In a certain, ever-expanding corner of the galaxy, May 4 marks Star Wars Day. But here at The A.V. Club, we’re spending this weekend diving into the fourth entries that reset franchises, broke a pop culture curse, or wrapped things up in a gratifying manner. Read on, and May The Fourth Installment Be With You.
Assigned to a victory lap or janitorial duties after a trilogy’s completion, the fourth movie in a series has the unenviable task of reigniting the fires of story. At the same time, like Toy Story 4‘s Forky, the fourth movie has to justify its existence and find a reason for Indiana Jones to put his hat on again. There are no hard rules for the hard reset aside from needing to hit it out of the park, a complex order when dealing with aging stars, audience turnover, and the responsibility to clean up a previous entry’s mess.
A fourth movie often has to resurrect characters, lighten the mood, and leave things open-ended, in hopes that a “quadrilogy” can one day become “quintrilogy.” Though rarely successful, third sequels are almost always interesting, revealing a studio’s perceived strengths and insecurities in an oddball package that probably shouldn’t exist. Here are 14 fourth movies that, for better or worse, reset the series.
Thirty years after Beyond Thunderdome hit the brakes on the Mad Max trilogy, the long-awaited return to the Wasteland roared into the theaters. Mad Max: Fury Road wasn’t an overhaul of director George Miller’s series. It was an elevation of action movies in the macro. A technical marvel born of a nightmare production, Fury Road showed no signs of wear, arriving confident in its aims and trusting its audience to buckle up and not ask too many questions. Parking in theaters years before the legacy sequel boom that plagued the rest of the decade, Fury Road didn’t bother explaining any new characters or why the actor who played Toecutter in Mad Max was now a pasty white dictator named Immortan Joe. It charged ahead with a breathless two-hour chase that’s light on dialogue, heavy on emotion, and unmatched in originality. Miller indulged his every imaginative flight of fancy and allowed his viewers to witness it before being sent to Valhalla. However, the most distinctive thing about Fury Road is its sidelining of the main character. The new driver, the mighty Furiosa (Charlize Theron), takes the wheel and control of the movie, imbuing the film with a feminist fury well beyond the series’ Ozploitation roots and priming the pump for the epic Furiosa. [Matt Schimkowitz]
Ocean’s 8
Like virtually all the cinematic resets on this list, Ocean’s 8 had its work cut out for it. Though Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s films aren’t quite as ingrained in the public consciousness as, say, the Indiana Jones franchise, they boasted the only cast that could rival the Rat Pack-led ensemble of the 1960 original in terms of sheer star power. The heist premise for the 2018 spin-off/sequel was almost incidental; what screenwriters Gary Ross and Olivia Milch really needed was to put together a crew as charismatic (and, as Reuben might put it, “nuts”) as their predecessors. And they pulled it off by bringing in Sandra Bullock as the leader of this new team: As Debbie, Danny’s sister, she’s flinty and flirty, bent on revenge but also knows how to have a good time. Her partners in crime—Anne Hathaway, Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulson, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling, and Awkwafina—each brought a distinct yet complementary energy to the group. Whether they were putting a cad in his place or making off with a bigger score than all the previous Ocean’s jobs combined, the cast was a delight to watch. That was the real bar to clear, which this stilettoed crew nimbly did, racking up impressive box-office figures and, like its reset predecessor, Ocean’s Eleven, becoming even more watchable with time. The sneakiest thing about it is how it grows on you. [Danette Chavez]
Avengers: Endgame
As befits its status as the 22nd installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Endgame is the most load-bearing sequel in this Inventory. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo were tasked with wrapping up not only the Avengers franchise-within-the-franchise, but also ending the Infinity Saga—Spider-Man: Far From Home may be the official finale to Phase Three, but Endgame serves as the real denouement—while setting up Phase Four and the “cosmic” side of the universe. As A.A. Dowd wrote in his review, Endgame is all endings, which is part of its uneven charm. Like Infinity War, it’s a lot of movie, but that’s because it’s also effectively the series finale for the biggest, longest-running Marvel TV series ever made. For a while, it looked like the fourth Avengers movie had cleared the decks, handing out happy conclusions to almost all of the key players and making way for new stories. But that sense of finality turned out to be as short-lived as a Scarlet Witch-induced hallucination; Marvel Studios continues to “un-retire” Earth’s mightiest heroes in various capacities, for limited series, cameos, and some extremely well-paid fan service. Marvel’s backpedaling in the wake of its underperforming forays into other heroes’ journeys was probably to be expected, but it also suggests the studio’s risk-taking started and ended with Iron Man. [Danette Chavez]
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
There are deeper ideas flitting around the edges of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, many of them embedded in a much-mocked early movie image that nevertheless still holds some measure of genuine power: Indiana Jones standing beneath a mushroom cloud, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg attempting to update their classic adventure hero for the more pulpy, paranoid stories of the Atomic Age. Mostly, though, Crystal Skull asks a far more prosaic question, one endemic to returning to a successful trilogy 19 years after wrapping it up in perfectly fine fashion: Can we still do this? And will anybody give a shit if we do? A game but creaky Harrison Ford does his best, even as the script dutifully transforms Indy into a family man and massively ups his sidekick quotient. But the film never builds anything meaningful out of its efforts to supplant the mythology of the Old World with the more sci-fi trappings of the New, making Crystal Skull not much more than a reasonably enjoyable flick to catch halfway through on TNT on a lazy Sunday afternoon. (Which, you could argue, makes it a perfect continuation of Indy’s “serial stories for the modern era” legacy.) But it lacks, almost by definition, the energy and life that made that first trilogy not just a clever genre exercise, but something genuinely special, becoming an iconic film in the pantheon of fourth movies acting as a symbol for the concept of diminishing returns. [William Hughes]
Land Of The Dead
Arriving two decades after 1985’s immensely bleak Day Of The Dead, George Romero’s Land of the same is, on the surface, a thoroughly modern reimagining of his former style. Look no further than Dead Reckoning, the ludicrously appointed converted semi-truck that Simon Baker and John Leguizamo use as their mobile fortress while scavenging the remains of the American countryside, and which feels tailormade for a less miserable and reflective take on the zombie apocalypse. Spend more time with Romero’s fourth Dead movie, though, and the connective tissue shows through: Humans who consistently work to prove themselves less than human, and undead who reveal themselves to be more than lumbering, cannibalistic beasts. Arriving a year after Zack Snyder’s slick, highly effective, and slightly hollow reimagining of Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead stormed theaters, the older director’s film shows that no amount of shiny action sequences or big honking trucks could clear away Romero’s need to say something with these movies, even if he had to rig up a giant, zombie-crushing deathmobile to do it. [William Hughes]
Scream 4
Scream 4 (Scre4m?) is a bit of an outlier in the series. The original three movies end with Sydney Prescott finally safe and secure from perennial Ghostface threats. But horror movie villains have a way of always coming back, and since Ghostface doesn’t have a fixed identity, it’s less convoluted for him to return than most. Scream 4, released 11 years after the series’ third installment, does the thing a legacy sequel/soft reboot tends to do: It brings back its original characters to guide a new generation through the obstacles they already know well. But what Scream 4 does unusually is kill pretty much the entire new cast. The franchise then waited another 11 years to reboot things a second time with 2022’s Scream. That time, the series learned the opposite lesson, becoming entirely too precious with its new characters, both old and new. Scream 4 may not have been the most effective attempt to restart a franchise, but it remains one of the series’ higher points, going beyond broad Hollywood parody to center the teens’ relationships with cameras—the whole point of Scream in the first place. [Drew Gillis]
Bride Of Chucky
After a few films that juggled varying ratios of horror and comedy, Bride Of Chucky finally gave in and accepted that stories about a doll slasher might just be inherently silly. That’s a good impulse, and one that would persist throughout the rest of the Chuckyverse. Ronny Yu’s film finally goes dolls-to-the-wall with the splattery, bad-taste mania. There’s dolls getting high, dolls having sex, dolls doing crimes. There’s also Jennifer Tilly, whose lasting addition would help redefine the franchise and layer on another level of camp appeal. Her delivery of “Fuck Martha Stewart!” rivals anything from Brad Dourif, and that’s saying something. But aside from the performances, giving Chucky a love interest directly led to Seed Of Chucky, whose riff on Glen Or Glenda continues the franchise’s descent into lovingly queer slasher trash. And that was a descent knowingly, enjoyably taken; to give a sense of how wholeheartedly this film embraced a new, ridiculously self-aware direction for the franchise, here’s Chucky interrupting WCW Monday Nitro to banter with some wrestlers in promotion of the film. [Jacob Oller]
Terminator Salvation
Terminator Salvation gave fans what they thought they wanted. Having teased the war against man and machine since 1984, the franchisefinally brought John Connor’s war against Skynet’s cyborg army to life in Salvation, and had no idea what to do with it. The tricky part of following Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, a forgettably fun trilogy capper that turned Terminator‘s time-travel mechanics into a fatalistic closed loop, is that without Arnold Schwarzenegger or the present day brain-scramble of a son sending a man back in time to impregnate his mother, there’s not much to say. Coasting into theaters on a trailer that’s better than the movie and the slam-dunk casting of a post-Dark Knight Christian Bale as Connor—whose off-screen abuse of his cinematographer is more memorable than the film—Salvation aimed to launch a new trilogy of Terminator movies spread across the long-prophesied war. But as James Cameron probably knew, preventing the robot war is far more interesting. Salvation struggles to make a direct prequel to the original Terminator feel like a necessary adventure. While there are hints of good ideas, notably Sam Worthington’s Terminator who doesn’t know he’s a Terminator, Salvation is stuck in purgatory. No wonder this series keeps rebooting itself. [Matt Schimkowitz]
Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers
Halloween 4 wasn’t mincing words with its subtitle. Following the disappointing returns of Halloween III: Season Of The Witch, which infamously eschewed the series’ centerpiece killer, producer and Michael Myers’ warden Moustapha Akkad hightailed it back to Haddonfield for The Return Of Michael Myers, a low-rent remix of the first movie that, nevertheless, got Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis back on the Bogeyman’s trail. Charged with returning the series to its slasher roots, Halloween 4 doesn’t take any chances and, as a result, pleases no one. Where Season Of The Witch has built a cult following around its go-for-broke reformulation of the franchise, its follow-up doubled down on Halloween 2‘s soap operatics, mushing more mythology into Michael’s deteriorating mystique. The movie puts Laurie Strode’s tween daughter, Jamie (Danielle Harris), in the center of the action, moving Michael’s target from babysitter to baby, but for the most part, spends its time with Jamie’s teenage foster sister (Ellie Cornell) and her stab-ready friends. In the long run, the back-to-basics strategy worked, and Halloween lumbered back to life for two more uninspired entries before Akkad’s Thorn Trilogy was retconned from the series entirely. [Matt Schimkowitz]
Fast & Furious
Justin Lin earned his shot at reinventing the Fast & Furious franchise after helming the series’ improbably fun trip to Japan in Tokyo Drift. After that would-be spin-off was a hit, Lin solidified his place in pole position, a horsepower whisperer who took the franchise to sillier and more international heights with the fourth film: Fast & Furious. By simultaneously expanding the scope and scale of the films while zeroing their narrative in on the melodramatic emotions shared between the ensemble of gearhead family members (not friends), this movie turned disconnected meatheaded heist films into ever-complicating, ever-intertwining globetrotting blockbusters. The opening setpiece of Fast & Furious—where an oil theft quickly turns into a downhill disaster race with an explosive ending that would put the Mythbusters out of business—establishes the tone early. The secret identities, sudden deaths, swapping allegiances, and revenge plotting that follow solidifies the series as a muscle car soap opera. [Jacob Oller]
Alien Resurrection
Much like Halloween, the Alien movies had no choice but to reset things after Alien 3. David Fincher’s pitch-black third Alien was not only rejected by the moviegoing public in 1992, but it also killed off the main character, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). Five years later, Fox needed her back for the first junk-food Alien movie, Alien Resurrection. Reformulating the series to be far more fun and far less gothic than Fincher’s troubled sequel, the studiobrought in Delicatessen and Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet for a decidedly more European and less intensely horrific approach. More garish and gleeful than previous installments, the movie’s best idea literalizes the eternal bond between Ripley and Alien, turning Ripley into a clone birthed with a bit of Xeno DNA. As a result, this new Ripley was a superhero with Alien strength and incredible free-throw skills, creating a different character altogether. It also cheapened the series, opening the door for mediocre movies like Alien Vs. Predator and Romulus to Face Hug the series into submission. However, it also allowed the Alien films to be something they had never been: A lot of fun, hitting the chestburster and secret android beats with more excitement than previous entries. Resurrection aims to please and even ends with a teaser for something fans have wanted ever since: the Xenomorph on Earth. While an Alien: Earth TV show is imminent, Resurrection would be the last time the series bothered with Ripley, and the series has been trapped in a reboot loop ever since. [Matt Schimkowitz]
The Matrix Resurrections
Like a surprising number of fourth films, 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections is a movie that’s at least partially interested in the ways that endings don’t really exist. (Not even dying in a full Machine Messiah Christ pose can save you from the post-saving-the-world midlife crisis, turns out.) Directed, in a solo effort, by Lana Wachowski, the over-stuffed, somewhat shaggy, but philosophically energetic franchise return sees Keanu Reeves’ Neo once again trapped in both The Matrix, and the life of Thomas Anderson, a video game designer stuck endlessly designing… The Matrix. Building on ideas of synthesis and coexistence that bubbled up out of the original film’s brutal zero-sum game in its two previous sequels, Wachowski cranks the series’ emotional volume to maximum, reasserting The Matrix as a love story that’s also a parable about self-discovery. Unfortunately, Resurrections falls down, perhaps inevitably, in its duties as the return to one of the most era-defining action movies of the late 1990s, the original movie’s extraordinary stuntwork getting (ironically) subsumed into digitally rendered sludge. But as a film that exists in reaction to the original trilogy, as much as an effort to continue it, it’s at least a movie on a mission: The rare fourth movie that exists because its creator had something she desperately wanted to say, and not just mounting bills to pay. [William Hughes]
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
There’s a before The Phantom Menace and an after. Though there are some elements of the original trilogy that don’t land with every Star Wars fan, they’re a contained and cohesive set of movies that tell a complete story. But, given that the original trilogy’s films were (eventually) billed as Episodes IV, V, and VI, there was an understanding that there was more to discover in the galaxy. It wasn’t until 1999 that moviegoers got a taste of just how much more was out there. At its best, The Phantom Menace expands the Star Wars film universe in really cool ways. The combination of money, technology, and clout that brought forth a planet like Naboo, for example, is pretty stunning. But a lot of the worst elements of the subsequent Disney shows and movies took off here. Plots can be contrived, because connecting back to the story everyone already knows is a priority. An overreliance on CGI backgrounds leads to a ton of stationary scenes. And The Phantom Menace reopened the story with such financial success that the saga may never be closed again. [Drew Gillis]
X-Men: First Class
In an era of superhero fatigue, audiences grow weary of seeing the same origin stories over and over again. But X-Men: First Class struck the right balance, revitalizing and resetting the mutant franchise by re-focusing on the friendship between Charles Xavier (a.k.a. Professor X) and Erik Lehnsherr (a.k.a. Magneto). The chemistry between James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender launched a new X-Men era (and thousands of fanfictions), and the film boasted a young cast that would go on to become some of the biggest names of their generation (Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz). That it was a period piece worked to refresh and reset the series, giving audiences a greater understanding of the mutant world and adding depth to the characters (seeing Erik’s backstory as a Holocaust survivor, for instance, humanized the villain of the original trilogy). This reset was successful enough that the younger cast stuck around for three more films, to diminishing returns—though it was fun to see how the studio interweaved the original trilogy and the new (old) generation. [Mary Kate Carr]
