Early Installment Weirdness / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

• Alien has quite a lot of distinct qualities from the rest of the entries in the franchise it spawned, almost to the point of feeling like it's from an entirely different series:
  • While all the films in the series have elements of horror in them, this one is just a straight-up horror flick with absolutely none of the action that would come to be prominent in later entries. The style of horror itself is much less "creature feature" and more Cosmic Horror Story in tone and presentation; the film was very heavily influenced by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, particularly At the Mountains of Madness, an aspect that very few later entries would try to emulate.
  • Despite all the slick, cinematic entries this film would inspire, it makes some very cinema verite artistic choices marking it as a contemporary of the New Hollywood era. One example is that there is no dialogue for the first five minutes, focusing on the eerie music and setting the scene of the currently empty Nostromo. Then there is the roundtable scene where Ripley decides to blow up the ship, having main cast members out of focus in the background reciting barely audible lines of dialogue and not sweetening them in post-production would be considered amateurish nowadays. There's also a focus on naturalistic dialogue, to the point where major plot points like the existence of androids and the company's bioweapons division are completely unmentioned until they become relevant; Dan O'Bannon, when writing the original script, agonized over working details like what the ship was and why it was there into the dialogue, before deciding that anything that didn't flow naturally was information the audience didn't need to know. Contrast with the sequel, which sets up plot points like the Power Loader early and knocks them over like dominoes.
  • The Alien's vocal effects are quite different to those used in future entries in the series, being much more electronically modulated and artificial-sounding. From the next film, a more natural collection of hissing sounds would instead be used.
  • The crew decide to take weapons when investigating the signal, and are shown with laser pistols slung at their sides. Fortunately they are not used or discussed, because the sequel would establish that Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better for a Used Future look.
  • The Alien itself is markedly different in behavior and nature from how it's species would come to be defined in both the series and pop culture. It takes a much more slow, methodical, and intelligent approach to hunting the humans compared to the later films' Xenomorphs attacking like the feral animals they are. In keeping with the more Lovecraftian horror vibe of the first movie noted above, the Alien here is presented in a much more mysterious and eldritch light; it possesses a phantom-like presence onboard the Nostromo being able to grow in size in a extremely short space of time and indulging in Offscreen Teleportation to increasingly impossible levels, while also displaying disturbingly human-like characteristics such as its attack on Lambert being sadistic in a manner akin to sexual assault and Ash describing it as "Kane's son". All in all, the original Xenomorph is portrayed as less of a mere animal and more of an ethereal and actively malevolent Humanoid Abomination, with the story having a very deliberate theme of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane and questions raised as to what precisely the Alien is and why it behaves as it does. A great deal of it is Orphaned Reference, as the originally intended ending was going to be a twist where it was revealed that the Xenomorph was actually fully sentient and sapient, so all the strangely human qualities were meant as foreshadowing to a climax that ended up never happening. The second film, while still implying the Xenomorphs to be possibly intelligent, greatly downplayed all of this in favor of a more animalistic depiction, which subsequent entries would go all in on.
    • Another rather dramatic oddity with the Alien's depiction is the infamous "egg-morphing". The theatrical release leaves an odd gap in the Xenomorph's life cycle by not showing where the eggs come from (itself an example of this; the Queens wouldn't be introduced until the second film) due to the scene where the reveal happened being cut and not restored until the Director's Cut. This version of the Alien life cycle features the much stranger reproduction method of the monster doing something to its victims that mutates them into eggs that produce facehuggers, again reflecting the more Lovecraftian vibe of the original film and its emphasis on the Xenomorph being something utterly unnatural, possibly mystical in nature.
• The first Austin Powers was slightly darker in tone than its sequels, parodied James Bond tropes more directly, and had those short segments with Austin dancing to music in-between scenes.
• Back to the Future:
  • In the first film, Marty's central personality flaw of the sequels — his habit of acting foolishly when people call him "chicken" — isn't anywhere in sight. Indeed, the one time we see him being verbally taunted — when Biff's gang makes fun of his jacket — he easily ignores it. His motive for confronting Biff later is entirely a sincere desire to protect his mother; there's no evidence that he cares what they think of him. Hand Waved by Word of God, who claims that the new timeline created a Marty with a more privileged background, causing the personality change. They also stated that if they had intended to make sequels, they would have included this flaw in the first film.
  • In the second film, Doc is appalled that Marty would want the Sports Almanac for betting purposes, loudly proclaiming that he didn't invent the time machine for financial gain. In the first movie, though, he tells Marty that, when he travels to the future, he's going to find out who wins the next 25 World Series. Granted, he never explicitly states he's going to bet on them, but it's the most likely explanation.
  • In the sequels and subsequent spin-offs, the franchise used Identical Grandson extensively when meeting ancestors or descendants of characters in the present. The first film, however, had no Acting for Two involved (aside from some characters making appearances in both 1985 and 1955) and the related characters were all played by unrelated actors.
• Battal Gazi is a series of Turkish films starring Cüneyt Arkın as the eponymous Warrior Prince, and the first movie (Battal Gazi Destani) takes place in a separate continuity altogether. Naturally, there's some inconsistencies around:
  • In the first movie, Battal Gazi is an only child who lost his father during his childhood - the second film, Savulun Battal Gazi Geliyor, instead depicts a grown-up Battal Gazi kicking ass with his father Hussein, side-by-side, as well as the hero having a sister. The action in the first movie is also somewhat toned down in scale, while the third and fourth films would follow the continuity, themes and over-the-top action scenes started by the second.
  • Battal Gazi's iconic white outfit with a red sash (basically, Cuneyt Arkin's equivalent to the yellow Bruce Lee tracksuit) is prominently featured in the sequels, but not the first movie. He wears a variety of clothing and spends a large part of the climax fighting in purple.
  • The Christian invaders from the first film are depicted as armored knights, instead of crusaders in hooded black outfits with red crosses from the second movie onwards (as well as similar films later in Cüneyt Arkın's career, like Lion Man and Fearless Warrior). This is part of director Natuk Baytan's decision to implement Dark Is Evil in the sequels.
• The Bourne Identity feels very different in tone to its sequels. The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum are contiguous to the point that there is no time-cut at all between the last scenes of the second film and the first scenes of the third film (not counting the Bourne-in-New-York-scene, a Supremacy note which is also tied up in Ultimatum...). But when you have recently seen Supremacy and/or Ultimatum, it can come as a bit of a shock to rewatch Identity and realize how different it is, though it was setting up all the Bourne tropes the later films played on. Notably, the soundtrack is a very different beast, employing techno-ish and poppy background music. Damon's Bourne is also surprisingly chatty and smiley compared to his later silent stoicism. The editing takes a different approach completely, and the camera work is free of the Jitter Cam that defined the sequels. Most of this change in tone has to do with the first film being made by a different director to its sequels.
• The earliest Bowery Boys movies were still comedies, but had more serious plotlines, with a number of scenes being straightforward melodrama. It wasn't until the series gained traction that the movies became Denser and Wackier.
• Buster Keaton didn't invent his famous deadpan "Great Stone Face" persona until breaking out as a star of his own films in The Roaring '20s. Viewers of his early work, such as his fourteen films with Fatty Arbuckle, may be surprised to see a Keaton who smiles, laughs, cries, and mugs for the camera. See Coney Island (1917) or The Garage (1920).
• Charlie Chaplin had a lot of this during his first year in Hollywood, because he was working for Mack Sennett and Keystone Studios and was not yet in artistic control of his career.
  • His first feature film, Tillie's Punctured Romance, not only does he not wear the Tramp costume, he's the bad guy.
  • A similar example from Chaplin's time at Keystone being the short Mabel At the Wheel (starring and co-directed by Mabel Normand) in which Chaplin not only plays the villain but in contrast to his "Tramp" persona is seen wearing a top hat, frock coat and goatee-like beard (apparently in imitation of Ford Sterling, whom he'd been hired to replace).
  • The Tramp's first appearance on film was Kid Auto Races at Venice, where the Tramp does not display much of his trademark personality. He's simply a bystander at a race who wants to get on camera and keeps wandering into the shot.
  • In Mabel's Strange Predicament, The Tramp was more of a lecherous drunken jerk than a lovable, innocently mischievous hero we all know and love.
• In the Child's Play (1988), a plot point is the fact that Chucky must transfer his soul out of the doll before the doll body turns fully human. As the film progresses, Chucky's body begins to have a more biological look to it including a receding hairline, human like skin, and eyebrows with real hair. The subsequent films would later drop this. According to the creator, it cost too much to make so many different versions of the Chucky doll for a physical change that was so subtle. In later films, Chucky becoming more human is treated more as a metaphorical ticking clock wherein his doll body looks the same, he can just no longer transfer out of the doll after a certain amount of time. For most of the franchise, beyond the first film, Chucky simply looks like a doll throughout.
• Cinderella (2015) is the first of the Disney Live-Action Remakes to be a straightforward remake of the original rather than a sequel or a perspective flip. But apart from certain character names and other fairly small details borrowed from the animated version, the film comes across much more as a new adaptation of the original fairy tale than as a remake. Subsequent Disney remakes would be much more obviously based on the animated versions, sometimes almost shot-for-shot.
• In the first Critters film, one of the titular monsters grows big. This never happens again.
• The original Death Wish is a gritty, realistic look at urban decay and out of control crime in major American cities during the era. The movie was such a hit largely because it embodied the feelings of many honest citizens at the time. In the end there is no dramatic showdown with the men who killed his wife and raped his daughter, they simply disappear into the city and Paul will never know who they were. There's little graphic violence, but what there is is very disturbing; far from mowing down hordes of goons with a mini-gun or blowing a bad guy up with a bazooka, the first time Paul kills someone is followed by him going home and vomiting in disgust at what he's done. Nothing in the movie could be defined as gratuitous. When the schlocky production company The Cannon Group bought the rights eight years later, they began releasing sequels that were more or less exploitation and dumb 1980s-style revenge fantasy action films.
• The first Divergent film has Tris narrating the beginning and end portions. Starting with the second film, the series abandons this element. This might be attributed to the change of directors (Neil Burger in the first and Robert Schwentke in the rest).
• The original The Evil Dead (1981) is more a Gorn horror film, rather than the horror comedy of Evil Dead 2. Also none of the other cabin members besides Linda is mentioned in the other films. Ash is far from the Catchphrase-spouting, badass and Jerkass we see in the sequels, instead being a rather bland Final Guy. The Necronomicon doesn't have that name and the look of it is completely different from the other films. And lastly, in a subtler example, the Deadites (which aren't named as such until the second movie) are originally just pissed off that the teenagers awoke them from their eons-long sleep, whereas in the sequels they implicitly want to Take Over the World.
• The original Final Destination includes some more overtly supernatural elements that were left out of the sequels. Among them are an implied psychic link of sorts between Alex and Clear, the foreboding presence of gusts of wind from nowhere right before a death scene, a smoky black shadow that appears on reflective surfaces when Death is coming for someone, and a shot of Death supernaturally "covering its tracks" after Tod slips on the water leaking from his toilet, causing his death; the water impossibly recedes under the toilet to "hide" itself and make it look like a suicide. The last point is also a rare example within the film itself: The filmmakers had planned for Death to cover its tracks throughout the film, but after the first death they changed their minds to simply have the rest as accidents.
• The long-running Friday the 13th series has plenty of this:
  • In the original Friday the 13th (1980), Jason not only isn't the killer, he doesn't even appear save for a dream sequence. He doesn't get his trademark hockey mask until Part III. Also, in Part 2, he's considerably less physically imposing than subsequent movies.
  • The first film also has a bit of a Whodunnit mystery to the killer, unlike the later films where, for the most part, the identity of the killer is clearly shown from the get-go.
  • In the original films with Jason as a killer, he was alive rather than the indestructible undead human of later films. In the second and third films, he would run after his victims, back away if someone came at him with something dangerous, and would sometimes even grunt in pain. Surprisingly, despite not yet having his undead killer status yet in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, his behavior is actually closer to as it is in the later films.
• Godzilla (1954), which kick-started the Godzilla franchise, is a surprisingly dark (and seriously scary) horror film rather than a campy monster movie. Because Godzilla is the only monster appearing in the film, the focus is on the humans' response to his rampage rather than on a battle between opposing monsters. Also, Godzilla is a metaphor for the horror of nuclear weapons and is unambiguously presented a villainous monster, albeit an extremely tragic one, incapable of reason or sympathy, rather than the Noble Demon and defender of humanity that he evolved into as the series went on.
  • Whilst virtually every other installment in the franchise would imply Godzilla is either a prehistoric species of naturally gigantic animal or Nuclear Mutant which was a reptile of some sort before mutation upon exposure to radiation, the first film leaves this all very vague. Whilst Dr. Yamane does speculate Godzilla is some kind of prehistoric amphibious animal, it's never actually confirmed. Odo Island already features myths of a similar entity and Godzilla never behaves like a regular animal, instead choosing to destroy like they are a vengeful god. Supernatural aspects are present in the franchise elsewhere, but the first film's Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane treatment is unique.
• Halloween
  • The original film is noticeably different from its sequels and remake in a couple of ways; there's much less blood and killing, and it focuses far more on suspense. Starting with Halloween II (1981), Michael's kills were bloodier and more elaborate to more closely match the numerous slasher movies the original had inspired.
  • In the first movie, Michael has no apparent motivation; he's just "pure evil" and kills on instinct. In Halloween II (1981), it's revealed that Laurie, his main target in the previous film and that one, is actually his sister. From then on out, every movie he appears in includes an element of him specifically stalking a family member. Taken to its illogical extreme in the sixth movie, which reveals Michael suffers from a druid curse that requires him to kill off his entire family.
• Harry Potter
  • Throughout the films, more and more areas are added to Hogwarts, making the Hogwarts of the first film almost a kind of bare-bones version with, for example, nothing between the back of the castle and Hagrid's hut but a field of grass. It's also much closer to the castle than in later installments.
  • In the first two films, Professor Flitwick is an elderly-looking dwarf◊. From the third onward, he became a small man with brown hair and moustache◊. It was so unexpected that quite a few people joked that he now looked like Hitler. (The story is complicated: as Flitwick wouldn't appear in Prisoner of Azkaban, Warwick Davis was instead offered a cameo as the chorus conductor - credited only as "Wizard"; through Retcon, that guy became Flitwick in the fourth movie.) Combined with that is the fact that J. K. Rowling wasn't entirely happy with Flitwick's original appearance. The original movie Flitwick (who has distant goblin ancestry) looked, in her opinion, a bit like a full-blown goblin, while she had always pictured him as just a very small man.
  • Filch. In the Chris Columbus films, his characterization was very much in keeping with his book counterpart; from the fourth movie onward, they used him as comic relief.
  • In the first film, the brooms look like real-life brooms actually used for sweeping. Harry's Nimbus 2000 is the only exception, which appears to be because it is new and a special model. In the later films, the brooms become increasingly obviously designed for flight rather than cleaning.
  • There's also a drift away from on-location shooting and towards soundstages. At the start of the series, they couldn't afford to build every room in Hogwarts, so there were only a few purpose-built sets and most of the Hogwarts interiors were filmed at various castles, cathedrals, and universities. As the series went along, they built up more and more sets, which was coupled with improvements in CGI technology. Philosopher's Stone was filmed at locations all across Britain, while Deathly Hallows, Part 2 was filmed almost completely at Leavesden Studios. Some places that were originally filmed on location were reproduced as sets later in the series, often accompanied by changes in design — compare the hospital wing in the first movie to the hospital wing in the second movie onwards.
  • In the first movie, the students wore pointed hats with their uniforms during formal scenes in the Great Hall (you'll recall these hats being tossed in the air when Gryffindor won the House Cup). The hats disappeared in the second film and were never seen again. This is probably due to infrequent mentions of hats being part of the school uniform in the books. Doubtlessly, they were dropped because they looked ridiculous.
  • In the first film, emphasis is put on the fact that the staircases can change path, and this does have an effect on the plot. In the second and third films, this is relegated to background scenery, and by the fourth they seem to have gone altogether.
  • The first movie puts a lot more focus on Harry's life with the Dursleys, probably to help get a feel for how much Hogwarts improves him. In the later films, since the audience already understands, they only make up the first ten-fifteen minutes... if they're even present at all.
  • Also in the first movie, the Dursleys were portrayed as somewhat over-the-top antagonists, with practically no redeeming features who seemed to take almost sadistic pleasure out of torturing Harry. While no more likeable in the later films, the Dursleys (at least the parents, Dudley always remained a bit of a jerk - at least, without the inclusion of the deleted scenes) became a bit more human in their portrayal.
  • The CGI Voldemort face seen on the back of Quirrell's head in the first movie looks completely different from the Ralph Fiennes version seen in the fourth movie onwards. First-movie Voldemort even (gasp!) has a nose. Voldemort's voice is different as well, since he was voiced in the first movie by Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell.
  • In the fourth movie, Krum under the Imperius Curse is depicted with Mind-Control Eyes and groaning zombie-like mannerisms. In Deathly Hallows, the curse is depicted Truer to the Text, with victims being blankly smiley and not having whitened eyes.
• There are significant differences between the first Hellraiser and the rest—and more broadly between the first two films and the later ones:
  • The entire conception of what the Cenobite realm is changes significantly. In the first film, the realm is never directly called "Hell." The idea that it's a Hell-like place is arguably hinted at in the title and some of the dialogue, but it's never given as the realm's official name. The realm is simply an alternate dimension featuring monstrous creatures that torture people and reconstruct their bodies indefinitely; furthermore, the victims enter the realm voluntarily (even if they don't realize what they're getting themselves into), while alive. There is no suggestion that it's a place where people's souls go after death, and the central theme of the realm isn't punishment but sadomasochism. The Cenobites describe themselves as "explorers in the further regions of experience: demons to some, angels to others." This sentiment is echoed by Frank when he says the puzzle box opens "doors to the pleasures of Heaven or Hell" and that "The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond the limits: pain and pleasure, indivisible." Only by the second film do the Cenobites start to refer to the realm as "Hell," and as the series continues, the realm begins to more closely resemble the traditional Western concept of Hell. For example, in Hellraiser: Hellseeker we see that a character we know is in the Cenobite realm also has a corpse on Earth—implying his physical body never entered the Cenobite realm, only his spirit or soul did after he died. The first film never suggests the Cenobite realm isn't part of the physical, material world or that the victims didn't bring their actual physical bodies there. More broadly, the later films deal heavily with the theme of people paying for their sins, whereas the theme of sadomasochism is largely set aside.
  • In the first film, Pinhead is unnamed and simply described as "Lead Cenobite" in the credits. The name "Pinhead" was coined by the makeup crew and does not appear in the dialogue until the third film.
  • Pinhead had only brief appearances in the first two films and was not intended to be the series' primary villain. But due to the character's popularity with fans, he was upgraded to main character in the third and fourth film. Ironically, in the later, direct-to-video sequels he went back to cameo-sized appearances (a reflection of their being Dolled Up Installments), although he is still implied to be the dominant figure among the Cenobites.
  • Pinhead's characterization and motives change from the Blue-and-Orange Morality of the first film to more outright evil. It is not until the third film that he's shown to be a mass murderer. The retcon explanation is that the separation between Pinhead and Eliot causes Pinhead's evil to be fully unbound, whereas their unification keeps Pinhead's evil in check. But this is quite different from the way he's presented in the first film, where it's heavily implied that Earth-like notions of good and evil are simply irrelevant to the Cenobites.
• Hop was Illumination's second film, at which time they were leaning toward becoming a label for family films in general, not just computer-animated feature films. To date, this has been Illumination's only live-action film and the only film to have no involvement from their in-house, Paris-based animation studio.
• The Hunger Games: There is a considerable number of differences between the first film and its sequels, because the directors are different (Gary Ross departed after the first and was replaced by Francis Lawrence).
  • The camerawork is by far the biggest difference. Ross employed Jitter Cam that fits the reality TV feel of the Hunger Games, but which can sometimes feel amateur or unprofessional, while Lawrence used a steady camera. This is the reason why the first film had a significantly lower budget ($78 million) compared to its sequels ($125+ million each).
  • District 12 is portrayed as much more rural and barebones in the first film, like a town in the middle of the Great Depression, while later films show far more mechanization and infrastructure.
  • In the first film, the Peacekeepers are equipped with modern riot control gear. The sequels would have them wearing fully-enclosed armor.
  • The Capitol's tacky fashion is more bizarre in the first film, with the Amazing Technicolor Population of the books being fully represented. Effie dons a chalky, full-body makeup that she never uses again in the sequels.
  • Buttercup is portrayed as a piebald cat in the first film, and the book-accurate ginger cat in the sequels.
  • Katniss is brunette in the first film. For the sequels, Jennifer Lawrence dyed her hair black, making it closer to Katniss's appearance in the books.
• The James Bond films:
  • If you watch Dr. No after other James Bond films, it'll be a shock: it's a hard-boiled detective story instead of a spy action thriller - mostly because the budget was low. The fight scenes and car chases are rare and short; the only gadget per se is a mook's Cyanide Pill (Q - here, Major Boothroyd, and not played by Desmond Llewelyn - only appears to change Bond's gun). Even the opening sequence is all wrong. It starts with a series of weird electronic beeps, and the familiar theme doesn't play until Bond shoots the gun barrel, and it starts on the wrong cue (the big dramatic part of the song, instead of the actual intro). Then the barrel wiggles down to the bottom of the screen and the opening scene wipes in from— oh? No, it moves on directly to the opening credits while still playing the Bond tune, over some colorful dots appearing all over the screen. Then it jarringly switches to some upbeat salsa music (not a theme song including the movie's title) over some colorful silhouettes of people dancing for a minute or two, when it again suddenly switches to a salsa rendition of "Three Blind Mice" over the silhouettes of the title mice, which then fade into the actual opening of the movie. To call that opening schizophrenic is being a little too kind to it. In fact, the music-video Bond titles didn't appear in their best-known form until Goldfinger.
  • Both Dr. No and From Russia with Love featured Bond flirting with Sylvia Trench early in the film before being called away for the mission. This was intended to be an ongoing Running Gag, but was dropped after the second film. The romantic tension would then shift to Bond and Miss Moneypenny.
  • Desmond Llewelyn's first appearance as Q in From Russia With Love is noticably different than later appearances. He shows up to M's office to brief Bond on his new attaché case, with Bond using care to learn how to operate the gadget. Starting with Goldfinger, the two would become known for their bickering banter.
  • Roger Moore in his first outing as Bond is much colder and darker than the comedic tone he would be remembered for. His second is still on the way, with Moore admitting scenes such as Bond interrogating a woman by nearly breaking her arm felt like they were still writing for Sean Connery.
• The first Lethal Weapon movie, before the series embraced its comedic elements, is much darker, with moody sax music, and a bit of a Film Noir vibe. This is somewhat justified by the fact that Martin Riggs, the main source of humor in the sequels, is always on the verge of killing himself in the first movie. His suicidal tendencies and self-imposed isolation overshadow his more comedic tendencies. Once he becomes part of Roger's family, he lightens up considerably.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring keeps with the books by having Bilbo non aging because of his possession of the One Ring and has him being played by Ian Holm in both the actual time and the flashback to back when he got the ring. Once The Hobbit trilogy was made this was ignored in favour of having Bilbo being played by the younger Martin Freeman.
• The first Mad Max movie is very different from those that followed. It is not postapocalyptic, and Max spends most of it as a happily married family man with wife, child and job rather than the lone nomadic warrior of the wastelands he later becomes. The film is also very different in tone, relying more on slowly building suspense with only occasional, brief action sequences.
• Maleficent started, or at least inspired, Disney's trend of making Live Action Adaptations of their Disney Animated Canon. Despite this, it is extremely different from the other titles. Maleficent is obviously an Alternate Universe Perspective Flip take on Sleeping Beauty. It contradicts the original film in location (Scotland instead of England), names (Diablo's name, and all the fairies have different names, in Maleficent), and most of the characterization of both the title character and King Stefan. Starting with Cinderella, the films instead became more straight adaptations. They follow the original films more accurately, while still being more realistic than the originals and having their fair share of differences.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The series' infamous usage of The Stinger took a while to be standardised. All the Phase One films leading up to The Avengers only feature one stinger. What would've been The Incredible Hulk's stinger takes place just before the credits due to Executive Meddling, and was the only MCU film to lack a true stinger until Avengers: Endgame. Captain America: The First Avenger also foregoes an original scene in favor of showing a trailer for The Avengers after the credits. The Avengers is the first film to feature the now-standard format: a mid-credits Sequel Hook and a more humorous post-credits scene, but even then it took until Ant-Man for that to become the norm.
  • Movies from Phase Two and onwards are known for their more lighthearted tone and flinging themselves unashamedly into fantasy, whereas the Phase One films were more serious in comparison and subscribed to Clarke's Third Law.
  • Also, pre-Avengers entries were prone to get quite violent at times, with The First Avenger probably being the closest the MCU came to show Family-Unfriendly Violence. As the films became increasingly popular with children and the MPAA ratings board became stricter regarding potentially disturbing imagery, the franchise mostly steered clear from portraying bodily harm afterwards.
  • Iron Man:
    • The first entry into the MCU had a few issues which would be retconned out in later films, mostly regarding S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson introduces himself as being from the "Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division," then saying they're "working on shortening the name." This suggests that it's a fairly new organization but was likely to ease in moviegoers who were unfamiliar with S.H.I.E.L.D., as later installments would show that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been around for decades.
    • Terrence Howard plays Lt. Colonel Rhodes, while Don Cheadle would take the role for later Marvel films.
    • The film is set during the contemporary War on Terror in Afghanistan, with screentime dedicated to showing his involvement in supplying weapons to the conflict and his Starter Villain being the Ten Rings, a relatively mundane Middle Eastern Terrorist organisation. The MCU would never again have a setting so deeply rooted in a real-world conflict; the closest it otherwise gets is Captain America: The First Avenger being set in World War 2, and even so that film still feels the need to feature the fantastical Hydra as its villain as opposed to rank-and-file Nazis.
  • The Incredible Hulk, the second MCU film, in many ways is different from the rest of the series:
    • Most prominently, Bruce Banner is played by Edward Norton rather than Mark Ruffalo as in later films.
    • Virtually no reference is made to the events of the film by any later MCU films.^note Banner does make mention of the fact that the last time he was in New York, he "broke Harlem", which is the climax of the film, and the information that Stark reviews in The Avengers is filled with clips from the film as well, but no mention of The Leader or the Abomination is ever made. However, while later films mostly ignore this film, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. namedrops Abomination's civilian identity of Blonsky to state he is still in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s custody, and Luke Cage features a newspaper alluding to Hulk's battle there. With the exception of Banner himself, only two characters who debuted in the film ever returned for future installments - General Thaddeus Ross, who took eight years to reappear in Captain America: Civil War, and Emil Blonsky, who took thirteen years to reappear in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Banner has not had any significant interaction with either of them since his debut film. Ross' daughter Betty, Banner's love interest in the film, has never even received a mention^note Aside from a supporting role in an episode of What If...?, which explicitly takes place in an alternate timeline
    • The Tony Stark cameo at the end is a pre-credits scene, not mid- or post- as would be the case in all other films.
  • Hawkeye has an Early-Bird Cameo in Thor, before playing a much larger role in later films. In his first appearance, not only does he not carry his bow and arrows with him at all times, he even briefly considers picking up a gun rather than a bow when Coulson calls him to action.
  • The Asgard of the Thor sequels is so colorful that returning to the first movie it seems very dark, as the scenes there are either fire-lit indoors or Always Night outdoors.
  • Many of the early films in the MCU preferred to include Mythology Gags for the sake of it and without regard for how they'll fit into the wider universe. The SHIELD example in the first Iron Man mentioned above is one example of this, but perhaps the most famous example is the Infinity Gauntlet appearing inside Odin's vault in Thor. Thor: Ragnarok, made while the franchise was hyping up the Gauntlet as of paramount importance and in the possession of Thanos, had to explain that this Infinity Gauntlet was a cheap fake.
  • While the Infinity Stones would eventually become a major element of the first three Phases of the franchises, they weren't actually mentioned or established until Phase 2. The Tesseract was heavily featured in Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers, but was never actually called the Space Stone, nor was there any indication it was merely one of a set of powerful objects. The Infinity Stones would not be mentioned by name until 2013's Thor: The Dark World's mid-credits scene, while 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy was the movie that finally explained the Stones and their importance.
  • Captain America: The First Avenger can be dark at times, but in general is much campier and Lighter and Softer than its first sequel. The first movie is also more of a straight-up superhero film with a military backdrop, while the sequel had a much bigger emphasis on espionage and political elements. Basically, The First Avenger feels like The Rocketeer, while The Winter Soldier feels more like The Bourne Identity or Three Days of the Condor.
  • Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame are the twenty-first and twenty-second installments in their film series, but were filmed out of order. Carol Danvers' appearance and design in her solo movie had not been finalized when the time came to film Endgame, and there are some noticeable differences in how she wears her hair and makeup.
• Mission: Impossible (1996): Despite the movie being the Trope Namer for "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop, which in turn would set the bar for the high concept scenes and stunts of the sequels, the first film is VERY different in tone from them. There are very few action scenes until the end - even the cable drop scene is more tension than action or complex stunts. Ethan's character doesn't have that "larger than life" reputation and presentation the other films give him. It's a much more quiet and psychological film, and when watching the series back to back, its tone clashes with its sequels, which would become better known for their action and stunts. (It helps that the first was made by thriller expert Brian De Palma, while from the second onward the series went for action-based directors.)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street:
  • The first two films are much darker and more serious than the later sequels. Before the third film, Freddy Krueger was very much a monster, and he wasn't the least bit humorous; when he did speak, it was meant to scare his victims rather than have a laugh at their expense. The early films also have some strange quirks of their own:
  • In the first film, the characters and the credits identify the killer strictly as Fred Krueger (he's only called "Freddy" in the Ironic Nursery Tune), he only kills four people, and it wraps up with a Gainax Ending that raises the question of just how much of the film was real versus what was in Nancy's head.
  • The second film, Freddy's Revenge, is even weirder. The plot revolves around Freddy possessing a teenage boy (complete with a Body Horror-filled transformation scene) in order to re-enter the real world, something that never comes up again in later films. He also has demon dogs in the real world and the idea that the souls of his victims go into his chest is likewise not brought up in the first two films. It also has mountains of Homoerotic Subtext in the protagonist Jesse's character, his "relationship" with Freddy, and some of the kills (most infamously the gym coach's death).
• The first Paranormal Activity had the two lead actors, Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, using their real names for their characters. This is because the film was marketed to be a real footage, which was made easier by the fact that it started out as an indie project before it was picked up by Paramount. After it became a smash blockbuster success and Paramount greenlit sequels, the marketing didn't make sense anymore, hence why characters in future films had different names than their actors.
• The original The Pink Panther (1963) was written to be about the thieves rather than Inspector Clouseau. It was in the sequel, A Shot in the Dark, where the series shifted to focus on Clouseau, and the recurring characters Cato and Dreyfuss were introduced.
• The original Poison Ivy was a character-driven thriller with A-Lister Drew Barrymore in the title role, and (here's the kicker) no female nudity at all. The following three sequels were a loosely connected series of erotic dramas starring B-List actresses, known for their gratuitous sex and nudity...and not much else. In an odd subversion, though, the original is probably the most well-known of the four.
• The first two Predator films seem to imply that the titular aliens wear their iconic face masks because they need to; that the Predators come from a different kind of atmosphere than ours and have trouble breathing on Earth, thus needing the face masks to offset a major hindrance. Both films take care to have a loud decompressing sound accompany the masks' removal, and the second in particular makes this a minor plot point, with the City Hunter freaking out when it loses its mask, visibly struggling to breath after, and using an emergency oxygen mask-like device to keep standing long enough to get back to its ship. This would also add a great deal of significance to the Jungle Hunter in the first film taking off its mask prior to its final fistfight with Dutch; its a way of evening the odds between them, the Jungle Hunter giving itself a disadvantage out of respect towards its adversary. The Expanded Universe, however, never really used this idea, with many comics and games showing the Predators continuing to function perfectly fine on Earth without the mask, and the third film would likewise have Predators showing no issues when their masks come off (albeit while they're on a different planet from Earth). Prey (2022) would put a nail in the suggestion by having the Feral Predator's mask not even cover its full face, making abundantly clear that the only apparent purpose of the masks is a mixture of simple head armor and being ceremonially important. Notably, while the first two films had the Predators need to unhitch some kind of air hoses to remove the masks, many later entries just have them casually remove it without such steps. The decompression sound remains, but no longer seems to have any significance.
• The original The Producers, being Mel Brooks' first movie, is a bit straightforward compared to his later comedies. Particularly, it completely lacks the fourth-wall breaks and Medium Awareness of Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
• While the sequels portrayed Pumpkinhead as little more than a near-mindless animal, in the first film it could speak, was cunning enough to do things like disable a vehicle and play possum, and was more overtly demonic, doing things like taking the time out to trash a church and sadistically carve a cross into the forehead of a cowering girl named Maggie. Another dropped element was Pumpkinhead gradually growing to resemble its summoner, while the summoner slowly started to look like Pumpkinhead.
• The Purge is basically The Strangers with a different Excuse Plot, a movie about wealthy people, with a cast made up almost entirely of white actors, set almost entirely within a single well-protected household. All the sequels have taken efforts to show several different angles to a Purge night, in a wider variety of settings, and ethnically diverse casts too.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark has several differences with its successors:
  • It's the only Indiana Jones film without the name "Indiana Jones" in the title. Though recent boxsets and home releases label the film as "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark."
  • While it does have its share of gags (such as the famous shooting-the-swordsman scene) and one-liners ("It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage"), it is overall a lot more serious in tone than any of the later films, which feature outright slapstick and screwball elements.
  • It goes much further than any of the later films in imitating the look and style of 1940's serials and adventure films such as The Spy Smasher.
• The Rambo films are known as popcorn action flicks about a One-Man Army named Rambo mowing down armies of Dirty Communists with a heavy machine gun. The first film, First Blood, is an anti-war film about the dehumanization of soldiers, which involves a Shell-Shocked Veteran named Rambo becoming a fugitive from the law after being mistreated by lawmen in the country he served, tormented to the core by his traumatic experiences fighting the Vietnam War. This Rambo goes out of his way to avoid killing, slaying three police dogs in self-defense because he had no other option, and subduing the rest of his pursuers non-lethally because he just wants them to leave him alone. The only person to die is an Asshole Victim who is killed completely by accident, and whose death has major plot significance unlike the Mooks of later films. When he's brought into Tranquil Fury / Unstoppable Rage by an explosive attempt to kill him and gets a heavy machine gun, Rambo uses it to destroy property and disable an enemy but still doesn't use it to kill anyone. The one time he seems ready to kill someone, he is met by his former commander who successfully talks him down. It ends on a famous two-part speech about the trauma and mistreatment of veterans delivered by a Rambo who suffers a mental breakdown midway through and starts crying. That's not even mentioning that the film is based on a book that's not only more violent than the film is but has a much less sympathetic take on Rambo than the film does.
• The Ring was the fourth film Alfred Hitchcock directed and the second to be released. It's a Sports Story, the only one of his career. It's the only film for which he got sole credit for the screenplay. It doesn't have any of the plot elements that would become typical of Hitchcock—no crime, no murder, no one Wrongfully Accused, and it isn't a thriller (it's a simple Love Triangle drama). And he doesn't have a Creator Cameo.
• Road to Singapore, the first of seven "Road to..." movies featuring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, is a fairly typical adventure-comedy movie, and doesn't do much in the way of Breaking the Fourth Wall, compared to the later entries in the series.
• Saw. In the first two films, Jigsaw is a brutal Serial Killer with an interesting MO. Also, the first film contains very little gore, and the second only contains a lot of blood, but nothing too explicit beyond that. The Torture Porn that the films became known for didn't really start until the third film, at which point Jigsaw was toned down considerably into a very deranged man with a tragic past, but with his heart in the right place. While still a psychotic villain, he is no longer like the first two films. That role, instead, gets taken over by his apprentices, especially Hoffman.
• W. C. Fields became famous for his portrayals of bitter old misanthropes who hated children. But in early starring vehicle So's Your Old Man, he's a loving, if bumbling, husband and father. Additionally, he's quite a bit thinner and more nimble than he was in later films, and he sports a bushy mustache in this film.
• Star Trek
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in contrast to the original series AND the successive films, featured Starfleet officers wearing very drab, colorless pajama-like uniforms, with most of its action taking place on a plainly lit bridge. The movie itself was criticized for being rather slow and plodding, and for lacking any human or humanoid antagonist. In the following Star Trek movie, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and in the original cast movies that followed, Starfleet officers were given crisp, bright red uniforms, and the Enterprise bridge was lit in a more visually exciting way. One could even argue that Trek producers even pretended that ST:TMP never even happened in later movies; for example, the Enterprise is shown as being newly renovated and retrofitted in ST:TMP, and then again just seemingly a couple years later in ST:TWOK. (Mostly using scenes taken from the original)
  • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was the first Star Trek production to feature the full Klingon language, and so a lot of the word pronunciations are different to how they would sound in TNG onwards — for example, listen to how Kruge says Qapla' (with a more phonetic sound) just before Torg's boarding party leaves for the Enterprise. The most common explanation for this among fans is that Kruge just has an odd regional accent.
• In Steven Seagal's first film Above the Law (1988), he doesn't sport his trademark ponytail. Even more notably, considering his later defining characteristic as an Invincible Hero, his character of Nico gets the shit kicked out of him hard during the climax, which actually makes his Heroic Second Wind far more believable.
• The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) movie is a good deal grittier than its sequels, with an overall more serious tone and fewer comic-book gimmicks. Yes, there is plenty of humor, but it is there only to underscore the brooding nature of the piece rather than to exist for its own sake. Also the jettisoning of most supernatural elements: Master Splinter and the Turtles themselves have a supernatural origin, but their allies and enemies are all ordinary human beings. Not until The Secret of the Ooze (1991) do we get to see used as villains the bizarrely mutated beasts for which the cartoon series and the original comics had become famous.
• Terminator:
  • The first film is really weird compared to the ones that follow. Chief amongst the differences is that it's a Horror-Action hybrid which borders on Slasher Film. It also has a much lower budget than the rest of the films, making it look somewhat dated in special effects. And finally, the Time Travel plot mechanic uses a very closed and fatalistic Stable Time Loop while the rest of the movies run amuck with the Timey-Wimey Ball.
  • The first film implied that all T-800s looked different, as they were designed to infiltrate the Resistance and it's a plot point that Kyle Reese doesn't know what the Terminator looks like and has to wait for it to attack Sarah to find out. But Arnie became so iconic in the role that they weren't gonna give him up, so in later films, there's a whole bunch of other Terminators with the exact same appearance, including at least three working for the Resistance.
• The Three Stooges started their long and successful run at Columbia Pictures with The Captain Hates the Sea, a feature film in which they are background players as the band on a cruise boat, and only Larry has a line. Afterwards they'd become stars of their own series of comic shorts.
• Transformers Film Series:
  • Transformers (2007) is a more straightforward story with a relatively small number of robot characters (Sequel Escalation and Serial Escalation were heavy in the two movies that followed). Also, while Bumblebee drops Sam and Mikaela out of his vehicle mode before transforming into his robot mode to fight Barricade, the sequels have the transformations fast enough to safely eject any passengers and quickly convert into robot mode in one quick go.
  • The first film had Cybertronians bleed blue-green Alien Blood (most likely meant to be Energon). The sequels replace it with a red substance that may or may not be real blood (they're alien robots, remember).
• If your knowledge of Twilight (2005) comes from Pop-Cultural Osmosis, you'll find the first movie awfully strange. It's essentially a low-budget indie (a very successful one) and it feels like it. There are only the most basic special effects and it generally just feels "small". In contrast, the sequels had higher budgets, so they feel bigger and have a blockbuster "sheen" which the original lacked. The first film also features no gratuitous Fanservice.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) is notably discussed in the US Senate in X1 and referenced by Professor X to the President of the United States in X2: X-Men United, but she only had cameos and was played by two different actresses. In X-Men: The Last Stand, she finally becomes an important character with whole sequences that are centered around her, and is portrayed by Elliot Page.
  • The first film also features a different actor as John Allerdyce (Pyro) in a brief cameo. John later becomes a major character and is played by Aaron Stanford in the next two movies.
  • The first movie has Mystique barely speaking (she has plenty to say in all her later appearances), and Sabretooth is a Terse Talker Brute - a huge contrast to the Manipulative Bastard version Liev Schreiber played in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
  • Mystique also disguises herself as a statue while the X-Men infiltrate Liberty Island. This is the only film in the series where she demonstrates the ability to turn into inanimate objects.
  • The initial three films also give no indication that Professor X and Mystique are related or even know each other, whereas the prequels deal heavily with the fact that they're adopted siblings and are very close.
  • Halle Berry gives Storm a hint of an African accent in the first film. Realizing that it didn't sound very good, she uses her normal voice in subsequent films.
  • Wolverine's trademark Healing Factor seems to be downplayed in the earlier movies: He gets knocked out in X2: X-Men United when he's shot in the head by some regular cops. In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Wolverine gets shot multiple times by gangsters with no real effect on him. In The Wolverine he even survives being nuked in WWII which chronologically sets this event decades before the headshot in the second movie.
  • X-Men: First Class:
    • Michael Fassbender's Magneto alternates between sounding ambiguously British and Irish in various scenes. Essentially Fassbender's Not Even Bothering with the Accent. The film was envisioned as a Continuity Reboot, mostly unconnected to the previous ones. In the next movie, which features Canon Welding with the series, Fassbender matches his accent with that of Ian McKellen's Magneto.
    • Invoked, as the prequel versions of the characters display characteristics that they're implied to grow out of. Charles Xavier sometimes acts like a cocky, womanizing ditz (which is a sharp contrast compared to his much more subdued and mature persona later on), Magneto doesn't hesitate to use a gun if he likes to (whereas in the previous films, he sneers at firearms with disdain), Mystique is more of a shy shrinking violet who desires to fit in, and Beast is socially awkward with severe self-esteem issues—you wouldn't have expected that the confident politician in X-Men: The Last Stand had started his adulthood as an introvert.
  • X-Men: Apocalypse: This prequel seeks to evoke this for the adolescent X-Men. Jean Grey is scared of her powers and isn't in control of them yet, Cyclops is a bad boy and isn't leadership material, Nightcrawler is afraid of his own shadow, and Storm is a morally dubious thief who sides with the Big Bad.

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