For an industry based more and more on ongoing franchises, there aren’t as many movie spin-offs as you might think. The concept of taking a character from one popular series and putting them in another environment is more commonplace in mediums in which series last longer, like TV, where programs “Angel,” “Frasier” and “The Simpsons” eventually became as popular or more so than the original shows, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Cheers” and “The Tracey Ullman Show.”
But movie spin-offs do exist, like this weekend’s Penguins of Madagascar, in which the lovable schemers of the “Madagascar” franchise embark on their own solo adventure. And there are quite a few others as well, but most of them suck. Is it really necessary to remind you all that Supergirl, The Ewok Adventure, Elektra, Annabelle and The Bourne Legacy were all kind of crap? We don’t think so.
So let’s take a look at 11 of the better movie spin-offs, some of which are genuinely great and some of which merely don’t suck. We’ve also included two bonus films, which you could argue are technically not spin-offs.
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11 Movie Spin-Offs That Don't Suck
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Night Train to Munich (1940)
Spin-Off Of: The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Caldicott and Charters, the breakout comic relief co-stars of Alfred Hitchcock's witty thriller The Lady Vanishes, were such popular characters that they appeared in four more films (five if you count the horror anthology Dead of Night, but that one is unofficial). The first one, Night Train to Munich, is the best, and finds the subtextually gay duo once again stuck in the middle of Nazi intrigue, kidnapping plots and mismatched young lovers.
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A Shot in the Dark (1964)
Spin-Off Of: The Pink Panther (1963)
The original Pink Panther was more about a cat burglar played by David Niven than the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, but Peter Sellers' character was clearly the best part of the movie. So Blake Edwards gave Clouseau his own film, the superior A Shot in the Dark, which remains one of the funniest comedies ever made. After this the sequels were once again named after The Pink Panther but only for the sake of franchise recognition: Sellers successfully hijacked the series from Niven and became the star.
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Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Spin-Off Of: Star Trek: Generations (1994)
The TV spin-off "Star Trek: The Next Generation" appeared alongside their "Original Series" counterparts in Star Trek: Generations, but finally got a film of their own in First Contact, a smart blend of action, continuity and time travel that sent the crew of the Enterprise back to the 21st Century to stop the Borg from preventing mankind's first encounter with the Vulcan race. Although they appeared in four feature films, Star Trek: First Contact remains the only undeniably solid movie starring the "Next Generation" crew.
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U.S. Marshals (1998)
Spin-Off Of: The Fugitive (1993)
Eager to make a follow-up to the mega-hit The Fugitive, but unable to find a reasonable way to put Dr. Richard Kimble on the other side of the law again, Warner Bros. gave Chief Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard his own movie, and the results were... okay. Tommy Lee Jones (who already won an Oscar for playing this character) is great, and the action is fine, but the second "wrong man" plot just isn't as interesting as the original.
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The Scorpion King (2002)
Spin-Off Of: The Mummy Returns (2001)
The villain of The Mummy Returns got his own prequel/spin-off in The Scorpion King, an enjoyably hokey fantasy adventure set in the years before Dwayne Johnson's character turned into a giant arachnid monster. It's pretty lowbrow, full of scantily clad virgin witches and anachronistic jokes, but it's still better than The Mummy Returns.
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Get Him to the Greek (2010)
Spin-Off Of: Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Outlandish rock idol Aldous Snow stole Jason Segal's girlfriend in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, then got his own starring vehicle in the very funny Get Him to the Greek. Jonah Hill (playing a different character than he did in the original film) is in charge of keeping the raucous celebrity in line until they get to his big concert, winding up in one outlandish comic set piece after another.
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Machete (2010)
Spin-Off Of: Spy Kids (2001)
Danny Trejo's over-the-top Mexican hero Machete may be more famous for his fake trailer in Grindhouse, but he first appeared as a helpful tech genius in Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids, which technically makes his first solo feature film a prequel. It's a violent and cheesy action flick that defends Mexican culture from anti-immigration bigots, and it's a total blast.
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Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)
Spin-Off Of: Grindhouse (2007)
Jason Eisener's fake trailer for Grindhouse became a Troma-esque ultraviolent grotesquerie, complete with decapitations and blunt social commentary. Rutger Hauer plays the title character, who becomes a vigilante in response to local corruption, and he turns in a genuinely great performance in a genuinely odd motion picture.
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Puss in Boots (2011)
Spin-Off Of: Shrek 2 (2004)
Antonio Banderas's swashbuckling pussycat stole every scene in Shrek 2, and finally got his own movie seven years later. It's an unusual adventure about fairy tale outlaws competing to steal the giants' treasure at the top of the beanstalk, and it probably has one prison rape joke too many, but it's better than any of the official Shrek sequels.
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The Wolverine (2013)
Spin-Off Of: X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
The first spin-off of the X-Men franchise, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, just plain sucks. But the second solo adventure starring Hugh Jackman is a ripping superhero yarn, pitting Wolverine against ninjas without his mutant healing factor to protect him. It goes a little off the rails at the end, but until then it's a very entertaining flick.
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This is 40 (2012)
Spin-Off Of: Knocked Up (2007)
Pete and Debbie were only-kinda-happily married supporting characters from the comedy hit Knocked Up, and they graduated to the leads for This is 40, an overlong, overly bourgeois but otherwise rather funny saga of two immature people struggling to act like the adults they assume they have to be now that they've officially hit middle age.
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Bonus #1: Friday the 13th (2009)
Spin-Off Of: Transformers (2007)
It wasn't very well advertised as such, but the reboot of the Friday the 13th franchise is actually a spin-off of Transformers, with Travis Van Winkle playing the same character - the hunky douchebag Trent - in both films. This is what you get for being mean to Sam Witwicky, Trent. You get killed by a slasher villain in a hockey mask. Michael Bay sure knows how to hold a grudge. (The movie is not as bad as its reputation, incidentally.)
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Bonus #2: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
Spin-Off Of: Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)
When director Justin Lin took over the Fast and the Furious franchise in 2006, he rewrote the script to include a character from his first movie, Better Luck Tomorrow, about Asian-American high school students who delved into the criminal underworld. Han, played by Sung Kang, is now the mentor to new character Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) in a stand-alone film that remains one of the better entries in the blockbuster series. Han was such a popular character that Justin Lin then inserted him into the next three sequels, all of which turned out to be a prequel to Tokyo Drift, bringing the franchise more-or-less full circle.
