After years in development hell due to an ongoing pay dispute between Warner Bros. and director George Miller, the much-anticipated follow-up to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road is finally happening… and it’s a Furiosa prequel story?
With Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II recently announced to star in this upcoming prequel, the response from fans has been mixed. Although Charlize Theron’s performance as the hard-as-nails character earned acclaim from the critics, few wanted to learn about her backstory – instead, they wanted to see more of Theron kicking ass. After all, it was Theron’s performance of the character that elevated the role, so it feels questionable that they would bring in Anya Taylor-Joy to play a more inexperienced Furiosa instead.
But, hey, chances are that the film will still be incredible. Fury Road is seen as one of the best action films of all time, so this prequel is likely also to be good. However, not all unexpected follow-up films share the same fate. There have been plenty of examples when a sequel, prequel, or spin-off of a beloved film took a surprising approach, to mixed results. Here are some films that broke away from what fans loved about the initial installments, for better or for worse.
The premise of Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy series is brilliant – an ancient powerful force re-emerges in the present and uses their archaic power to try to rule the world. The juxtaposition and conflict between the ancient Egyptian and the contemporary protagonists are exactly where the jocular fun stems from. So, what if a spin-off film took place completely 5000 years in the past, based off a character that got five minutes of screen time in one of the films and whose appearance was relentlessly mocked by fans? That’s 2005’s The Scorpion King.
Starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in his first-ever lead role as the eponymous character, The Scorpion King keeps the same comedy-action tone as The Mummy but just removes the ‘mummy’ aspect. It was something fans obviously didn’t see coming, but nevertheless didn’t mind – the film made almost $200m at the box office and spawned a litany of sequels, even though The Scorpion King looked SO BAD in his original film. See for yourself:
The term ‘parallel prequel’ refers to a film that both takes before and alongside an initial film, and that’s exactly what Lion King 1 ½ is – instead of following Simba, the film explores Timon and Pumba’s backstory and their unseen perspective of the original film. Once again featuring jazzy songs, impressive emotional moments, and a lot of feel-good fun, fans were won over by this parallel prequel, even if they didn’t know they even wanted a Timon and Pumba POV.
Meta-narratively the film makes sense as well. Hamlet (the play The Lion King was loosely based off) has its own parallel-prequel, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and Lion King 1 ½ is loosely based off that play-prequel. In this sense, Lion King 1 ½ is the perfect epitome of a parallel-prequel, and was an unexpected delight with fans.
No one watched the Coen Brothers’ 1998 cult classic The Big Lebowski and thought to themselves “gee – I really hope a loose spin-off gets released in 20 years based around the bowling side-character of Jesus Quintana without either one of the Coen Brothers being in any way involved.” Well, no one except John Turturro.
Written, directed, and starring Turturro, 2019’s The Jesus Rolls looks at what Jesus Quintana’s life is like after he’s released from prison, following his love of bowling and inclination to break the law. The Coen Brothers gave him permission to make the film but made it very clear that they weren’t creatively involved at all. Despite featuring a packed cast, including Christopher Walker, Bobby Cannavale, and Pete Davidson, fans and critics were decidedly lukewarm about this spin-off – no one cared about Jesus Quintana in 1998, and even fewer people cared about him a couple of decades later.
Remember in 2006 when X-Men: The Last Stand completely botched the Dark Phoenix storyline (one of the most beloved arcs from the X-Men comics) and was a failure both critically and with fans? Who would’ve thought, a mere 13 years later, Fox would try again and fail just as badly.
After X-Men: Days of Future Past canonically ‘erased’ the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, Simon Kinberg (the very same guy who messed it up the first time) went to Fox wanting a second chance writing the same story… and did just as badly the second time around with Dark Phoenix, producing a box office and critical bomb. The most infuriating aspect of this whole debacle is that fans didn’t want another Dark Phoenix storyline, still in pain from their first attempt. There are hundreds of legendary stories from the comics to pick from (where was Mister Sinister?), and yet Fox and Kinberg made the unexpected decision of trying to make the same film.
MORE: Four Prequels That Are Better Than Their Predecessors
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