Whenever you hear a producer, director, hell just about anyone in film talk about making a sequel, they almost always spew the same line about "the audience is going to expect bigger" or "we have to outdo ourselves this time out!" But I have to wonder, how many audience members ever really expect the sequel to be bigger or better than the original? How many people go to a film and think, "I liked the first one but this one need to have bigger explosions or else I'll be disappointed."

I'm starting to think that the problem with most franchises is that they lose sight of what made them a franchise to begin with. Nine times out of ten, it's not the fights or FX that get people into a film, it's the character and the story. And what sequels should probably look to do is expand on the story rather than the spectacle. One of the reasons that The Godfather 2 is one of the best sequels ever isn't because Michael Corleone killed more people or because they had to top the Sonny/Tollbooth scene, it's because they went deeper into the characters and fleshed out the familia.

But, OK, I'll give you that very few films that are getting sequels nowadays are The Godfather. Still, look at Terminator 2. Yes, the addition of the shape-shifting villain definitely added to the draw but what made it a truly great sequel was the connection between John Connor and the Terminator. The added character elements elevated it. The same can be said for Empire Strikes Back, Toy Story 2, Superman 2, etc. I feel like Iron Man 2 could have gone down this path but because they had to dedicate the second act to setting up The Avengers, the character pieces were blown past and lost.

Hopefully producers in the future will heed my warning but odds are they won't. It seems like most of them just want to make a second movie that isn't bad enough to scare away too many people from the third flick, and then poop out the third pick ASAP and then, after that tanks, reboot the franchise and start from scratch. It will be interesting to see how this approach works with X-Men and Spider-man.

And just spitballing here but it seems like the best sequels often contain: a good guy from the first movie turning on the hero, the hero questioning his role/wanting to give up his power, and often the good guys have to team up with the bad guys in order to fight some new kind of evil.