One of the best ways to keep a long-running movie franchise fresh is by shifting genres. While this may result in a sequel that feels like it wandered in from a wholly different series, this is one of the best ways to inject new blood.

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This creative gamble doesn't always pay off, though. Where some movie series improve and even thrive by having sequels from all kinds of genres, others flounder and become infamous for their inconsistencies.

10 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Kept Restarting & Remaking Itself

The Sawyer Family Recreates The Breakfast Club In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Describing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' continuity as "confusing" is putting it lightly, because the Sawyer Family's series is downright nonsensical. As far back as the second movie, director Tobe Hooper had no intention of taking a Leatherface franchise seriously, so he ruthlessly parodied the movie that put him on the map.

With the exception of the third movie, every succeeding movie wholeheartedly embraced this ignorance of continuity. Almost all of Leatherfaces' movies are reboots and remakes with little to no connection to one another. Basically, all of them were failed attempts to restart The Texas Chainsaw Massacre into a topical franchise.

9 Hellraiser Struggled To Make Pinhead A Mainstream Slasher Killer

Pinhead Proclaims His Arrival In Hellraiser 3 Hell On Earth

The first two Hellraiser movies struck unexpected gold, since they were a successful mix of erotica and Gothic fiction. Hellbound: Hellraiser II is itself a very different film from Hellraiser, as it was more Lovecraftian than the first movie's morbid romance, but they worked in tandem. The same can't be said for the rest of the franchise.

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth onwards tried to expand the story into a franchise by shoehorning the Cenobites into different genres, all of which failed. For example, Hellraiser: Inferno and Hellseeker were time loop thrillers with Pinhead cameos, while Hellworld was a drug trip where Pinhead was a hallucination.

8 Alien Put Ellen Ripley & The Xenomorphs In Different Genres

Ellen Ripley confronts her child in Alien: Resurrection

The real stars of the Alien franchise are the always-evolving heroine Ellen Ripley and the titular alien, the Xenomorph. Every sequel starred at least one of the pair, so to spice things up, each subsequent movie tackled a different genre. The most famous genre change was in Aliens, an all-0ut war movie that centered on Ellen waging war against a horde of aliens.

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Alien 3 returned to the original's haunted house roots through a prison setting, but Alien: Resurrection and the Alien Vs. Predator movies followed the second movies' action-packed leanings. The most drastic changes came in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, a prequel timeline that's its own franchise and a more ethereal take on the same world and concepts.

7 The Predator Series Is An Anthology Starring The Predator

The Yautja Engage In Armed Combat In Predators

Like most horror franchises, the only recurring character in the Predator movies is the killer (or the Yautja, according to the lore). What sets Predator apart from the likes of Friday The 13th (which actually expanded to comics), though, is that it's not a slave to formula. Instead, each standalone movie dropped a Yautja hunter in a new genre and let the carnage ensue.

For example: if the original Predator and Predators were typical war movies with a Yautja in it, Predator 2 put the alien hunter in a cop movie. Some of the franchise's most outlandish outings came in the form of The Predator and the Alien Vs. Predator duology, which were a suburban action-comedy and a franchise crossover, respectively.

6 Resident Evil Is About Alice's Adventures In The Zombie Apocalypse, Not The Games

Alice Fends Off A Horde In Resident Evil The Final Chapter

For better and worse, the divisive, trope-ridden Resident Evil movies ignored everything in the games. In fact, the movies took their source material so liberally that the only things that were adapted faithfully were characters' names, the terminology, and zombies. Since they were under no obligation to stick to established canon, the movies did whatever they wanted.

Alice's cinematic debut was a by-the-numbers zombie movie in a lab, but then it turned into five different kinds of zombie apocalypses in the sequels. Every Resident Evil sequel started by outright ignoring or retconning whatever transpired in its immediate predecessor, since all its attention was placed on showing off Alice's newest post-apocalyptic trek.

5 Cloverfield Tried But Failed To Become A Sci-Fi Anthology

The Cloverfield Monster Reveals Itself In Cloverfield

The Cloverfield trilogy's big appeal was that its stand-alone installments were actually connected, thanks to J.J. Abrams' patented Mystery Box. Cases in point: the original was a found footage horror, the arguably superior 10 Cloverfield Lane was a tense bottle movie, The Cloverfield Paradox was a space thriller, and aliens were the connective tissue. Unfortunately, the big picture backfired.

The sequels' worst detriment was that they would've been good if not for their forced connections to the aliens from Cloverfield. The backlash against The Cloverfield Paradox's twist ending was so intense that it's been rumored that Overlord scrapped its planned Cloverfield connection, while the franchise fell into obscurity.

4 The Evil Dead Trilogy Evolved From A Horror Movie To A Comedy

Ash Shows Off His Boom Stick In Army Of Darkness

Despite starting with a dead-serious splatter movie, The Evil Dead gradually evolved into a comedy. By the time of Army of Darkness, all tension was gone and the traumatized survivor Ash Williams was now a catchphrase-spouting parody of an action hero. Surprisingly, this was all according to writer/director Sam Raimi's plans.

Raimi and his team preferred making comedies, but they made a horror movie to challenge themselves and because it was lucrative. When Raimi gained more creative control, he slowly changed The Evil Dead's tone, starting with the original movie's loose remake, Evil Dead IIThe end result were three tonally distinct movies that just so happened to star Ash.

3 The DC Extended Universe Pivoted To An Anthological Style Out Of Necessity

Harley Leads Her Squad In Birds Of Prey

The DCEU was initially planned as a franchise of interconnected DC Comics adaptations that didn't just share a darker tone, but all built up to a war between Earth and Apokalips. However, after the backlash against Man of Steel and Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, the DCEU had no choice but to change course.

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While the original DCEU is still continuing with Zack Snyder's Justice League and the upcoming Flash moviestandalone works were given more focus. The change paid off, with the likes of the grindhouse throwback Birds of Prey and the often misunderstood character study Joker being praised for being their own unique experiences more than direct sequels or spin-offs.

2 The Marvel Cinematic Universe Is The Biggest Movie Multiverse To Date

Star-Lord And His Family In Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2

From the beginning, the MCU was envisioned as a series of solo movies and sub-series of varying genres that were set in the same universe - exactly like how Marvel's comics told their stories. For example, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a martial arts movie, while Guardians of the Galaxy is a space opera. Though these movies follow a base formula and timeline, they can mostly work as individual examples of their chosen genre.

While the MCU is debatably not the first cinematic universe, it's undeniably the biggest and most successful franchise of its kind. That said, the MCU's scope is about to get even bigger. With the introduction of the multiverse, the MCU now includes all Marvel movies that were made outside of the Marvel Studios banner.

1 Godzilla's Movies Always Evolved With The Times

Godzilla Faces King Ghidorah In Godzilla King Of The Monsters

If there's one thing synonymous to the Godzilla movies besides the eponymous fire-breathing dinosaur, it's change. Every Godzilla movie tried something different, even if doing so went against his original concepts and ideas. In fact, in his very first sequel, Godzilla stopped being a metaphor for nuclear annihilation and fought other kaiju as a destructive savior.

While Godzilla is most famous for his superhero phase that also included epic crossovers and legendary rivalries, he had his fare share of villainous turns and horror movies. The latter may be the most tonally jarring to those more familiar with the heroic Godzilla, even if the likes of Shin Godzilla are the most faithful to Godzilla's original 1954 incarnation.

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