T2: Greatest Sequel of all Time.

[Woochifer]

The reason why I mentioned THE GODFATHER Part II is because I knew that if I made the claim that T2 is one of the greatest, if not THE greatest sequel would be crying that THE GODFATHER II is the best....still to my amazement people are still crying that tune. I do not personally believe that THE GODFATHER II is better than the first film. My point with T2 is that it is a highly superior film to the orginal and I think my 10 reasons are excellent proof of that. If anyone can come up with 10 vastly detailed reasons why GODFATHER II is superior to the first film than I would be happy to see that.

Well, it's obvious that you knew ahead of time that Godfather Part II would be the odds-on pick for best sequel by most people, and that's for a very good reason. The Godfather is one of those consensus top ten all-time movies -- a tall order for any sequel to even come close to. That Part II would be so widely considered close to, equal to, or surpassing the original is an unprecedented and unequaled accomplishment because the first one is so widely considered one of the best, if not, the best movie of all time.

Just look at IMDB's average user ratings -- The Godfather is #1 with an average 9.1 rating, while The Godfather, Part II is #3 with an average 8.9 rating.

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top

Here's a case where the sequel is not only the top rated sequel, but very close to being the top rated movie, period. I'm certainly not the only one who considers The Godfather, Part II the best sequel and at least the equal of the original, as evidenced by the user comments entered on the IMDB site.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071562/usercomments

If your criteria for "best sequel" is the degree to which the sequel improves upon the original, then an argument can be made for T2, but only because of the pantheonic stature that The Godfather occupies. There's only so much room for improvement when a movie like The Godfather is already considered by many to be the best ever.

Of course, if the criteria for "best sequel" is how much the sequel improves upon the original, then I would put The Road Warrior at the top of my list because it's so far superior to the original Mad Max and because IMO it's a great movie in its own right.

Your list of improvements that T2 makes over The Terminator is largely populated by the technical categories. Well, it's easy for T2 to make those leaps forward when The Terminator was a low budget movie originally recorded in mono and filmed with low budget stop motion model effects, while the sequel had a budget more than 10x the original and 7+ years of new technology available. While T2 did improve upon the original in many ways, it did not have the weight of a consensus top ten film to live up to either.

As for why The Godfather Part II would be considered superior to the original, here are some of my reasons:

- having Part II tell both the backstory and the continuation story, and do both so effectively
- the Sicilian backstory of Vito Corleone provided a compelling undercurrent to the continuation of Michael's story, and a great character study that contrasts the character flaws of the son with the circumstances that led Vito to power.
- the audacity to do the Sicilian backstory entirely in Italian; subtitles in Hollywood films are always considered highly risky, yet Coppola and Puzo did half of a highly anticipated sequel in Italian, and it worked big time
- Part II simply had more of an epic feel to it; from the Ellis Island scenes to the Little Italy scenes, Part II was telling a much broader immigrant story, which was not present in Part I.
- Robert DeNiro as Vito; as great an actor as Brando was, DeNiro showed a more compelling screen presence as the young Vito
- Al Pacino stepping up big time to take over the central character role in Part II, plus all the other carryover actors from Part I improving on the quality of the acting
- less of the melodramatic; the family bonds are a big reason why audiences connected with The Godfather, but I did not like some of the more soap operatic melodrama that was present in the original. Part II had a leaner treatment of the family story, and it had better pacing, despite the longer running length.
- the central conflict between Michael and Fredo had a more compelling and tragic edge to it than any of the family subplots from Part I -- it's one thing for Michael to kill all his enemies, it's quite another to be betrayed by his own brother and order his execution
- the parallels between events depicted in the movie and actual historical events (e.g., the Keyfauver hearings, the fall of Batista in Cuba, the infiltration by the mob in Las Vegas, etc.) make for more interesting repeat viewings
- the revenge plot of Don Vito vs. Don Fanucci is one of the best "payback" moments I've seen in a movie, yet it managed to book-end a 3 1/2 hour movie.
- Part II IMO shows deeper character development than did Part I
- the technical aspects, from the cinematography to the art direction and the sound are all improved over the original