A Helpful Guide to Not Ruining Cult Movie Sequels

I have, both fortunately and unfortunately, been alive long enough to witness nearly every single one of our favorite films and TV shows, otherwise only semi-accurately described as camp cult classics, be ruined by every major production studio… and their inability resist the money-hungry urge to eke out every last cent they can from the nostalgia-pilled masses. (Rather than, you know, create something original.) Optimists might say: “Nicole and Sandra are back! Surely, they will save it!” To this, a sensible person would respond: both of them have already participated in absolutely abysmal sequels and reboots of their own.

Both Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, starring Bullock, and Bewitched, starring Kidman, take the magic of the original IP and grind it up to produce nothing short of vaguely visually similar garbage. I will omit Kidman’s The Stepford Wives here only because of a truly iconic performance by Glenn Close. The other two are slop meant to appease the masses. Slop through which even the faintest cries of Gracie Lou Freebush’s wit and brilliance can’t be heard over the cacophony of bad jokes and pallid references to the original Miss Congeniality.

Were an entire cast’s returning enough to save a sequel, Hollywood wouldn’t have found itself drowning in such failures as Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, Hocus Pocus 2, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, And Just Like That…, or Will and Grace. Sure, the leads are back, but are they really? No, no, they’re not. And neither is the magic.

Of course, the failure of revivals can’t just be blamed on actors slotting back into their original roles, because total reboots have seemingly been complete messes over the last decade. See: 2020's The Witches, 2018's Charmed, 2011's direct-to-TV movie Mean Girls 2 and the 2024 wide-release movie-musical Mean Girls. The list could, no doubt, go on.

Two bright spots amongst all of this darkness are much further back: Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. Both sequels, both retaining most of the original cast while also adding a few perfectly placed new characters. You can’t really go wrong casting ‘90s Lauryn Hill or any-time Demi Moore. Both manage to capture the sublime absurdity of the originals while pushing their respective stories to new heights. So how was it that these two movies escaped the fate of their peers? They believed in their audience and told critics to fuck off.

Naturally, the perfect legacy of Charlie’s Angels and Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle would later be tainted by the 2019 reboot starring Kristen Stewart, who would later admit to hating the film herself.

None of these movies for and about women ever feel critically acclaimed when they premiere — largely because I see the critics themselves as idiots. (They are also misogynists.) TIME lambasted Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette when it premiered, before naming it one of the best movies of the past 10 decades in 2023. Practical Magic was eviscerated in the press. Legally Blonde was initially written off as candied fluff with a decent leading lady, just as it was with Charlie’s Angels and Sister Act.

But the latter two, rather than cowering to critics when it came time for the inevitable sequels, doubled down on their antics and believed in the intelligence of their audience.

Rather than turning their leading ladies into caricatures of themselves — the entire plot of Legally Blonde 2 is beneath Elle Woods — they let them tell the jokes, rather than turning them into jokes. In Legally Blonde, we believed Elle could get into Harvard, arrive for her first day in a fuchsia faux-leather pencil skirt (with a matching faux-fur collar-lined jacket), and eventually find herself victorious while solo-litigating a high-profile homicide case before a jury thanks to a generation's worth of Cosmo-girl know-how and newly found legal expertise. That we are then expected to accept the woman stomping around in an affronting barrage of terribly placed barrettes while haphazardly arguing an animal cruelty case through a script flatter than her hair, as the same Elle Woods in the sequel is as insulting to the character as it is to the audience.

Rather than resuscitating Miranda Hobbes and turning her into a lesbian struggling with critical race theory, let’s let her stay closeted in Brooklyn with Steve and find a new story to tell.

Undoubtedly, fans of other genres of film have also experienced this devastating phenomenon. Every day, it seems, there’s a new superhero slogfest or dinosaur movie sequel or galactic soap opera that has men unleashing their inner demons; that is none of my business. They deserve such torture, but the girls and gays don’t! We deserve sequels and reboots that understand the beauty of the originals — we deserve to grow old with our favorite things without having them ruined years later. We deserve an end to the incessant rehashing of what was, and to allow new titans to enter the canon. Maybe straight men do too, but again, that is none of my business.

It isn’t any fun to live life this way. I would much rather keep my head in the clouds and pretend to be one of those people who say things like: “Just let people enjoy things!” But when the thing in question is undeniable slop, there is only so much slop one can consume before their head is pulled out of the clouds.

Presently, there’s no telling when a dam will finally be erected around the torrent of reboots and sequels. In the coming years, we have Practical Magic 2, Legally Blonde 3, and The Devil Wears Prada 2 to contend with, and those are just the ones that are confirmed. (When Variety reported a potential Family Stone sequel being discussed following the death of Diane Keaton, I wanted to close my laptop forever.) And while the newly released official The Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer elicited the same deluge of texts from the girls and the gays as the Practical Magic 2 announcement did, I have reservations. The girls (including Stanley Tucci) are back. But is the script as whip smart? To be sure, the Miranda-does-n’t-remember-who-Andy-is bit ran its full course in the span of the trailer’s one minute and thirty-nine seconds, but still, as Miranda Priestly said in the original: “I [have] hope. My God, I live on it.”

If we can’t let old dogs lie, at least let them be full of joy and humor and unbridled sexual energy. Magic! Let them ignore whatever was said about their predecessors, and find something new to say, rather than parroting old stories and parodying themselves.

And please, for the love of God, get Faith Hill on the soundtrack, just like in the original Practical Magic. That’s all.

Graphic Design by Composite / Images via Getty