by his new name, Wyatt Earp.
Here comes the unusual twist, in the next movie, Shanghai Knights, we learn that O’Bannon gave up on that whole good guy thing, left his lady love, and is now pretty much back to his old depraved ways, minus robbing. Basically, any and all growth O’Bannon/Earp went through is completely wiped clean so Owen Wilson can play the character the exact same way in the new movie.
Also Read: Toy Story: 5 Reasons Why Grown-Ups Find It Relatable
