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So I have this small observation about genre pictures: Sometimes, on rare occasions, the sequel is better than the original. My DVD collection is rife with holes due to my insistence that I won’t buy the first film of a series just for completeness sake. Blade? Sucked. Blade 2? Sheer brilliance. The Mummy? Meh. The Mummy Returns? Dude… Pygmy mummies! See, when genre pictures (horror, sci-fi, comic book movies, etc) get made for the first time, they don’t get a lot of liberty with the overall vision and budget. It’s a gamble for a studio to fund just any movie, especially one with a niche audience. This is how the Fantastic Four movie can be so, so bad and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer can be… well, still bad, but not AS bad. In fact, if FF:RSS had come out first, I might not have liked it just that smidge-above-crap that I do. If you ask me, it’s not JUST a matter of bigger budgets and more freedoms. Yeah, that’s most likely the case with something like The Mummy where Steven Sommers is given more funding for his massive special effects spectacles or even Spider-Man 2 where Sam Raimi gets to really cut loose and even make a couple of winks to his old Evil Dead style of directing (see the Doc Ock attack in the operating room scene). Other times, though, it’s just a matter of someone else taking over for the second go-around that might actually have been better suited for the franchise in the first place. Transporter 2 is not all that great of a film, but is light years more entertaining than its predecessor. That is in no small part to Louis Letterier getting to make the film HE wanted to and not pick up the pieces of Corey Yuen’s mess. Steve Norrington is hand’s down just a shitty director and shows it in the first Blade movie (if you think it’s a fluke, go rent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for double feature of crap). It was international sensation Guillermo Del Toro stepping up to the plate that really showed just how cool a Blade movie can be (Zombie Vampires!). Hands down, though, the movie that will always show that the sequel can trounce the original in terms of awesome will be be forever known as Aliens. What Ridley Scott started with the classic sci-fi horror film, Alien, James Cameron shot out of the park with his taking the franchise up to 11 and injecting Space Marines, Power Loaders, Alien Queens, and annoying child hostages. All in all, the original movie sometimes just serves as the tryout film. What can this property do in a mainstream marketplace? It’s a success? Great! Let’s make another and throw a couple more million at it! When that happens, we the audience can sometimes get a taste of a really great time. Of course, we can also get Batman Returns, Chronicles of Riddick, and Rambo: First Blood part 2.