A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples shouldn't be added until six months after the sequel is released, to avoid any knee-jerk reactions.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is considered by a lot of fans to be the best in the series. Same with Wes Craven's New Nightmare, though some consider that a separate film from the main series.
- Although The Addams Family was very well received critically and financially, it's often accepted that its sequel, Addams Family Values, is even better, especially regarding plot and script.
- While the original Alien is a great movie — interesting characters, creepy and horrifying designs for the alien, it introduced the xenomorph life cycle to an unsuspecting populace, and so on — the second movie, Aliens, is widely (though not universally) regarded as a better film. It also benefited from a Genre Shift from straight up Horror to Action Horror, which meant that instead of suffering from Sequelitis, Aliens was able to do things its own way.
- Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (the titular comics live-action adaptation) was a lot funnier and better than the first, Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar. Its own sequel, Asterix and Obelix at the Olympic Games
◊, is said to be less good than the second but better than the first. - Batman Begins was the reboot everyone hoped for after the Neon Age of Schumacher, but it was The Dark Knight that won universal acclaim and a posthumous Academy Award for Heath Ledger.
- Before Sunrise is widely considered to be a great romance film. Its sequels Before Sunset and Before Midnight are regarded by most people to be just as good as, if not better than, the original because of their exploration of different stages of Jesse and Celine's relationship and consequently more mature themes of growing up and long-term commitment.
- Albeit Blade is not generally considered a bad film, it was also disregarded as just an "action flick" by many critics. But Guillermo del Toro's Blade II is regarded as an improvement from the first for the more harsh critics of the franchise and —by far— the best of the trilogy (especially in comparison to the third movie) for the fans and the more benevolent critics. It's also considered one of Del Toro's more memorable works (which is saying a lot).
- Downplayed example: Blade Runner is now widely considered such a cinematic classic that no follow-up could ever live up to its greatness. The announcement of a sequel was met with disbelief and incredulity, but the naysayers were proved wrong when Blade Runner 2049 received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, who found it at least as good as the original if not superior, despite the astronomical expectations. It quickly earned a spot on many lists of the best movie sequels of all time, and picked up two Academy Awards to boot. There's a small but devoted crowd that considers it better than the original thanks to its expanded world-building, deep and emotionally moving story and better writing of its female characters.
- Bride of Frankenstein is often considered to be a horror masterpiece and even better than its predecessor, which is no small feat. In its retrospective of the 100 all-time greatest films, TIME Magazine hailed it as "one of those rare sequels that is infinitely superior to its source."
- Dollars Trilogy is widely considered to be three good movies, with the closer The Good, the Bad and the Ugly standing out as the best.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Captain America: The First Avenger was considered a solid action movie by most critics and audiences, applauded for its fun characters and proper character development, but it had the second-lowest box office returns of the MCU's first wave of movies (only The Incredible Hulk did worse), and it was written off by numerous fans as nothing more than a simple prologue to The Avengers. To many people's pleasant surprise, Captain America: The Winter Soldier turned out to be one of Marvel Studios' most critically acclaimed films to date, garnering the strongest reviews for the series since The Avengers, and the fandom considers it one of the contenders for the best film in the franchise. It's also another one of the Genre Shift examples, as First Avenger was a WWII adventure while Winter Soldier was a Conspiracy Thriller.
- In general, Phase 3 is seen as having fixed many of the problems that most of the films in Phases 1 and 2 had, namely their forgettable villains and formulaic nature, as well as Phase 2 focusing entirely too much on world-building and continuity.
- Ant-Man was a decent, uneven film with solid performances, entertaining fight scenes and enjoyable sense of humor, but a boring villain, poorly written romance, awkward attempts at connecting itself to the larger MCU, and the fact that it was mostly a retread of Iron Man hamstrung it a great deal. Ant-Man and the Wasp, on the other hand, improved upon it greatly with tighter pacing, more entertaining dynamics between the main characters, connections to the MCU that came across as far less forced, and a more interesting, fun, and unique plot that featured a compelling, sympathetic antagonist in the form of Ghost.
- Avengers: Age of Ultron has its strong points, but it's generally seen as a step down from The Avengers, which was a Tough Act to Follow. In particular, many reviewers criticized its overly complex plot, its over-abundance of new characters (not all of whom were properly developed), and its occasionally uneven blend of drama and comedy, as well as a few overlong action sequences that lacked any real pathos. Avengers: Infinity War is considered an improvement in every conceivable way, with many critics calling it one of the greatest superhero films ever. It boasts a tighter plot, a stronger villain, and more epic action sequences; it manages to effectively juggle dozens of superheroes in the same cast, and it's all capped off by an emotional gut-punch of an ending. Avengers: Endgame shattered everyone's expectations all over again, ending with a Grand Finale to end all Grand Finales.note
- Spider-Man: No Way Home has been garnering better reviews than its two predecessors and has shaped itself as one of Marvel Studios' most acclaimed films, seen as on par with the above-mentioned Avengers: Endgame.
- Crank was somewhat over-the-top (mildly formulated) but enjoyable. The sequel cranked everything up, including the meta. Please have your ration of Bellisario's Maxim ready!
- The Diary of a Wimpy Kid trilogy, despite having opened with mixed reception, would later be looked upon more fondly. The second movie, Rodrick Rules is regarded as the best of the three movies. Furthermore, many consider Dog Days to at least be better than the original.
- Drunken Master is a thoroughly beloved action-comedy, and a classic of Wuxia cinema that turned Jackie Chan into a movie star. Against all odds, its sequel Drunken Master II managed to surpass its high bar: TIME Magazine ranked it one of the 100 greatest films of all time in 2005, and Roger Ebert called its climactic foundry sequence the greatest fight scene ever committed to film.
- The Evil Dead series.
- The Evil Dead was a cult film that was noted for its extreme violence and low-budget gore. Evil Dead 2, however, added a new element of slapstick comedy, which is apparently what Sam Raimi wanted all along. The action also focuses more on the character of Ash, who became something of a cult icon.
- The third film, Army of Darkness, has the highest budget and is the most well known. It continued the trend toward increased slapstick violence and making Ash a wisecrack-spouting badass, which is generally what people remember most about the series.
- The Expendables was a case of Critical Dissonance. The Expendables 2 managed to get better reviews alongside very positive audience remarks, as it added more big names, more action and used a more comedic, self-deprecating tone.
- Friday the 13th: Interestingly, the original film is not usually the one people remember. It doesn't even feature Jason, and on its own, is usually seen as a mediocre slasher at best. The following three films are the classics, with the fourth film usually being hailed as the ultimate Friday the 13th film. Part VI also has its fans.
- G.I. Joe: Retaliation is seen as this to people who enjoyed G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Others consider it to be a Surprisingly Improved Sequel.
- Gamera: Guardian of the Universe was a pretty good reboot of a long-dead franchise. Gamera 2: Advent of Legion had a tighter script, deeper characters, better special effects, more action and more gore. Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys had less action but even deeper characterization and still better special effects with more effective gore, and a better script. It's still debated whether the second or third is the best, but everyone agrees they're both better than the first.
- Some film buffs consider The Godfather Part II to be better than the original The Godfather, and everyone considers it to be at the very least comparable. This is partly because of the brilliant decision to tell as parallel stories the origin of Vito Corleone's criminal career, which was a part of the original Mario Puzo novel, and the tragic descent of his son Michael.
- In the Godzilla series:
- After the first film, Godzilla Raids Again was the first direct sequel of the series by keeping the dark tone of the original. However, most of atmosphere and weight of the original was effectively lost. The third film, King Kong vs. Godzilla was considered the best of the series for showing the two famous movie monsters duking it out and in color, and would have the grand tradition of Godzilla fighting another monster in a major location.
- Godzilla Minus One is this to Shin Godzilla. While both films are Continuity Reboots to the 1954 original, Minus One is seen as this for its compelling human drama and character arc for its main character who was a Kamikaze pilot in World War II, and his war trauma that involves Godzilla. While both films don't show as much Godzilla, it's executed in a way that Godzilla's presence serves a purpose in the plot and how he personally affects people while Shin Godzilla is depicted as a lost animal just trying to survive while the Japanese politicians waste their time trying to act against him, but in a way that's legally possible.
- The original Gremlins movie is regarded as a classic '80s horror-comedy, even if it feels cliché by today's standards to some. Warner Brothers had tried to make a Gremlins sequel for years with no success before finally re-hiring director Joe Dante to helm it, which he did on the condition that he had final authority on the film's content. The result was 1990's Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which cranked the satire and metahumour up by mocking the very concept of movie sequels and taking a sledgehammer to the Fourth Wall.
- For the third Harry Potter film, The Prisoner of Azkaban, Chris Columbus left the series and auteur Alfonso Cuarón stepped in. The end result is a film that many critics consider far more mature and stylized than the by-the-book adaptation approach of the first two films.
- Hello Mary-Lou: Prom Night II, while more obscure, is considered a superior film to the original Prom Night (1980) by those who have seen it. It's actually a sequel in name only, and has a more original premise that combines elements of both the slasher and supernatural horror genres, while also having a more self-referential tone, and it embraces its campiness to the fullest extent. It also pays homage to many, many classic horror films. The original Prom Night, while still fun to watch for its own reasons, stuck very, very close to conventional slasher tropes, and is considered one of the more generic films in the genre.
- While The Hunger Games is good, its sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire improves on it in every way: a new director, less Jitter Cam, better performances from everyone, spot-on pacing, much improved effects, a darker and more mature story that remains completely faithful to the book, and a third act filmed in IMAX with a shocking and sudden Cliffhanger ending. While the first film had to skirt around violence involving children and teenagers, the adult cast for the special edition Hunger Games featuring past winners gave this one much more free rein with its action sequences.
- James Bond: The first three films are generally considered to be progressively better than the one that came before it. Goldfinger is still regarded by some as the best Bond film ever.
- Johnny English Reborn: Many viewers found Johnny's Character Development from lucky moron into Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass to make for much more interesting watching than the first film.
- Mad Max
- Mad Max and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. The first was impressive for a low-budget action film to come out of Australia, though by today's standards is rather slow-paced and tedious (despite some excellent auto-stunts). The second film practically popularized the Scavenger World and The Apunkalypse in film, filled with balls to the wall action and was the best remembered film in the series for the next 30+ years, at least until...
- Mad Max: Fury Road, critically acclaimed for its action, visual storytelling and Worldbuilding, acting, surprising amounts of Character Development and depth despite a very simple story, and relentlessly feminist message. It earned universally positive reviews - 97% on Rotten Tomatoes (a point higher than Schindler's List, it's actually the 4th highest rated movie on the site) and an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, unheard of for a summer action movie. It was only a few weeks after its release that fans and critics started calling it one of the greatest action films ever made.
- Maniac Cop is considered by many fans as actually inferior to its sequels, Maniac Cop 2 and Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence, the latter two having a much higher budget and upping the ante of action over horror.
- The Mission: Impossible film series is a rare franchise where (after the third film, the first one regarded by a majority of people as actually being really good) each subsequent movie has gotten better reviews than its predecessor, partly because the films just keeping topping themselves in terms of increasingly insane and over-the-top stunts. After the standout first one the films fluctuated in quality, but by Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation, some were beginning to see that they'd even reached greater heights than before. Fallout, the sixth entry, is touted by some as one of the best action films of The New '10s. Since then, Dead Reckoning has gotten very slightly inferior scores to Fallout but still maintains a very high bar.
- Night of the Living Dead (1968) basically invented the entire zombie movie genre overnight, even while simultaneously destroying it with subtle undertones of social satire. For the sequel ten years later, George Romero wisely followed the ethos of "If ain't broke, don't fix it", and kept the core premise of characters trapped in one building that was besieged by zombies, but made the masterstroke of setting it in an urban shopping mall. The result, Dawn of the Dead (1978), is a gorier, scarier, funnier, and more intense film than the original, delivering more of what everyone liked in the original but adding more action and more zombies while upping the social attire to scathingly sharp levels.
- Reviews of Paddington 2 frequently mentioned it was even better than the critically acclaimed first film. It also became the most-reviewed film on Rotten Tomatoes with a perfect 100% score, surpassing Toy Story 2.
- The Pink Panther (1963) tends to be hit by this, at least for modern audiences. The original movie, while far from unpopular in its day, is essentially a typical (and somewhat dated) 1960s sex farce with a bumbling French policeman played by Peter Sellers popping up every so often. As the policeman — a certain Inspector Jacques Clouseau — proved to be the Ensemble Dark Horse even for contemporary audiences, the sequel A Shot in the Dark made him the central character, amped up the absurdist humour and structured the narrative to be more of a crime/murder-mystery spoof, which later sequels would for better or worse draw on more.
- The third Police Academy film, Police Academy 3: Back in Training is considered by most fans as the series' peak.
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes was considered a flawed but successful and enjoyable reboot to an ailing sci-fi franchise, with a groundbreaking performance by Andy Serkis helping to make up for its faults. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes improves on everything, with more complex characters, both human and ape, across the board, strong social and political themes that are deeply explored, and a career-best performance from Serkis, with many calling for an Oscar nomination. The result has been compared to The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight, been called one of the best and most emotionally powerful movies of 2014, and the kind of film other summer blockbusters should strive to be. And trilogy closer War for the Planet of the Apes managed to also be an improvement with its heightened emotion and tension, leading to even higher critical scores.
- Scream 2 is considered by critics to be scarier and funnier than the original Scream (1996). Discussed in Randy's film class, where everyone discusses movie sequels, the frequency of sequels that are better than first installments, and which sequels achieve this.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) was already considered an astounding subversion of Video Game Movies Suck, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) earned even better remarks with a larger scope, fun new characters, and more elements reminiscent of the games.
- Spider-Man 2 had a drastically improved plot and insight on the main character when compared to the first movie, as well as longer, bigger, and better fight scenes. And if anything, the knockout train battle against Doctor Octopus was the Spider-Man fight everyone had been waiting and hoping for.
- Star Wars
- While A New Hope is considered a cinematic masterpiece, many consider The Empire Strikes Back as an even better film, and the best of the Star Wars saga, though at the time of release it was disliked by many fans, and there are some who still argue A New Hope was better (perhaps because A New Hope can be enjoyed pretty well on its own, whereas casual viewers of all the other films will suffer Continuity Lock-Out).
- Revenge of the Sith is generally considered the best of the prequels, although some claim that's more on the previous two's faults than the film's own merits.
- Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!: Held against the original Super Size Me, this really shows Spurlock's maturation as a film-maker with vastly improved camerawork, editing, and scripting, as well as delivering a much more targeted and robust critique of the fast food industry by focusing on its Very False Advertising and Big Chicken's abusive corporate practices against the regular farmers compared with the far more Anvilicious message of the original.
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day got even more acclaim than The Terminator, and had a much higher gross than the already-beloved first film. Like the Alien series, it shifted from horror in the first installment (which was effectively a Slasher Movie) to a greater focus on action in the second. Incidentally, both sequels were directed by James Cameron, though unlike Alien, Cameron also directed the first Terminator.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring blew away all expectations and forever set the bar for what an epic High Fantasy film would look like. The Two Towers took everything that worked in the original film and cranked it way up, with better pacing, expanding the supporting cast while simultaneously giving the others more time to shine, and providing some of the most iconic moments in the whole series: the return of Gandalf the White, the Battle of Helm's Deep, Sam's lump-in-the-throat-inducing climactic speech to Frodo, and the march of the Ents on Isengard, among many, many others. And those who don't find it the best in the trilogy certainly give the spot to the closer The Return of the King, which - aside from not knowing when to end - was a Grand Finale with even better battle scenes and no dearth of emotional moments, leading to box-office records all over the place and tying for a record-breaking 11 Academy Awards.note
- The Thing (1982) is widely regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, remakes ever made, with many considering it to be superior to The Thing from Another World.
- The Vengeance Trilogy by Park Chan Wook started with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, which isn't a bad film, but relatively obscure. Oldboy (2003), the second film, is the one everyone remembers. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, the third film, was also well-received but is not as well-known as Oldboy. However, these are all stand-alone films linked only by the theme of vengeance.
- Wrong Turn 2: Dead End received a far better reception than the original film, even though it was Direct to Video. Having Henry Rollins in it probably helped.
- X-Men Film Series
- X2: X-Men United is considered an improvement on the already good original X-Men, fleshing out the characters and themes introduced in the first one, while providing more action. Bryan Singer said the strategy for X2 was to follow the Empire Strikes Back plot, where they split up the characters for purposes of development, then bring them together again for a fantastic finish.
- While X-Men: First Class was well-liked by fans for bringing the X-Men series back on track, X-Men: Days of Future Past has been even more well-received and cited by a few reviewers as the best of the X-Men movies. It even currently has the highest Rotten Tomatoes score in the series at 92%, placing DOFP among the best-reviewed Marvel movies of all, Marvel Cinematic Universe or otherwise. The movie has also become the top-grossing X-Men film in terms of worldwide box office by far, usurping the position previously held by The Last Stand.
- Among the Wolverine spin-off trilogy, the critically-bashed X-Men Origins: Wolverine was followed by a Surprisingly Improved Sequel with The Wolverine, which was itself followed by Logan, critically adored (92% on Rotten Tomatoes) and praised by many critics as "one of the best superhero movies ever" for its darker tone. It even got an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming very first comic book film to ever do so.
- While Deadpool was a funny and well-liked movie, some fans consider Deadpool 2 to be a better film that has better humor and action scenes. Some critics have praised Deadpool 2's humor for satirizing Darker and Edgier superhero flicks like The Winter Soldier, Batman v Superman, and Logan.
