10 of the best movie prequels

At any time when a brand new film prequel is introduced, even the core viewers that beloved the unique work typically responds with a convincing ugh. Who can blame anybody for dismissing out of hand the advertising and marketing formulation that gave us 2007’s Hannibal Rising, 1979’s Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, or 2004’s Exorcist: The Starting? Prequels inform tales the place the tip has been predetermined, typically with out beloved key actors, prompting unflattering comparisons to inimitable classics. (Like what occurred with the Star Wars prequel motion pictures.)

However as soon as in an extended whereas, prequels can even inform new tales that experiment with stylistic shifts and new characters. At their greatest, they’ll deepen an present story, or supply extra dimension and perception into acquainted characters. (Like what occurred with… the Star Wars prequel motion pictures.)

Prequels have turn out to be an excessively acquainted go-to transfer for anybody hoping to reverse-engineer successful. However possibly the shape has gotten a foul rap. A great prequel might be an escape hatch from dead-end sequels and tangled continuity. Generally they’re simply baggage-shedding enjoyable. With that in thoughts, let’s take a look at 10 prequel motion pictures that truly are surprisingly value your time.

A couple of floor guidelines: No Star Wars motion pictures, as a result of at this level, almost half the Star Wars characteristic movies in existence are prequels, and so they’ve been mentioned to dying. Additionally out: alternate-timeline reboots (just like the 2009 Star Trek), retellings with ambiguous relationships to earlier movies (like Rise of the Planet of the Apes or the 2006 James Bond film On line casino Royale), and films set years earlier than an iconic unique movie, however with no specific narrative or character connection to the sooner movie (just like the Predator prequel Prey). In different phrases, we’re protecting it difficult! You may say Surprise Lady is technically a prequel to Batman v. Superman as a result of it comes earlier than it in the identical continuity, however that isn’t actually what Surprise Lady is doing on a story degree. Right here, however, are 10 pure prequel motion pictures that show leaping again in a narrative doesn’t should be a doomed, last-ditch effort.

The Starvation Video games: Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)

Picture: Lionsgate

Director: Francis Lawrence
The place to look at: Presently in theatrical launch

Has there been a 21st-century movie collection as efficiently constructed round a single star because the Starvation Video games motion pictures are constructed round Jennifer Lawrence? The unique Starvation Video games film quadrilogy includes a stacked solid of Oscar nominees, however Lawrence’s steely resolve sells the humanity behind the world-building. So how the hell does a Starvation Video games prequel handle with out Katniss Everdeen?

Songbirds & Snakes makes the try by shifting character focus, turning the villain (President Snow, beforehand performed by Donald Sutherland) right into a handsome, younger pre-fascist, caught between a corrupt establishment and extra idealistic associates, and falling for an irresistibly feisty brunette. (Sound acquainted? It’s the Assault of the Clones method.) Whereas Suzanne Collins’ books and Lawrence’s efficiency gave Katniss a directness and aversion to artifice that made her a compelling and unwilling Tribute, Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) and his Starvation Video games mentee Lucy Grey Baird (Rachel Zegler) have extra sophisticated, much less clear-eyed relationships with their respective worlds — and with one another. That provides a component of unpredictability to a narrative whose final ending has already been dramatized.

Circling again to clarify how sure elements of collection lore developed in-world generally is a dangerous, hardcore-fans-only technique, so it’s all of the extra spectacular that The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is by turns brutal (for a PG-13 fantasy) and entertainingly daft. (At some factors, it resembles a musical.) It’s additionally notable that the film, maybe owing to its literary supply materials, doesn’t tease an entire world of prequels, sequels, and spinoffs, even when some followers will hope for them anyway. The e book and film merely inform a compelling, typically haunting story that feels full even in its ambiguities. In that means, it even outdoes its predecessors, none of which had been anticipated to face alone the identical means.

Pearl (2022)

Photograph: Christopher Moss/A24

Director: Ti West
The place to look at: Showtime, Paramount Plus

Figuring out the complete backstory of Pearl, the aged killer who picks off the solid and crew of a porn film in Ti West’s superior slasher X, can diminish the way in which X evokes a lifetime of thwarted goals. However at the least West and his star Mia Goth got here by Pearl’s story actually: Whereas quarantining previous to filming X in 2021, they wound up understanding a personality historical past and accompanying screenplay, capturing this companion prequel on the fly alongside the unique movie.

That explains why Pearl looks like a bit extra of a low-key inventive train in comparison with the totally developed X — however what an train! Pearl pulls from 1950s Technicolor melodramas, its Silent Period interval setting, and its standing as a up to date pandemic manufacturing, all tied along with Goth’s fierce efficiency. It avoids killing X’s vibe as a result of Pearl by no means feels particularly opportunistic: It’s a prequel that stays true to its conception as an inventive experiment.

Orphan: First Kill (2022)

Photograph: Steve Ackerman/Paramount Photos

Director: William Brent Bell
The place to look at: Prime Video, Paramount Plus

Orphan: First Kill is undoubtedly cheaper-looking than the slick 2009 unique. It additionally has a counterintuitive reversal worthy of Benjamin Button: Whereas the primary film has then-tween Isabelle Fuhrman taking part in just a little woman who’s secretly a murderous grown girl with proportional dwarfism, the 2022 prequel makes use of digital camera methods and good old style nice appearing to have now-adult Fuhrman play the identical character when she’s imagined to look even youthful.

Orphan: First Kill makes use of the viewers’s presumed information of the primary film’s wild twist as a distraction, unleashing a second, unrelated however sensible twist upon a seemingly easy story that has Esther (Fuhrman) claiming to be the long-missing daughter of a well-to-do suburban couple. It’s a too-rare case of a horror prequel taking part in higher — cleverer, weirder, extra daring — for viewers who hold the unique’s triumphs in thoughts.

300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

Picture: Warner Bros/Everett Assortment

Director: Noam Munro
The place to look at: DirecTV; streaming rental

Following up Zack Snyder’s influential megahit 300 was at all times a idiot’s errand, one particularly unlikely to succeed with out Snyder directing or Gerard Butler starring. (On reflection, it appears wonderful that this seven-years-later prequel made it previous the $100 million mark on the field workplace primarily on branding alone.) That mentioned, possibly idiot’s errands would have a greater repute if extra of them featured Eva Inexperienced.

In 300: Rise of an Empire, Inexperienced performs Artemisia, naval officer and secret architect of an ongoing battle between the Greeks and the Persians. For Inexperienced, that entails kissing a severed head on the lips, carrying a shiny gown whereas occupying a boat-throne, and having tough recruitment intercourse with the enemy. (She even will get a mini-prequel-within-the-prequel to clarify her origin story.) Her movie-star vitality could make the remainder of the film dim by comparability (the Snyder-knockoff battlescapes had better exploitation-movie kick within the movie’s 3-D theatrical launch), however that is smart — she dominates the unique 300 in the identical means.

Prometheus (2012)

Picture: 20th Century Fox/Everett Assortment

Director: Ridley Scott
The place to look at: Streaming rental

George Lucas should have felt lots much less lonely within the decade following the tip of his Star Wars prequel trilogy, as a bunch of administrators beloved of surly Gen-X males, like Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings) and the Wachowskis (The Matrix), made their very own ill-regarded prequels and sequels. In 2012, it was Ridley Scott’s flip to make an underappreciated prequel to his sci-fi traditional Alien. Like one other movie on this checklist, Prometheus feels meaner than its predecessor. (Although Alien: Covenant, additionally good however much less of a prequel, is even nastier).

That alone looks like a refreshing rejection of the fan service prequels typically characterize. The film itself has a menacing, horrible grandeur, utilizing xenomorph-related imagery and mythology to discover the concept of creations and creators pitted towards one another in an inconceivable wrestle.

X-Males: First Class (2011)

Photograph: Murray Shut/20th Century Fox

Director: Matthew Vaughn
The place to look at: Starz

You realize what’s worse than a prequel? A film swiftly reconfigured as a trilogy-capper, towards all proof on the contrary. The X-Males comics comprise huge numbers of characters and tales for potential adaptation, but for some cause, Fox hedged its bets with X-Males: The Final Stand, positioning it as an abbreviated grand finale that killed off main characters abruptly, handled well-known storylines carelessly, then cravenly left just a few doorways ajar for the longer term sequels the studio gave the impression to be spurning.

So it was a blessed reduction (and, on the time, shock) that the mainline X-Males collection went into prequel mode as a substitute, with this fashionable, zippy interval story about how Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) met as younger males within the 1960s and shaped an early iteration of the superhero group.

X-Males: First Class supplied a badly wanted reset for the franchise, not by way of timeline (Days of Future Previous tried that just a few years later), however in kind, casting apart varied Canadian places in favor of a globetrotting James Bond-esque fantasy. It felt capricious to swerve the story right into a prequel world, however the method let the X-Males collection open up an entire new avenue, leading to the most effective superhero motion pictures of the trendy period.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

Picture: Display screen Gems/Everett Assortment

Director: Patrick Tatopoulos
The place to look at: AMC Plus

On paper, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans represents the whole lot mistaken with prequels. It jettisons the charismatic star of the primary two motion pictures, Kate Beckinsale, to retell a narrative the sooner motion pictures coated in mere minutes of exposition. On this case, it’s a historic rundown on the werewolf rebellion that led to a generations-long battle between werewolves and vampires.

But returning to the origin of the werewolf-vampire battles lends Rise of the Lycans a medieval-fantasy kick; it’s pulpier, lustier, and extra all-around entertaining than another Underworld entry, and one which greatest fulfills the lizard-brained promise of supernatural creatures in love and at battle.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Picture: Paramount Photos/Everett Assortment

Director: Steven Spielberg
The place to look at: Disney Plus, Paramount Plus

Numerous people first heard the time period “prequel” in reference to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, one of many highest-profile pure prequels that had but been launched in 1984. At first, it feels unusual that Spielberg and Lucas bothered situating this film earlier than Raiders of the Misplaced Ark. It’s not as if the primary movie had such a neatly resolved pleased ending that it precluded additional adventures, and Indiana Jones’ nature suggests his complete life is a collection of adventures. The rationale it is smart for Temple of Doom to happen earlier than Raiders seems to be what delay some audiences. (Not completely; there’s additionally the racism.)

Because it seems, it is a meaner film, with a extra callous Dr. Jones pursuing “fortune and glory,” bickering with a woman, and repeatedly endangering his youngster sidekick. Anybody who felt they had been acclimated to Indiana Jones’ rhythms may nonetheless be thrown off: Temple of Doom is grosser, extra violent, and eclectic sufficient to accommodate a James Bond homage, a musical quantity, and a literal rollercoaster experience. Aside from its racial insensitivity (which can understandably not be straightforward for a lot of viewers to hurdle), it’s nonetheless essentially the most fascinating and best-crafted of the 4 post-Raiders Indy motion pictures.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Picture: 20th Century Fox/Everett Assortment

Director: J. Lee Thompson
The place to look at: Starz

The unique Planet of the Apes collection is so depending on time-travel that you can declare it doesn’t comprise any true prequels, simply tales kicked into gear by a possible temporal paradox. That feels more true of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, although, than it does for Conquest, which dramatizes the story of ape oppression and rebellion that finally leads into the 1968 unique.

The primary wave of Apes motion pictures notoriously decreased in finances with every entry, however director J. Lee Thompson stretches his sources impressively far on this fourth installment, creating an evocative future metropolis that will get completely and satisfyingly trashed by the apes resisting slavery to humanity. Generally truly witnessing the watershed occasion from a movie collection’ lore is as highly effective and thrilling because it’s imagined to be.

The Good, the Dangerous and the Ugly (1966)

Picture: Everett Assortment

Director: Sergio Leone
The place to look at: Streaming rental

The shocking half about this one isn’t the standard — the third in Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Title” trilogy is an acknowledged traditional. However how typically is the third film in a trilogy the most effective one, and the way typically is a 3rd film in a trilogy set completely earlier than its predecessors?

It appears unlikely that the intent was so as to add backstory to Clint Eastwood’s anonymous character (right here nicknamed “Blondie”), even when the film does present him buying his iconic poncho. Leone most likely simply wished to set his three-hour epic throughout the Civil Warfare, permitting for extra epic sweep than the comparably smaller post-war tales of A Fistful of {Dollars} and For a Few {Dollars} Extra. That call offers The Good, the Dangerous and the Ugly some further weight with out sacrificing his stylizations.

If something, these go even additional than the movie’s predecessors, with close-ups, exaggerated views, and drawn-out confrontations galore. However having the movie’s trio of gunslingers (Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef) repeatedly crossing via the continued wreckage of the Civil Warfare on their competing quests for graveyard treasure offers the story a way of real-life scale that additionally makes their violence appear small in comparison with the mindless slaughter round them.