Probably John Wick. I love the movies but the most impressive thing about them is that they were able to take a relatively straight forward revenge action movie and turn it into one of the most consistent film series currently on the market. I can't imagine the filmmakers expected to be making sequels to that movie several years down the road.
At one point.
watching part 3, my youngest son (who hadn’t seen the first two and just happened to grab a seat while I was watching the last installment) turned to me and asked, “this all started because someone killed his dog 3 movies ago”?
Mad Max. I've grown to appreciate the original over time, but upon initial viewing I couldn't believe it spawned the sequels that it did (I saw parts 2 and 3 before the original).
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Greg Oden: The future of the Blazers. The future of the NBA.
Very good choice. That's quite the plot premise summary by your son, Riv. It really did escalate drastically because of a doggy.
I'd throw the "Before" trilogy in there (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight). Richard Linklater placing the same actors as the same characters in movies released 9 years apart in real life and in-universe is pretty meta.
Also, I'll put The Matrix on here. The first movie's ending is one of the best in film history period, with Neo now able to fly and leaving it up to the viewer to imagine he and the humans continuing quest to stop the machines. Like the turning point in a war with one side gaining some serious momentum and a Superman-like advantage.
While I liked both the sequels as both technical marvels and storytelling efforts (The Animatrix helped flesh out the world-building substantially as well), I wouldn't have thought as a kid in 1999 that I'd be seeing not one but TWO Matrix sequels just four years later.
Because the second movie was objectively awful. Tried watching it recently, and just could not do it.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
I'd be disappointed if they'd never released a Terminator movie based on the future though, like we only got flashes of it in 1 and 2. Were they good movies? No, but I'm glad they exist.
I'll still watch The Phantom Menace over and over for that matter.