More often than not in the world of movies, replicating the quality of a brilliant first installment in a franchise proves to be incredibly hard. The most famous, notable exception is undoubtedly The Godfather Part II. The first movie is typically the best (Rocky, A Nightmare on Elm Street, American Pie, Star Wars and Jaws are just a few random examples of this).

However, in the comic book movie world, there are loads of examples of sequels that are better than the first movie – and that’s what this article is about.

Here are ten comic book movie sequels that were actually better than the original.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger wasn’t a terrible film, but it certainly wasn’t fantastic. It worked as an origin movie for the titular character, but it was frankly a little underwhelming and boring. Therefore, nobody really expected its sequel, 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, to be particularly great.

In a universe that had seen the introduction of aliens, and already included the likes of Iron Man, the Hulk and Thor, the grounded nature of this movie had the potential to seem comparatively boring – but it was anything but.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier made for a fantastic conspiracy thriller that transcended the comic book genre. It’s arguably one of the best comic book movies ever made, and it’s undoubtedly much better than its predecessor.

And now we move on to the only movie in this list that doesn’t feature a character from Marvel or DC.