What Stories Should be Continued?

If you’re like me, you look forward to sequels to your favorite films with a bit of trepidation and caution. Seeing the story continued and the characters in action again can be exhilarating but you can also get a follow up that is so bad it tarnishes the original and kills the future of the franchise. We’re also at a point now where there are reboots that sometimes serve as sequels to beloved franchises without having much of the original cast or creative talent involved. In some cases this works out, as in the recent Evil Dead (2013) reboot, and in other cases you get Freddy vs. Jason. The below list is comprised of movies that were fan favorites but have yet to receive a proper sequel.

Bubba Ho-Tep

In this movie Bruce Campbell plays an aging Elvis in a nursing home who has to take out a soul sucking mummy before it gets him or more of the other patients. Don Coscarelli of the Phatasm series directed, and injected a weird sense of humor into this cult hit. The credits for this movie teased a sequel/prequel Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires which would see Elvis taking on some lady vampires in his younger years. That movie has yet to happen and Bruce Campbell eventually dropped out of the in-development project due to creative differences. It could still theoretically happen,  but without Campbell it would leave fans wondering what it could have been.

Pans Labyrinth

Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 classic was a mix of a fairy tale fantasy, war film, and one of the better showcases of practical effects in recent memory. There are some genuinely creepy creatures in this movie, and the tone is such that is hard to know what the true intentions of the creatures in the story are. This movie is relatively self contained and I don’t know that a direct sequel is necessary, but a spiritual successor tackling a different time period with new characters would be very welcome.

Troll 2

A movie doesn’t have to be good to deserve a sequel, sometimes it just has to be so bad and possess story elements so incomprehensible that a follow up is the only way that any of it could make sense. Troll 2 raises way more questions than it answers, like why is it a sequel to Troll (1986)? It is about Goblins, in a town called Nilbog. The real answer is marketing purposes and other boring business reasons. This is an example of a movie that is so bad it’s actually fun to watch, as opposed to something more modern like Birdemic: Shock and Terror that is just plain bad and hard to sit through. Any follow up that could be made would have to be an earnest attempt to make a good movie, and explain things like how the Goblins run the town of Nilbog (seriously, they have a sheriff and way more buildings than a town that small should have). It would also have to be so bad it’s fun to watch, or just really fun to watch. It’s not like something could be made that had worse acting or plot developments than Troll 2.

I’m sure that there are plenty of other movies which deserve a sequel or follow up, let us know what you think in the comments below.