Recently, u/Spooky_Cron asked the people of r/movies, "What’s the oddest left turn a franchise has made with a sequel or prequel?" Here are some of the most-upvoted replies:
1. "Each and every fresh installment of the Friday the 13th franchise."
3. "The Fox and the Hound is a tragic story about best friends who are each other's natural enemies. The Fox and the Hound 2 is about one of them joining Reba McEntire's band."
4. "This just reminded me that there's a Cinderella 3, which is a time travel movie and a meta-commentary on the original film."
5. "I'm not so sure exactly how it happened, but I'm just saying that between The Fast and the Furious and Fast X, some changes were made."
6. "In The Exorcist II, Regan has amnesia, so her psychiatrist uses an Inception-style contraption to enter Regan's mind in order to unlock her suppressed memories. Also, it turns out the demon from the first movie targeted Regan because she's destined to become a telepathic superhero."
7. "First Blood was an anti-war movie. Rambo: First Blood Part II was a war movie."
8. "Every single subsequent movie in the OG Planet of The Apes pentology."
9. "The first Rocky is an Oscar-winning character study of a man too old already to really succeed in the one thing he’s always wanted to be good at, and there’s hardly any boxing in it. By Rocky 3 it’s just become check out all the awesome punching and training montages!"
10. "Frozen 2 being about asymmetrical colonial negotiations for water rights was quite surprising to me."
11. "Pitch Perfect 3. From the first movie about a young college acapella group coming together to perform and compete to a weird kidnapping/heist movie centered around Fat Amy’s sudden reappearance of her espionage father."
12. "An American Tail > Fievel Goes West."
13. "Gremlins was pretty dark and after watching it I was thinking how is this a children’s movie? Then Gremlins 2 came out and it is like a slapstick parody of itself, like some made a movie with intentional malice towards their fan base."
14. "Not complaining but Evil Dead took several turns to end up at Army of Darkness."
15. "American Psycho II: All American Girl. You remember the commentary and satire on yuppie culture? Well forget that and watch this lifetime movie about a girl trying to get a TA position. With murder!"
16. "Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby. It's like the first one except there's no baby, it's a chase movie, and there is a surprising amount of disco."
17. "The Star Wars sequels actively hated each other."
Shout out to u/Spooky_Cron and r/movies for having this discussion.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.