Following up a successful movie with a sequel is a tough proposition for any writer or director, and it’s often the case that such follow-ups fail to recreate the magic of their predecessors. But sometimes, sequels can offer a different yet entertaining experience of their own, and it’s even possible that, if they didn’t happen to share the same name as an earlier hit film, they might even have been better received.

This article’s dedicated to a few of these kinds of films. They offer lots of excitement, comedy, jolts of terror and a smattering of great performances, and might have fared better with audiences and critics had they not been sequels. At the very least, they attempted to do something a little different than the films they followed. While other examples undeniably remain, here are a few of our favourites…

Die Hard 4.0

Die Hard 4.0, or Live Free And Die Hard as it was known in the States, is an unimpressive Die Hard film. It feels like it’s Bruce Willis at the heart of it rather than the character of John McClane, and in that sense, it also feels like a break from the three films beforehand.

But still: for the first half at least, there’s a fun action movie in the midst of Len Wiseman’s film. There’s an argument that Wiseman’s Total Recall movie was quite good in its first half too, when the story was being set up and before the excesses kicked in. In the case of Die Hard 4.0, Wiseman frames a few good action sequences (they’re certainly a mile better than anything in A Good Day To Die Hard), and puts the pieces in place for a decent techno thriller.