Sequels That Disregarded Key Scenes From The Original Movies
It seems we're getting more movie sequels than ever these days. After all, who wants to bother with getting acquainted with whole new characters, when most of us can't even bother to leave the house to meet new flesh-and-blood humans? But some of these sequels apparently think audiences are dum-dums who forgot all about what happened in the preceding movies. Like how ...
Terminator: Dark Fate -- Shouldn't Everyone Know What The T-800 Looks Like?
Even after terminating every post-T2 sequel, Terminator: Dark Fate somehow found a way to make a confusing franchise even more confusing. Skynet is now "Legion," the timeline is totally different, and John Connor gets shot in the face like five minutes after the last movie ended. Most baffling is "Carl," the T-800 who bumped off John and decades later now runs ... a drapery business? Oh, and he has a wife, because Terminators have working robo-dicks now.
What They Forgot About:
There's only one problem with all this. OK, there are many, many problems, but specifically, it ignores a key plot thread from T2. After the T-800 saves John from the T-1000 in a shopping mall shootout, the police understandably take notice. They also make the connection that this hulking sunglasses-clad Austrian is the same dude who laid waste to a police station back in 1984. We even see the cops questioning Sarah Connor about him.
That's two public shootings this guy is responsible for, and they both happened on camera. In Dark Fate, Sarah casually mentions that there's an episode of America's Most Wanted about her, so in all likelihood, there's probably an entire Netflix docuseries about the Terminator's murder sprees. But despite the fact that he's a wanted criminal, the extremely conspicuous Carl was somehow able to lead a quiet family life in rural Texas, where no one noticed that their drapes guy is a futuristic killing machine.
Related: 5 Sequel Plots That Retroactively Ruin The Previous Movies
Spider-Man: Far From Home Negates Multiple Tony Stark Character Arcs
Spider-Man: Far From Home finds Peter Parker mourning the death of Tony Stark, his mentor, friend, and guy who kept relentlessly hitting on his aunt. While a spare few million might come in handy for Peter's cash-strapped family, instead Tony bequeaths him a pair of glasses that control "E.D.I.T.H." an insanely elaborate global drone system. Which kind of seems like a terrible thing to give to a high-schooler, supported by the fact that Peter nearly blows up an entire bus full of kids with his new gizmo.
What They Forgot About:
This is the first time we learn that Tony has thousands of attack drones in satellites orbiting Earth, which completely undercuts all those lessons he supposedly learned in previous movies. In the first Iron Man, Tony puts a stop to his weapons manufacturing business after witnessing its damage firsthand. Then in Iron Man 3, a traumatized Tony can't stop making Iron Man suits, which he eventually realizes is just a new form of weaponry that can also be exploited by his enemies. So he blows them all up.
We've seen Tony come to the realization that massive arsenals can easily fall into the wrong hands, and are therefore a bad idea, multiple times. So it's more than a little questionable that he would secretly be harboring the most pants-wettingly destructive weapon system in human history. And that he would casually hand it over to a teenager with less instruction than you get with an IKEA bookcase. Peter in turn hands it over to a dude he barely knows in a bar. It's too bad none of these characters could have watched Iron Man first.
Related: 5 Sequels That Ruined The Original Movie's Point
Doctor Sleep -- How Exactly Are People Driving To The Overlook?
The exciting climax of The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep finds Dan Torrance and his new pal Abra fleeing the evil Rose the Hat -- who, despite being an immortal psychic vampire, got her nickname from a goddamn top hat, for some reason. Danny wants to lure Rose to the Overlook Hotel, because ... well, it's not super clear, but it sure would be disappointing if they didn't at least pop by, wouldn't it? So Danny and Abra drive to the Overlook. During winter. In a car.
What They Forgot About:
The reason The Shining is a horror movie and not a nudity-filled ski resort comedy is that the Overlook Hotel is closed during the wintertime. That's why Jack Torrance was hired to be the live-in caretaker; it was too darn expensive to plow the mountain roads in order to make the hotel accessible through the snow.
Doctor Sleep painstakingly recreated the Overlook sets, but they couldn't throw in one line of dialogue explaining why the famously perilous roads are easily handled by a mid-sized sedan? Dick Halloran had to rent a Snowcat to get up there; he didn't just swing by a Toyota dealership. Most oddly, in Doctor Sleep, it looks as though the roads have been plowed. But the Overlook is abandoned, so who's bothering to clear the way for it? The Grady twins? Did one of the spooky bartenders get demoted to snow and ice removal?
Related: 5 Sequels That Introduce Huge Plotholes To The Originals
Dark Phoenix Hopes You Don't Remember The Ending Of X-Men: Apocalypse
The X-Men movies are obviously full of a lot of weird discrepancies; from the characters' fluctuating ages to inconsistent mutant powers to the fact that so many X-Men seem to be dead inside, as if Professor X has them locked into an unfulfilling contract they can't escape. But the recent Dark Phoenix apparently expected audiences to forget not just the X-nonsense from the early 2000s, but the events of the previous movie.
In the opening of Dark Phoenix, Jean Grey and the rest of the X-Folks head to outer space to save a bunch of astronauts. Jean comes into contact with the "Phoenix Force," an alien phenomenon that gives her a bunch of crazy murder powers. Disappointingly, it's shaped like a "flaming raptor" and not Joaquin.
What They Forgot About:
In the end of X-Men: Apocalypse, Jean lets her powers loose to defeat the titular villain, played by an Oscar Isaac seemingly on his way to a Power Rangers convention. In doing so, a fiery phoenix shape appears around her.
But Apocalypse is set a decade earlier. So if Jean hadn't come into contact with the Phoenix Force yet, what the hell is happening in this scene? Is it a different power that coincidentally has the same motif? It's as if Apocalypse never happened. Which, come to think of it, is probably how everyone involved would like to keep things.
The Mandalorian -- Carbon Freezing Was A Darth Vader Thing, Not A Boba Fett Thing
Before it became The Baby Yoda & Friends Fun Hour, the first episode of The Mandalorian was just about a bounty hunter going about his business. In the opening scenes, Mando captures a blue sea monkey man and freeze him in carbonite.
Mando's ship is full of people frozen this way, which presumably takes up more storage space but means dealing with fewer pesky bathroom breaks.
What They Forgot About:
This is obviously a callback to that time Han Solo was frozen in carbonite so Boba Fett could transport him to Jabba the Hutt's palace. But while The Mandalorian makes it seem as though this is something bounty hunters do on a regular basis, that's not how it went down in The Empire Strikes Back. There, Darth Vader wanted to freeze Luke in order to take to the Emperor, presumably because Luke is strong in the Force (and again, bathroom breaks). They only freeze Han as a test run to make sure the process won't liquefy Luke's organs.
Even Fett, a man who wears a fully operational jetpack indoors, thinks it's a risky idea.
And it's a reasonable concern, seeing as Bespin's facilities are used to freeze gas, not handsome space smugglers. There's even an episode of Clone Wars in which Obi-Wan and Anakin freeze themselves in order to sneak into a prison, which retroactively explains where Vader got the idea. Of course, it's possible that Fett's successful experience with carbon freezing got a write-up in the local mercenary newsletter, and now every bounty hunter post-Return Of The Jedi encases their targets in large coffee tables for long journeys.
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