From Top Gun: Maverick to Crystal Skull, the 5 best—and 5 worst—legacyquels of all time

Martin Scorsese’s mid-’80s follow-up to Robert Rossen’s melancholy 1961 masterpiece might qualify as the original legacyquel. Tom Cruise stars as Vince, a billiards prodigy taken under the wing of seasoned pool shark Eddie Felson (Paul Newman), in a film that arrived just months after Top Gun and turned out to be a torch-passing between two generations of movie stars. Scorsese and screenwriter Richard Price built a legacy—of failure and bitterness as well as greatness and success—for Felson to shoulder. That narrative resonates even more when the master eventually falls victim to the manipulative, mercenary coldness of his protégé.

It would be easy to catalog this film’s shortcomings on a technical and narrative level without even getting into its status as a legacyquel, but for the purposes of this list, its choices are nothing short of dismal. The inexplicably lazy decision to resurrect Emperor Palpatine exerts a fatal wight upon a story that started with incredible promise. Even if co-writer and director J.J. Abrams didn’t want to pick up threads introduced by Rian Johnson in The Last Jedi, there are countless other ways to explore the characters Johnson created instead of simply resuscitating a villain from the original trilogy (especially after reviving the threat of the Death Star in The Force Awakens). By bringing back the franchise’s thoroughly vanquished main baddie, and then tying the sequel trilogy’s new characters into bloodlines that went back to the franchise’s first days, Abrams generated more questions than answers. And his film virtually obliterated any investment in a cohesive story, not just for the final three films but the overall nonology.

Honestly, this was one of the unlikeliest successes of the last two decades. Even with original director Ridley Scott, screenwriter Hampton Fancher and star Harrison Ford involved, a sequel arriving 35 years later feels like a major miracle given how many obstacles got in the way of finishing the first film, which took some time before it was properly lauded as a masterpiece. Notwithstanding those niggling questions about Deckard’s identity, this film utilizes a new character to reiterate the larger themes of the franchise, including the very definition of humanity, while offering a meta-commentary on sequels themselves. Sometimes, like Ryan Gosling’s K, it’s not about you, it’s about the purpose you serve to give people what they want. Mind you, people didn’t especially want another one of these films from a commercial standpoint, but like its predecessor, 2049 lives on as a worthy, thoughtful science-fiction opus that’s due to be fully appreciated even more in the years to come.

The fifth film in the Shaft franchise desperately aims to tie together its entire mythology—not just Richard Roundtree’s watershed 1971 film, but also Samuel L. Jackson’s not especially great 2000 reboot—by introducing a third generation of this family of detectives. That cybersecurity expert, played by Jessie T. Usher, is appropriately mortified by his forebears’ political incorrectness, as well as their dubious procedural fealty. While this premise could have offered an intriguing opportunity to re-litigate the legacy of the franchise, not to mention the changing role and responsibility of police within the black community (much less for and by black cops), director Tim Story reduces most of those provocative ideas to superficial and sometimes irresponsible punch lines that validate the elder Shafts in favor of humiliating the latest family member to follow in their footsteps.

Following up one of the funniest movies of the modern era—a high-wire act that balanced absolutely fearless, gobsmacking comedic bits with actual ideas and commentary about American culture—would seem an impossible task. But Sacha Baron Cohen’s decision to put together this follow-up on the eve of the 2020 election was a brilliant move. The addition of the title character’s daughter Tutar, played by Maria Bakalova with the same brilliant abandon as Cohen, also paid off. While Cohen manages to put conservative America under a magnifying glass, Bakalova creates an incisive portrait of girlboss femininity that’s simultaneously empathetic and regressive, catapulting the backwards Kazakh reporter into the future while showing how far we haven’t come since 2006.

Steven Spielberg’s track record with Indiana Jones is, well, uneven to say the least; notwithstanding the unimpeachable Raiders Of The Lost Ark, there are as many critics of Temple Of Doom and Last Crusade as there are fans. Crystal Skull was clearly engineered to pass Jones’ fedora and bullwhip to Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) while delivering more scruffy derring-do from Harrison Ford himself. Ford delivered on his end of that bargain, and LaBeouf did his best to step into those very big, very well-worn shoes, but even with Cate Blanchett as the duo’s formidable nemesis, Spielberg’s acquiescence to George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson’s premise—and the filmmaker’s wild over-reliance on CGI—undercuts everything that made the previous films work.

Bill and Ted are too dopey and well-meaning not to love, but this long-awaited follow-up delivered on one of the most important aspects of the mythology of the franchise: the song that would bring the universe together. Whether or not the jam that ends the film actually accomplishes that task, Bill and Ted’s journey to figure out why the music—sweet and clear and true—hasn’t poured out of them yet is a fun and thoughtful meditation on managing expectations. Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves are terrific in their respective roles, but by bolstering their airheaded enthusiasm with the arrival of Thea (Samara Weaving) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) as their prodigiously talented progeny, the film breathes new life into their legacies by highlighting how they can be fulfilled by sharing them with others.

Likely the most divisive title on this list (particularly as a “Bad” entry), The Matrix: Resurrections offers perhaps more than any film here the most explicit examination of a film series’ legacy. Surprisingly, the film’s technical deficiencies aren’t as relevant to its failure as a “legacyquel,” although creating a new installment in a series with historic filmmaking and action choreography bona fides that contains neither is pretty disappointing. Even if Resurrections acknowledges the impact of its predecessors and brings back the original stars (and one of their filmmakers), its choice to simply repeat the same story offers nothing except an indictment of moviegoers’ appetites for more of the same.

You could argue that Sylvester Stallone made a legacyquel of his own for his Rocky series with Rocky Balboa in 2006, but given the character’s many comeback stories, that film fell pretty firmly into the mythology that was set up way back in 1977. With Creed, writer-director Ryan Coogler gave the aging palooka an incredible swan song as the coach and mentor to young Adonis Creed (a mesmerizing Michael B. Jordan). He also launched a new franchise that immediately carried the history and emotional weight of the films that came before it. Coogler and Jordan gave audiences a character to root for because he was not just inheriting his father’s skill, but his father’s absence as well. That was paired with his father figure’s sense of remorse, commitment, and determination to help the young man become the champion he believes he can be—inside and outside of the ring. It’s an extraordinary film, one that merges past, present, and future in an effortless and exhilarating way.

Jurassic World begins from an interesting premise: How do you keep the world entertained when something extraordinary—like, say, the ability to bring dinosaurs back from extinction—has become commonplace, or even boring? Unfortunately, the resulting film doesn’t examine that in a particularly meaningful way, and instead relies upon an escalating series of stupid decisions (like, maybe don’t go into a bloodthirsty predator’s cage and then leave through the gate where it can get out) compounded by simplistic character motivations. Shouldering the weight of one of the most successful franchises in film history was an unenviable responsibility for co-writer and director Colin Trevorrow. As Jurassic Park itself has repeatedly taught, it takes a lot of infrastructure to make a thrill ride of this size function properly, and Trevorrow didn’t seem to have the kind of support to make his reboot go off without a hitch.

The legacyquel to end all legacyquels—or maybe just the one all others should be judged by—Top Gun: Maverick leverages the original film, and character, to tell a story that satisfies audiences in the present while also honoring the past. Cruise’s dedication to authenticity, inside the cockpit and out, is thrilling enough to keep viewers enthralled, especially those who loved the aerial action in the first film. But what this film does better than anything is to get inside the headspace of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, digging into where he’s been for the last 36 years and why he’s at risk for irrelevance even though he remains an undeniably skilled pilot. That Maverick is training the next generation of “best of the best” pilots offers satisfying closure as the student becomes the teacher. The film also shows that the old dog still can learn some new tricks, while giving viewers something unlike they’ve ever seen—even if they know the first film by chapter and verse. Top Gun: Maverick delivers irresistible, crowd-pleasing thrills fused to emotional payoffs, with some great writing, acting, and filmmaking pulling it all together.