It’s long been held as moviegoing gospel that “sequels are never as good as their originals.” When Rotten Tomatoes arrived on the scene, we were able to prove that to be true—with data to back us up. There are rare examples of superior follow-ups, of course: many consider The Godfather: Part II to be better than The Godfather: Part I (though the Tomatometer gives the edge to the original by a single percentage point), and Sami Raimi’s superhero masterpiece Spider-Man 2 earned a Certified Fresh 93% on the Tomatometer, beating the director’s acclaimed first Spider-Man movie by 3%. More frequently, though, precipitous drop-offs are the order of the day. Critics often slap sequels around for carbon-copying their predecessors, failing to recapture a first film’s magic, or for trying to do too much (even Raimi would fall into this final trap with his barely Fresh third Spider-Man movie). The Rotten movies in this chapter are guilty of some of these sequel sins—Rocky IV, about which critic Amy Nicholson writes, is guilty of all of them and truly wonderful because of it—but we’re willing to forgive and even embrace them. Each, in its own way, does something to mark itself as more than just a retread: some take risks, like hot-footing it to Japan with an entirely new cast of characters (we’re looking at you, Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift), and some take truly bizarre turns (remember the mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes?). Some make seemingly simple switches (a gender swap in Grease 2, a change of location for Home Alone 2: Lost In New York), managing to find new charms in gently tweaked conceits. They may not be Fresh, and most have achieved a certain “reputation,” but their franchises are all the richer (and weirder and wilder) for having them in the mix.