Prequel movies are notoriously difficult to pull off, especially if fans of the original movies never wanted them in the first place. While a prequel can provide some interesting backstory about characters, the stakes often seem lower, because audiences know roughly how they’re going to end.

Only the best prequels can bring some new ideas to the story which justify their existence, whether they subtly change the original movies or act as exciting standalone stories. It usually helps if the audience is already on board with the basic premise, although this is rather rare.

10

Cruella (2021)

Cruella Is Already A Great Villain Without Her Origin Story

Cruella de Vil is one of Disney’s best animated villains, but this doesn’t mean anyone was desperate to find out about her early years trying to break into the тιԍнт-knit world of haute couture. It’s a credit to the cast and Craig Gillespie that there are still elements which make the prequel worthwhile despite its unappetizing premise.

Cruella makes a few strange missteps in its origin story. It probably wasn’t necessary to try and humanize the villain by explaining that her mother was killed by some dalmatians. This detail is like a weak parody of the tragic villain trope, and it’s symbolic of the jarring tonal shift between animation and live-action.

9

Mufasa: The Lion King (2024)

The Lion King Prequel Captures The Divisive Reputation Of Disney’s Live-Action Remakes

Disney’s live-action remakes have been rather controversial, with many fans of the animated originals claiming that there’s no need for remakes other than commercial gain. The Lion King sums up this debate, as it earned mixed reviews and negative comparisons to the original, but it made over $1 billion at the box office.

Mufasa: The Lion King sees Disney doubling down on their live-action remakes, just like Cruella. It’s another story that fans of The Lion King largely didn’t care to see, but it’s another box office success that suggests the critical response to the movie isn’t something Disney are too concerned with.

8

The Scorpion King (2002)

The Mummy Spinoff Came Out Of Nowhere

There are plenty of great characters in the Mummy movies, but Mathayus wasn’t high on anyone’s list for their own spinoff movie. The Scorpion King continued the critical decline of the franchise, and it also failed to come close to the level of commercial success that the main series of Mummy movies enjoyed.

The Scorpion King gave Dwayne Johnson his first lead role. Perhaps it’s cynical to suggest that this was the motivation behind the prequel, but there certainly wasn’t much necessity in the story for The Scorpion King. Nevertheless, it developed into a franchise of its own, with more sequels than The Mummy.

7

The King’s Man (2021)

The Kingsman Franchise Brought Its Momentum To A Halt

After The Secret Service and The Golden Circle, the Kingsman franchise was set up for a bright future, but the tepid reaction to The King’s Man has put any further sequels on ice for the time being. The prequel travels 100 years into the past to follow the foundation of the Kingsman agency amid the chaos of the First World War.

The King’s Man received much worse reviews than either of the franchise’s two previous movies, with a contrived, fanciful plot that bogged down a few promising action scenes. It was also a box office flop, meaning that the bizarre post-credits sequel tease of Adolf Hitler entering the picture could be left hanging.

6

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Star Wars Has Enough Prequels

Since the original trilogy, the Star Wars franchise has been referencing itself in everything that it does. The tangled timeline includes several movies and TV shows which take place before A New Hope, starting with the divisive prequel trilogy. Some of these are great, but Solo: A Star Wars Story is an example of an unnecessary addition to the canon.

The Disney era of the franchise created one brilliant prequel with Rogue One, but fans weren’t asking for Han Solo’s origin story. One problem is that it’s impossible to replace Harrison Ford’s charms, and that’s no slight to Alden Ehrenreich. Han Solo is also a better character when he maintains an air of mystery. The upcoming Star Wars movies feature a balance of new stories and more prequels.

5

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Max Rockatansky Barely Features In The Prequel

After the explosive return of the Mad Max franchise with 2015’s Fury Road, fans were keen to see more from George Miller. In the end, it took nine years for another movie to materialize, and it wasn’t exactly what fans were hoping for. Charlize Theron’s Furiosa is a great character, but not many people wanted a prequel about her early life with a different actor.

Had things panned out differently, it’s possible that fans would have gotten the Mad Max sequel they were hoping for, with Tom Hardy reprising his role. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga‘s poor box office performance proves that it was seen as a disappointing consolation prize. Despite this, it earned positive reviews.

4

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

The Prequel Robs The Franchise Of One Of Its Great Strengths

A Quiet Place became an instant sensation when it was first released, but Day One is an unwarranted prequel that slightly dampens the original. One of the great strengths of A Quiet Place and its sequel is the intelligent worldbuilding, and the way the audience is suddenly dropped into an unsettling world. Day One wipes away a lot of this clever mystery.

A Quiet Place Part III will eventually return the franchise to the main story, which marks Day One as an unnecessary detour. The prequel performed worse at the box office and worse with critics, although the odds were stacked against it from the beginning, since fans would have rather seen a third movie right away.

3

The Thing (2011)

The Thing Was A Stealth Remake Of A Classic

John Carpenter’s The Thing is the kind of movie that should never be remade, but Universal Pictures gave the green light to a prequel that rehashes a lot of moments from the original. 2011’s The Thing takes place just before the events of Carpenter’s film, with the final scene leading directly into the opening of the 1982 original.

2011’s The Thing comes across as a pale imitation of a true sci-fi classic, and its reputation has constantly suffered from negative comparisons to the original. There was no need for a sequel or prequel of any kind to The Thing, especially not one with a lack of originality.

2

Hannibal Rising (2007)

Hannibal Lecter’s Origin Story Didn’t Need To Be Told

Hannibal Rising attempts to provide a backstory for one of cinema’s most iconic bad guys, but it tries to make him surprisingly sympathetic in the process. The idea that the cannibalistic serial killer started out as a Nazi hunter adds a layer of moral dubiousness that doesn’t fit with anything that had previously been written about the character.

Hannibal Rising suffered dismal reviews and a disappointing box office performance, proving that audiences weren’t particularly excited for more of Hannibal Lecter’s backstory. The TV show Hannibal, starring Mads Mikkelsen, is a much more interesting prequel, proving that the concept could have worked with a different execution.

1

Monsters University (2013)

Monsters Inc. Should Have Had A Sequel Instead

Monsters Inc. is one of Pixar’s best movies, but the studio has had a hit-and-miss record with sequels and prequels. While the Toy Story movies have gone from strength to strength, sequels like Finding Dory and Incredibles 2 never quite lived up to the high standards of the originals. Monsters University is the same, but it was probably doomed from the start.

Over a decade pᴀssed between Monsters Inc. and its prequel, but the second movie didn’t do much to justify its existence. There are some great jokes here and there, but the story is much less interesting than the original, and the college setting lowers the stakes. Pixar’s canceled sequel idea would have seen Mike and Sully traveling through a door to the human world, which probably would have been more entertaining.