What Is the Best Passing-of-the-Torch Sequel Ever Made?

Unpassing the Torch

 

"Yeah, I’m John McClane.”

“John McClane, Jr.”

“Well, that makes you a senior.”

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Legacies are a funny thing. Is it selfish of us to think we’re so important that we must preserve our memory in some way? Are we all so entitled that we demand our names, our achievements, our histories be immortalized via monuments, and our teachings or our likenesses live on in the form of artificial intelligence and/or CGI? The obvious answer is yes, we must maintain a franchise if we believe there is still money to be made.

Movies have a tendency of introducing newer characters meant to take the place of their aging predecessors. There have been some successful transitions in not only film, but television as well. Star Trek and Star Wars have seen their fair share of new casts in a variety of different settings, timelines, and outfits. Doctor Who‘s whole deal is to routinely switch out the lead actor. Batman gets recast every few years along with a legion of other superheroes. Rocky Balboa helped train Adonis Creed as he continued the Italian Stallion’s film series into a new generation.

While there are accepted torch passings, there are also many ill-fated attempts at crowning a new hero to take the reins of a beloved franchise. Some film legacy inheritors are mostly popular, or at least they don’t instantly nauseate viewers. Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady from the 2015 Jurassic World sequel adventure is typically liked by audiences—he did star in a total of three of the dinosaur movies after all, at least so far. John Wick even gets a spin-off in the form of the Ballerina (2025) film starring Ana de Armas, but I suppose that is technically more of a prequel. I’m not sure anybody watched that one anyway. Jeremy Renner tried his hand at it in The Bourne Legacy (2012), and some could argue that his Brandt character in the two Mission: Impossible movies he was in would have been a fine steward if Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt ever decided to actually retire and just go rock climbing. Ryan Gosling’s K may or may not have been specifically intended to be an official replicant replacement for Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049 (2017), but Gosling was definitely the main character.

Most belated sequels appear to have at least some contingencies set in place, such as the Tron additions as well as Top Gun: Maverick (2022). But like the Mission: Impossible flicks, Cruise wasn’t likely to give up control of that particular role. Fellow Maverick co-star Glen Powell did end up the male lead in Twisters (2024), so he got a torch passed to him eventually in some way, and he also got to be in the remake of The Running Man (2025). It’s getting hot in here with all these torches getting passed!

Contrastingly, what is ice cold are the times when anointing a new main guy simply fell flat on its face. No, I’m not including Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), but you had to have known that Shia LaBeouf was going to start us off. I’ll break down the top three movies that “unpass” the torch, then I’ll reveal which is the number one pick I recommend.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from 2008. Much has been said about the 2008 revival of Indiana Jones, a belated sequel that many thought would never happen. The eventual fifth film released in 2023, Dial of Destiny, was even more unbelievable, yet both of these follow-ups to 1989’s Last Crusade somehow exist. For years and years, a lot of fans thought that the only new Indiana Jones content would come in the form of video games, novels, and whatever other form of merchandising that could be imagined. It had been primarily accepted that there simply wouldn’t be any more movies. But after enough time passed, filmmakers got the itch to finally pull the trigger—or crack the whip in this case—and set in motion what was once thought to be only a dream.

By the late 2000s, it was understood that Harrison Ford was clearly getting too old to do these daring stunts, so who better to take the wheel than Jones’ son Mutt? As a movie, Crystal Skull is fine—an okay flick that is ultimately a product of its time. Many creative choices left audiences scratching their heads, though; many CGI effects had moviegoers wincing in discomfort. Above all else, the casting was, in a word, questionable. Sure, it’s easy to ridicule Shia LaBeouf, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, the dude is a good actor. He’s done some wilding off the screen, but generally speaking, his performances are usually on the money—money that never sleeps, that is.

Like so many other entertainers, if the material isn’t great, then the final product isn’t going to be anything to write home about. From Transformers (2007) to Megalopolis (2024), some of LaBeouf’s roles are more misses than hits, but I believe that when an actor, especially a young one, starts getting a push and pops up in every other film, then resentment grows from movie fans. Flavor-of-the-month casting can do some serious damage, and when longtime fans saw that LaBeouf was portraying Indy’s son Henry “Mutt” Jones III, this fourth entry in the series was doomed on arrival.

Despite having proven his skills as a thespian, LaBeouf was saddled with an unlikable sidekick character that no one really wanted to see. And to top it off, at the very end of the movie, Mutt grabs Indy’s famous fedora but is quickly stopped by Henry Jones, Sr.—er, the Harrison Ford one, the OG Indiana Jones. Symbolically, he told everyone that he wasn’t giving up the mantle. So then why are we doing this stuff with Mutt to begin with? Perhaps it’s unfair to assume that the character was solely introduced as a successor, but I mean, was he not? I’m not a Crystal Skull apologist, but I’ll take Mutt over Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Helena from Butt Dial of Destiny.

Reason to Rec: If you’re hosting an Indiana Jones movie marathon, then go ahead and include this and Dial of Destiny—just don’t be surprised if everyone leaves after Last Crusade.

A Good Day to Die Hard from 2013. Speaking of franchises that got a fourth and fifth entry late in the game, we have 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard. Bruce Willis returned for his iconic role as John McClane, the alcoholic cop who keeps himself in big trouble, and this time he has to buddy up with his all-grow’d-up son Jack, played by Jai Courtney. Aging John, Sr., seems to get more superhuman with age, as if he’s channeling Bruce Willis’ curiously strong guy character from Unbreakable (2000), Split (2016), and Glass (2019). In the fourth Die Hard, 2007’s Live Free or Die Hard, McClane cowboys up and takes down fighter jets. In A Good Day, he is still pulling off over-the-top stunts that peak McClane from the first film in 1988 would have maybe not survived.

Over the course of the film series, the ante kept getting raised, like all the airport action in 1990’s Die Hard 2, where he indeed died harder. 1995 is when they started getting cute with the names and titled the third one Die Hard with a Vengeance. That actioner, which co-starred Samuel L. Jackson, happened to be so awesome that one is willing to overlook any fancy names that forego numerals entirely. An interesting note about the third Die Hard is that Jackson’s Zeus Carver character was seen as more of a partner than anything and less of a replacement. In Live Free or Die Hard, Justin Long played Matt Farrell in the sidekick role, which I doubt many people considered to be the next in line to fight terrorists in or outside of skyscrapers.

Jack McClane, on the other hand, was a certified action hero in his own right as soon as he was introduced in A Good Day to Die Hard. Courtney would get another torch passed his way in 2015 when he took on the role of Kyle Reese in Terminator: Genisys (2015). While he doesn’t look a thing like Michael Biehn, the OG Kyle from 1984’s The Terminator, nor does he resemble Jonathan Jackson, who had a go at Reese in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008-2009), and Courtney for sure doesn’t look like Anton Yelchin, the Kyle from 2009’s Terminator Salvation—side note, Salvation also starred Sam Worthington, who I weirdly get confused with Jai Courtney—anyway, Jai however does have just enough of a passing resemblance to Bruce Willis to where you’re willing to go along for the ride. That is, until that ride gets wonky and eventually makes you as nauseous as you may be if you were exposed to the same radiation as the McClanes were in this movie.

A Good Day to Die Hard did indeed do a good thing, and that was basically let the franchise die. If this movie didn’t improve upon the crater that Live Free or Die Hard left, then it was for the best that the fifth be the final. Forgettable, schlocky, and corny, this film did nothing to truly carry on a legacy of the one movie people remember, and that’s the first one. If you do watch A Good Day to Die Hard, you may notice that John McClane says he’s on vacation when he specifically went to Russia to find his missing CIA operative son Jack. Man, you’d think that after all these crazy adventures John McClane has had, he’d be more famous in his universe.

Reason to Rec: This is one of those sequels that are truly only appealing to those of us who like a feeling of completion or even closure. There is nothing more satisfying than the unearned sense of accomplishment by finishing watching a movie series.

The Dark Knight Rises from 2012. Maybe it’s because this movie came out in the same year as The Avengers, which by comparison eclipsed the third in the Christopher Nolan-directed Batman series. Maybe it’s because The Dark Knight Rises decided to add a present-tense verb in its title, similar to its originator Batman Begins (2005), or Batman Returns (1992), Superman Returns (2006), or that Superman Lives movie that never came to be. Maybe it’s because the Christian Bale-starring blockbuster simply wasn’t as good. Whatever the reason, The Dark Knight Rises is the lesser of the latter two films in the Nolanverse trilogy.

Well, if we’re being honest, Heath Ledger’s untimely passing added even more mystique to his take on the Joker from 2008’s The Dark Knight, and the surrounding intrigue couldn’t help but overshadow even the Batman. It was a torch passing in its own way for Tom Hardy to step in as the next main big bad guy as Bane. Of course, this iteration of Bane, along with Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman and Marion Cotillard’s Miranda, aka Talia al Ghul—was a creative head-scratcher when considering the source material. Alas, adaptations by their very definition are going to be different, but certain choices left me bewildered and disappointed.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt played the Gotham cop Blake, an ally and all-around supporter of the Caped Crusader. Hardly the worst thing about the flick, Blake still contributes to an altogether okay-ish finale to a trilogy that peaked in its second outing. Admittedly, as the years go on, the Nolan movies feel less and less like Batman and his lore that’s been established on and off the screen and in comic books for about a century. The Nolan influence can be seen in superhero movies to this day. Similar things could be said about the doomed Snyderverse of DC films, but that was intended to be its own universe. Still, the fact that the Superman movie Man of Steel (2013) was named after one of Kal-El’s many nicknames is directly inspired by The Dark Knight‘s decision to not include Batman in its title.

Out of all the subversive, purposely different, mostly real-world serious approaches to this superhero story, it is Blake who stands out the most to me. I think I would have dismissed the character entirely as merely Nolan casting an actor he’s worked with before, but then the very end of the film takes place. It’s an otherwise unassuming moment where Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character addresses his full name: Robin John Blake. Sure, there was a point in the comics where original Boy Wonder Dick Grayson had grown up and acted as a vigilante named Nightwing, who at one point was a police officer in his secret identity life. Any other similarities pretty much end there.

Seeing Joseph Gordon-Levitt stand next to Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne, well, out of the two, it’d be Gordon-Levitt who you’d most likely pick to be the sidekick in that Dynamic Duo. But the fact that he’d serve as any kind of torchbearer in this particular scenario, in this kind of way, felt odd—not that there haven’t been numerous graphic novel tales of an adult Robin taking over for Batman in some kind of manner. No, what’s strange to me is that this big name reveal was a moment that was seemingly supposed to make us fanboys gasp with excitement. In reality, the revelation soured my experience. If Nolan intended to use Robin in such a drastically different way to the point where any semblance of the character is practically unrecognizable, I wonder why include any incarnation of Robin at all? In fact, it makes me think that Nolan and company actually don’t like the character of Robin to begin with. I say don’t have him at all if that’s what you’re gonna do with him.

Reason to Rec: The standout feature of this movie that deserves another go-round is the unique performances, namely Tom Hardy as Bane. Sure, it’s not exactly what longtime comic readers would expect, but Hardy has a fantastic penchant for choosing weird voices for his characters, and man, this one was pretty weird.

Def Rec

I’ll be honest: choosing which of these films to definitely recommend isn’t easy since they are all so flawed, but the one that is simply made better than the others is The Dark Knight Rises. The Indiana and Die Hard editions will leave you frustrated, but the final Nolanverse flick at least closes out the story and was never meant to be the final Batman we ever see on screen again anyway.

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Books by Jon McBrine

The Eric Icarus Series

Unable to hide his flying abilities, a shy high school student’s plan to hide in plain sight as just another superhero backfires after an attack leaves him as the only hope to stop a diabolical villain.

Recruited by tech mogul Baron Maddox, Eric Boxworth becomes Eric Icarus, a maskless member of the Super Society, tech-based defenders of New St. Cloud City. Eric’s miraculous, natural flight power is disguised by a decoy anti-gravity backpack to avoid getting dissected in a lab. Eric and his bubbly, good-natured classmate Jaycee - the armored hero Powerhouse - must stop a madman from creating an empire built on stolen powers. Fans of young superheroes, found family tropes, and high-stakes action will love this YA sci-fi adventure series.

Available at Amazon here

Available at Amazon here

Available at Amazon here

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