Is The Sequel Always Worse Than The Original?

There is a general understanding (thanks to Disney) that a sequel can never be as good as the original. At the time of writing this, I haven’t yet watched the Moana sequel—it's part of my break plans between study sessions—so unless Disney has somehow managed to defy this trend, no Disney sequel will ever surpass the original. Before anyone attacks me, AI suggested Mulan 2 as an example of a sequel better than the original. While 5-year-old me absolutely loved the romantic scenes between Mulan and her big warrior husband, there's no way it’s better than the emotional depth and angst of the first movie. So, as this is my article, I’m concluding the following: no Disney sequel is better than the original.

This idea that the original is the best isn’t just a Disney phenomenon. If you're reading this, I assume you're a student who has been told countless times not to plagiarize. While this rule is meant to ensure you actually do your work, it's also rooted in the fact that if you take a perfect essay—one that earned an A/7/100 (depending on your education system)—and try to tweak it a bit, it will never have that unique touch of the original author. You just can't recreate what they did. So, while I definitely do not encourage plagiarism, the next time you consider it, just remember what happened when they tried to take Cinderella and make a spin-off for Cinderella II (spoiler: that's why so few of us remember the sequel).

There is, of course, the counter-argument that two minds are better than one, and that with a fresh set of eyes, someone else could find flaws and improve on the original. But what about the author's stylistic intention? What about the tone and flow they set? There’s no "correct" way to write something, and when you take someone else’s work and try to make it better, it often ends up feeling like a shift in tone that doesn’t belong.

Before you leave this article and dismiss my opinion as completely crazy, let me offer a slightly far-fetched yet fitting example. If you’re a history student or history nerd, you might have thought about this before. I’m not going to go into all the details (and risk boring you), but here’s the gist: Mussolini (yes, the Italian guy) is the "original"—the good Cinderella movie—and Hitler is the "sequel," the one that takes the original idea and tries to improve it but can’t pull it off quite as well.

My favorite way to think about this is in terms of culture and propaganda. Let’s consider the role of women in society. Mussolini didn’t revolutionize Italian culture. Sure, he stuck to traditional family values and tried to increase the birthrate, but he did so within a culture that wasn’t too far removed from those values. Hitler, on the other hand, took the same ideas and tried to tweak them—a sequel of Mussolini’s policies—but he applied them in Germany. The problem? Germany wasn’t Italy. In Italy during World War I, women worked, but mainly in supportive roles—making clothes, serving as nurses. In contrast, during that same period in Germany, women took over jobs traditionally held by men. This difference meant that the same policies had a much bigger impact in Germany. Although both Mussolini and Hitler used laws to push women out of the workforce, the transition in Germany was much more drastic, which led to outrage—something Italy didn’t experience to the same extent.

Of course, this example is a bit extreme compared to plagiarizing an essay, but it illustrates the point: when you take someone else’s work and try to modify it to make it sound more like your own, it’s just never going to feel authentic. Eventually, someone will notice that the tone isn't truly yours.