2024 film sequels, ranked: Have been any of them mandatory?

In Hollywood, the query “Does this film franchise want one other chapter?” appears to have a fairly simple reply: “Certain, if we expect it’ll nonetheless earn a living!”

For followers of a given franchise, although, the calculations are extra difficult. Will that new installment in a film sequence really add something worthwhile to the story, or simply undermine the franchise’s unique successes? Can we really need to know extra about our favourite characters, or will prequels and spinoffs spoil them? Do we’ve got any motive to consider the most recent film utilizing a well-recognized IP has a motive to exist that isn’t solely mercenary? Will it a minimum of be some huge dumb enjoyable?

Whereas loads of 2024’s would-be IP blockbusters have shifted to 2025 dates, the yr to this point has nonetheless seen its share of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. So we’re working the numbers, rating the yr’s latest-in-a-series films by how properly they justify their existence — each as films, and as installments in ongoing tales.

A remake of 2008’s home-invasion horror film The Strangers wasn’t mandatory, but it surely might have been good: With a premise as stable gold as “masked strangers break right into a distant residence and kill the couple vacationing there,” there are 1,000,000 completely different takes that would have been nice horror fodder that doesn’t comply with the unique film beat for beat. Sadly, that’s precisely the uninspired strategy director Renny Harlin (Die Exhausting 2) takes with this film, the primary in a deliberate trilogy that was initially written as one huge four-hour-plus film, till Legendary Leisure broke it down into chunks.

This new batch of Strangers films is supposed to comply with the characters within the aftermath of this preliminary residence invasion. However it kicks off with Harlin basically remaking the primary Strangers with much less fashion and dread. Gone is the gradual creepiness of the unique film, changed by rushed horror sequences and some moments of lackluster motion. Whereas it’s doable that components 2 and three in some way redeem the kickoff, Chapter 1 is nothing greater than a considerably worse retread of an efficient shocker. —Austen Goslin

Madame Internet is just loosely linked to Sony’s already loosely linked universe of Marvel characters. Ironic, on condition that the tagline “Her internet connects all of them” was the central focus of all of the teasers. The one factor this presents to longtime followers of the present live-action Spider-Man narrative is a tease about Peter Parker’s existence — one thing that’s all the time been a giant query mark within the Sony Marvel films. Paramedic Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is buddies with Peter’s (scorching, younger, not but useless in a morally instructive manner) Uncle Ben, in spite of everything! Besides the movie by no means really acknowledges that Ben’s new child nephew is Peter Parker, to the purpose the place holding again on that element turns into one thing like a bit. It’s nearly pandering, however not indulgent sufficient to really feel fulfilling in any respect.

With its stilted dialogue and nonsensical plot, Madame Internet will not be film in any respect. Not less than it’s the type of horrible film that’s enjoyable to look at in a bunch setting, whereas making jokes and tuning out the slower bits? It’s kind of Cats for superhero followers. —Petrana Radulovic

This sequel to a sequelish reboot brings the brand new era of Ghostbusters (Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and so on.) again to New York, and brings again the unique characters (Invoice Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and so on.) for greater than a glorified cameo. That may be sufficient to make it important for superfans, however for everybody else, it’s a nostalgic callback to the unique film with not a lot new or partaking to make it stand out, aside from Grace’s character’s maybe-queer storyline with a cute ghost lady. —PR

Nobody within the Despicable Me films appears to age. Former supervillain Gru (Steve Carell) appears to be like identical to he did within the first film, and so do his daughters, who’ve been youngsters for 14 years now. And but in some way, Gru and his spouse Lucy (Kristen Wiig) pursued a relationship, acquired married, and had a child. So a minimum of there’s some sense of time passing, even when it looks like Gru Jr. may be an toddler for the subsequent decade of sequels.

Despicable Me 4 contributes a couple of enjoyable new world-building parts to the franchise, although it sadly doesn’t discover them sufficient to make them vital. Nonetheless, a few of them might set the stage for future adventures. (A complete faculty for villains?) This installment additionally provides a small however completely hilarious element to Gru’s previous, a backstory involving a highschool expertise present and the music “Karma Chameleon.” Nothing about Despicable Me 4 is important, but it surely’s cool to see a couple of extra funky particulars about this broadly outlined world. —PR

The fourth entry within the sequence Michael Bay inadvertently kicked off together with his directorial debut Unhealthy Boys again in 1995 brings again lots of forged members — mainly the Unhealthy Boys themselves, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. However the filmmakers clearly assume Unhealthy Boys followers need much more continuity than that. Screenwriters Chris Bremner and Will Beall do their finest to construct a Quick & Livid-style Unhealthy Boys universe out of each little bit of character work and villain lore they’ll scrap collectively from the earlier three films.

That isn’t a praise. The place so many blockbuster films undergo as a result of the studio is making an attempt to launch a worthwhile franchise as a substitute of telling a good story, Journey or Die assumes viewers are coming to the theater armed with nostalgia and a detail-oriented fascination with lore, relatively than simply eager to see a few gifted comedic actors mouth off at one another between frenetic motion sequences. Followers who care deeply in regards to the posthumous legacy of Joe Pantoliano’s character, that is your film. However largely, the franchise-building will get in the way in which of the enjoyable. —TR

Fede Álvarez’s 2024 installment within the Alien franchise is nearly perversely outlined by how a lot it copies from previous Alien films, and the way little it provides to the canon: Álvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues can’t even conjure up their very own catchphrase, and fall again on having a brand new character echo the sequence’ most well-known line.

The movie is successfully creepy as a stand-alone, and for viewers who’ve by no means seen an Alien film, this would possibly all be new, thrilling horror fare. However it’d nonetheless come throughout as a bit underexplained, since this movie is aimed instantly at individuals who know the franchise ahead and backward. It’s a greatest-hits montage, kind of: Bear in mind how creepy Xenomorphs are in water? Let’s try this once more. Chestbursters, facehuggers, Giger-esque genital imagery, evil androids suborning ships for the corporate — that was cool! Extra of that! And so forth. It’s time on the films, but it surely might hardly be much less important. —TR

The fourth within the new-era Planet of the Apes films (and the tenth Apes film should you batch all of them collectively) doesn’t add a lot to the franchise’s ongoing narrative — it jumps the story ahead in time about 300 years for a narrative that’s frustratingly half-baked and surprisingly acquainted from the earlier entry, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, however with a gorilla dictator working a pressured work camp as a substitute of a human one. There are some highly effective concepts at work — that historical past repeats itself, that communities are stronger than people, and that these communities have to band collectively to withstand tyrants — however they aren’t communicated notably clearly, particularly since they’re blended in with different threads, a couple of private journey undercut by each Kingdom advert, and in regards to the unreliability and unknowability of humanity.

Kingdom is satisfying sufficient within the second, an motion blockbuster with spectacular visible results and a few interesting characters. It isn’t a nasty or boring entry within the sequence. It simply by no means feels important, or prefer it’s doing a lot apart from echoing extra propulsive, dynamic earlier entries on this run on the Apes story. —TR

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire feels just like the film the place the brand new MonsterVerse franchise hit its stride. Whereas 2014’s Godzilla evenly parodies catastrophe films and 2017’s Kong: Cranium Island does the identical for darkish warfare films, Godzilla x Kong is a buddy film a couple of big ape and a nuclear lizard who don’t like one another a lot, however are sometimes pressured to crew as much as struggle greater monsters. It’s inescapably dumb and uncomplicatedly entertaining.

However what makes this franchise particularly enjoyable proper now’s that it has a secret weapon: tv. Whereas the massive display is reserved for foolish monster brawls, the MonsterVerse’s TV present, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, is a way more reserved, character-focused household drama that looks like an old-school journey film with big monsters thrown in. It’s a wonderful counterbalance to the foolish enjoyable of flicks like A New Empire, with the added bonus that the film’s story seemingly means Kong shall be within the present’s subsequent season. The MonsterVerse is a wierd franchise, however so long as each entry retains proving itself entertaining, it’s awfully onerous to complain. —AG

The adventures of panda kung fu grasp Po (Jack Black) might’ve been wrapped up within the sequence’ third installment again in 2016, however Kung Fu Panda 4 provides a little bit of a postscript. The door is now open for an additional unlikely hero to take over the franchise, ought to DreamWorks resolve to go that route: Principally, Po will finally retire from his title because the Dragon Warrior, and a protégé will take up the mantle. (That undoubtedly isn’t the way it labored within the first film, however I digress.) His inheritor obvious, the sneaky, thieving fox Zhen (Awkwafina), is definitely a fairly cool character. I wouldn’t be too mad seeing extra of her!

For the fourth film in an animated sequence, Kung Fu Panda 4 is decently satisfying, largely affected by wasted potential. However the struggle scenes are nonetheless cool, and the humor is humorous sufficient, even when it by no means reaches the highs of the originals. —PR

The First Omen is an advanced addition to this record. On the one hand, it isn’t mandatory, actually. And its worst moments come on the shut of the film, when the implied connections to the unique movie sequence are made much more express than they already had been. The First Omen does, nevertheless, earn its place on this record by way of a wholly completely different model of this metric: It’d simply be the perfect film within the Omen sequence, which makes it a necessity by default.

Even higher, by making a film this scary, director and co-writer Arkasha Stevenson (Model New Cherry Taste) really retroactively improves the remainder of Damien’s story, simply by making his origins this disturbing. The First Omen is solely a wonderful horror film, and that’s greater than we will say for many franchise entries on this record, which is precisely why it clawed its manner close to the highest. —AG

Netflix’s animated Ultraman film isn’t following a strict franchise continuity like so most of the sequels, prequels, and spinoffs on this rating. As an alternative, it’s a part of a sprawling historical past of anime, manga, comics, books, live-action films and reveals, and way more, a lot of which reinvent the tokusatsu hero in radically alternative ways. This specific installment additionally focuses much more on repackaging Ultraman for a brand new era than on tapping into or increasing his current lore. On this case, its worth to the franchise isn’t additive, it’s introductory: It is a advantageous, accessible place for brand new and youthful viewers to step into the story, particularly in the event that they occur to be followers of inventive, dynamic animation. Longtime Ultraman followers received’t be taught something radically new right here, however they are going to get an ideal launch level for the subsequent era of followers. —TR

Pixar’s sequel to 2015’s Inside Out is the definition of a sequel increasing on a earlier film, typically to a fault. The primary film goes inside the top of 11-year-old Riley to discover how her personified feelings work together with one another; the sequel ages her as much as 13, introduces new emotion characters, and shoves her right into a sequence of recent, anxiety-related choices. In lots of methods, this can be a more-of-the-same sequel, leaning on the same “essential characters misplaced at the back of Riley’s mind, different characters taking on at middle stage” plot, and loads of the identical corny-to-clever puns about how acquainted ideas, feelings, or associated buildings would possibly manifest as panorama options.

However the way in which it recognizably tells a narrative about the identical central characters, whereas specializing in how profoundly time and the occasions of the final film modified them, is uncommon for an animated sequel. (We’re side-eying you proper now, eternally-suspended-in-time Despicable Me franchise.) Inside Out 2 forwards Riley’s evolution in significant methods, even when that does elevate some greater questions in regards to the guidelines of this specific world. —TR

You’d have to return a couple of years to Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator franchise film Prey to discover a prequel that feels as very important, partaking, and significant to a movie sequence as A Quiet Place: Day One — and it’s notable that each films get to that time the identical manner. They each maintain continuity with the tales they’re establishing, however neither one is making an attempt to dole out pointless sequence lore, or clarify issues that by no means wanted explaining: They’re each simply telling riveting motion tales in a longtime setting, and shifting focus to utterly completely different characters with their very own distinctive dynamics.

Most catastrophe films on this vein (whether or not they’re alien-invasion-focused or not) middle on survivors. Author-director ​​Michael Sarnoski tunes in on somebody who doesn’t have survival as an possibility: Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is within the final weeks of a deadly sickness, and when killer aliens begin raining from the skies and chumming New York Metropolis and anybody in it who makes a noise, it’s barely transferring up the agenda on her mortality. Sarnoski provides her a perversely meaningless aim — to get throughout city to her favourite pizza place and luxuriate in a last slice earlier than she dies — after which spends half the film on taut, tense alien-stalking scenes, and the remainder on exploring why she’s so doggedly decided to do that one very last thing earlier than she goes. The give attention to her mixture of fatalism and obsession makes Day One an indelible story that expands the Quiet Place franchise in one of the best ways doable, with out piling on a bunch of additional, pointless world-building. —TR

Deadpool’s third live-action journey, and his first underneath the Disney-Marvel Studios banner, actually earns excessive rankings for recognition: It has damaged information on its strategy to the highest of the field workplace. However extra considerably for the needs of this specific rating, it pushes Deadpool’s story ahead, to the extent that something actually means something in a Deadpool film. Demise actually doesn’t. It’s doable that MCU canon does. Narrative rigor and character continuity don’t — however who goes to a Deadpool film for these?

The snark is tamer and fewer transgressive this outing, however the Deadpool & Wolverine film remains to be formidable about increasing the character’s attain into new arenas, from bringing within the Loki sequence’ Time Variance Authority as villains to letting him beg for a shot at becoming a member of the Avengers. You’ll be able to actually really feel producer-star Ryan Reynolds, his co-writers, and director Shawn Levy leveraging the Deadpool franchise’s recognition to get their palms on any property they need, from gleefully defiling the tip of 2017’s Logan to lining up cameos designed expressly for in-the-know comics followers. They hop round Marvel film continuity, grabbing and dropping no matter they need like nerdy magpies, and the film is extra enjoyable for it. Most franchise filmmakers might solely dream of this sort of freedom and entry. Say what you need in regards to the latest movie-multiverse growth — a minimum of one franchise is simply utilizing it to create a much bigger, extra colourful sandbox. —TR

Furiosa is the uncommon prequel that feels not simply equal to the hit film it’s establishing, however prefer it provides very important context relatively than gilding the lily. Conceived and written concurrently Max Max: Fury Highway so it might be in line with that movie’s story and characterization, Furiosa doesn’t unnecessarily simply fill in how-did-this-character-get-here blanks, it tells its personal distinct story and solutions questions on who Fury Highway’s most compelling new character is, and why she’s Max’s equal. Extra importantly, although, it’s wildly entertaining in its personal proper. —TR

The second half (or with luck, center third) of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation has a bonus no different film on this record has: It isn’t simply an adjunct to different films, it’s the very important continuation of an opening-act film that was largely setup, constructing to this payoff.

Even leaving apart the compelling performances and visuals, the epic warfare, and the fascinating shift in perspective — which is to say, leaving apart the truth that it’s one among 2024’s finest films to this point — Dune: Half Two would high this record purely as a result of it’s an important a part of its franchise’s story. It doesn’t simply contribute new issues to a franchise, it’s a cornerstone of the story Villeneuve remains to be hoping he’ll get to inform extra of sometime. —TR