To close out this month’s topic, I will go over traits common in poorly done sequels, and how to avoid them.

Some people say that a second book or movie cannot be better than the first. Some go further to say that the sequel is never better than the original.

Of course, this is demonstrably untrue, and subject to a lot of confirmation bias. The Empire Strikes Back is better than A New Hope. Angels and Demons is better than The Da Vinci Code. The Odyssey is better than The Iliad. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is better than The First Avenger. Spider Man 2 is better than the first of the Raimi films. Series like The Inheritance Cycle improve with each installment.

The reason why is tied to why sequels often fail: these works were intended to be part of a series. They were written with future installments in mind.

Many works are not meant to have sequels. They conclude their plot and character arcs to the point that creating new ones can be tricky. They are meant to be self-contained, a whole story, with little need to expand.

And, additionally, some works don’t leave enough loose ends to warrant writing a full new story.

For context: the movie Open Season deals with a bear raised among humans struggling to adapt to the wild, while fleeing from hunters. It has a good degree of heart, while creating decent comedy and mixing in legitimate threats.

Its sequel is about rescuing a dachshund from a pet camp.

I shit you not.

This is one main reason why later installments fail: adding on to the original is not necessary. Other causes stem from patterns that break my rules on sequel writing (at least, not in justifiable rule breakage):

  • A sequel should maintain a critical balance, one part honoring the traits that made the original good, and the other part creating a new story with its own identity.
  • A sequel should demonstrate the reasonable consequences of what happened in the previous installment.
  • A sequel should reinforce the messages and spirit of the original, while also expanding it and showing new challenges.
  • A sequel should learn from the shortcomings of their predecessors, so that the following works and the series itself improve.
  • The first three rules can be broken if doing so improves the work. (The fourth rule cannot be broken with this justification; refusing to improve the work cannot improve the work, that’s a paradox.)

Works that become too distant from the benefits from the original, such as Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Works that try too hard to be the original, that they do not become their own story, like many direct-to-video Disney sequels. Works that do not show the realistic consequences of what came before, like Jurassic Park 2. All bad sequels break the fourth rule by their very nature.

Rules in writing literature are almost always flexible, and function more like guidelines (as a wise undead pirate once said something along the lines of). But never. Ever. Break the fourth rule.

Speaking of Pirates of the Caribbean, there are additional instances of stories that mess with characters the audience holds dear. Like, how Jack Sparrow experienced decline after each movie. By Dead Men Tell No Tales, he’s practically undergone character development in the opposite direction, a parody of himself.

As Sun Tzu did not quite say, “Know your characters, know yourself, and you need not fear the reviews of a thousand critics.” (Beyond a thousand, though, you are on your own.)

Other factors in this are reader/audience expectations. Legend of Korra was a great series that followed up ATLA very well. But some people wanted it to be exactly like its predecessor, which caused them to be disappointed when it decided to, you know. Tell its own story.

Sequels can be as good as the original. Sequels can even do better. But, they often do not, because people sometimes forget the main reason they are written in the first place: to continue the story in a satisfying way.

What are the best or worst sequels you’ve encountered? What aspects made them succeed or suck?

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