Movies that "feel" connected but aren't?

[H-Man]

I posted this elsewhere, but Godzilla X Megaguirus and Samurai Commando: Mission 1549 feel like they could be set in the same universe.

[mikelcho]

Deep Blue Sea and Apes Reboot Trilogy.

Deep Blue Sea was a secret prequel to the trilogy where the sharks were the first attempt for the cure of Alzheimer's which failed and was eventually moved onto apes due to them being our closest relatives.

I've always thought about that. Deep Blue Sea was absolutely a conceptual precursor to those Apes films!

I also...in ANOTHER sense...always considered Deep Blue Sea and Pitch Black to be ALMOST structural twins.

Both have an initial opening(first 'normal' shark attack/capture and Riddick's voice-over) centered on the sort of 'edgy' anti-hero with a bit of a dark past but an area of expertise that is extremely valuable to the coming problem. They end up being the ultimate hero of the film.

We then almost immediately move to a perspective centering on a bit of a 'decoy lead', in both cases, women which come off as the total centerpiece of the film...both of whom make some dubious moral decisions that in some way cause or significantly lead into the events of the remainder of the film. They wrestle with those choices and seem in every way to be the conflicted heroines of the story but ultimately prove to not be the true lead in the long run.

Both films have a preacher/'holy man' character trying to find the light and keep the faith in the dire situation.

Both have that sort of 'stranded on our own battling killer creatures' concept in a very isolated setting.

To me, in terms of some of the basics of how their ensembles play out, and get killed off, what kind of archetypes they have, how they zig and zag over who the real central focus of the film is...those two movies just "Go together" for me.

Added in 5 minutes 31 seconds:

The Psycho and Halloween (third version) also includes the upcoming Halloween Ends, right? Also, does it include Psycho II, Psycho III, and Psycho IV: The Beginning?

Yeah, that's all up for debate. It would naturally include Halloween Ends...and I secretly hope that they sneak in at least ONE more key tether to Psycho into Halloween Ends, just to REALLY solidify the links and connections even more. To make it feel like an overall horror saga would be cool.

I think one could easily throw in as many or as few Psycho sequels as they like. I certainly think Psycho II is a SUPER worthwhile sequel to the first film, even if it isn't on the same level. I'm not sure if Psycho II or III include any of those coincidental connections, references, or links into the original Halloween or this new batch of films.

I would include all three sequels to Psycho. Psycho II and Psycho III were both two halves of one story, and Psycho IV: The Beginning finally gives Norman Bates a happy ending, something no other movie slasher killer ever got or did get.

[NSZ]

Reviving this because I did a double-feature out of mere curiosity and it got my brain going...

Leviathan (1989) & Underwater (2020)

NOW HEAR ME OUT, the narrative in Leviathan never actually confirms Doc's theory that what happened aboard the Livyatan was an experiment gone horribly wrong, and if anything, grinds ever so slightly against it, as nothing Sixpack salvaged/pilfered from the scuttled vessel actually said it was. The logs indicate, show, that the ship's captain and its doctors were completely bewildered and at a complete loss with what was happening to the crew, two parties that you'd want to keep in the loop if you didn't want to lose control of a supposed experiment.

Now, the contaminated vodka. We can infer from the infection of Cobb & Doc that these mutagenic cells are transmissible via fluids, as the Sixpack/Bowen amalgamation was coated in a residue, likely sweat produced from the ongoing transformation, and this amalgam had merely scratched Cobb, and Doc would get bit by Cobb who was in the midst of his own active mutation (both of these infections being in contrast to DeJesus, who got got by that eel/worm/hagfish thing). So, with this in mind, the possibility that the vodka from the Livyatan could just as well have been contaminated by the backwash of a crewmate that had already been infected cannot be ruled out.

So what in god's name happened aboard the Livyatan, then, and how on Earth does this relate to Underwater? There's a skeleton aboard the Livyatan, humanoid in appearance, but not quite human. Now Doc & Beck do jump to the conclusion that it was human, if only because of Doc's insistence on the matter (confirmation bias and all that jazz, y'know?), but there's an issue, in that this skeleton doesn't really resemble the rather consistent Viperfish-headed mutations that developed out of the Shack Seven crew. So what was it then?

Simple.

It's a Deep One.

Through some means, at some point during its doomed voyage, a Deep One had come aboard the Livyatan, and, perhaps while in an altercation, contaminated one or more members of the ship's crew with its own genetic material before being killed. The crewmember proceeds to get sick, but aren't properly quarantined in time, and end up contaminating the ship's supply of food & drink, in turn infecting more of the crew. Eventually, the infected crew mutate and begin preying upon the uninfected, and the Livyatan's captain (or whoever's left) sends out a distress call to any allied submarine close enough with one meager message: sink the Livyatan, with all hands aboard.

Their distress message, however, does wind up getting intercepted by Tri Oceanic, because really, what are the odds that they'd just so happen to randomly build Shack Seven in a location that's only a hop, skip, & a jump away from the sunken Livyatan? As for why they did it, who can say? Maybe there were cultists in high positions at Tri Oceanic, Martin did seem to know far more than she was letting on.

The events of Leviathan occur, the truth of what happened in Shack Seven is kept hush hush, but this doesn't prevent Tri Oceanic's stock from taking a nosedive for incorrectly reporting all hands lost, and they end up getting bought out by fellow undersea mining company, and (possibly fellow cult-run) competitor Tian Industries, who pick up where Tri Oceanic left off, leading to Underwater.

[miguelnuva]

My cousin felt like Godzilla 98 and Godzilla 54 could work together. Japan kills Godzilla in 54 and is able to cover up a lot of what Godzilla did. When Godzilla 98 appears the name Gojira sticks because of a mistake.

I then informed her of GMK and now she's convinced the films work together.

[The One and Only]

My cousin felt like Godzilla 98 and Godzilla 54 could work together. Japan kills Godzilla in 54 and is able to cover up a lot of what Godzilla did. When Godzilla 98 appears the name Gojira sticks because of a mistake.

I then informed her of GMK and now she's convinced the films work together.

Not too far out a theory. Although Japan didn't seem to have to work too hard to cover up Godzilla's rampage. GMK was set fifty years after Godzilla's original reign of terror. And as we saw throughout the flick some people in Japan thought Gojira was a myth. Like the woman in the supermarket responded to the store manager telling everyone to evacuate when Godzilla was approaching. She yells out "Godzilla's just a myth !" before the Big-G's approach started shaking the store. The kids on the Bonin Islands doubted Godzilla even existed, and if he did, he was some poor animal that was cruly put down by the military before he came stomping in. Heck, in Britan some people actually believe Winston Churchill was a fictional character in the same vein as Uncle Sam. Also, the old fisherman in G-98 who survived Zilla's first attack looked old enough to be around to see the Godzilla's first rampage. And seeing a gigantic creature of similar build, and even sounding a bit like original. Set off a whole minefield of childhood trauma when Phillipe,and his team got to interview at the hospital seeing the state he was in.

[miguelnuva]

My cousin felt like Godzilla 98 and Godzilla 54 could work together. Japan kills Godzilla in 54 and is able to cover up a lot of what Godzilla did. When Godzilla 98 appears the name Gojira sticks because of a mistake.

I then informed her of GMK and now she's convinced the films work together.

Not too far out a theory. Although Japan didn't seem to have to work too hard to cover up Godzilla's rampage. GMK was set fifty years after Godzilla's original reign of terror. And as we saw throughout the flick some people in Japan thought Gojira was a myth. Like the woman in the supermarket responded to the store manager telling everyone to evacuate when Godzilla was approaching. She yells out "Godzilla's just a myth !" before the Big-G's approach started shaking the store. The kids on the Bonin Islands doubted Godzilla even existed, and if he did, he was some poor animal that was cruly put down by the military before he came stomping in. Heck, in Britan some people actually believe Winston Churchill was a fictional character in the same vein as Uncle Sam. Also, the old fisherman in G-98 who survived Zilla's first attack looked old enough to be around to see the Godzilla's first rampage. And seeing a gigantic creature of similar build, and even sounding a bit like original. Set off a whole minefield of childhood trauma when Phillipe,and his team got to interview at the hospital seeing the state he was in.

Godzilla 98 works better as a whole if they would have connected it to G54 in this way. I know it was impossible and not what they wanted done in 98 but it would have been better if 98 is mistaken for the 54 Godzilla.

[The One and Only]

The 1994 monster flick MOSQUITO and GODZILLA:The Animated Series episode S.C.A.L.E.. In the low budget creature flick a National Park is terrorized by giant mosquitos with an unquenchable thirst for blood. The source of the mutation behind these arthopods was from a mosquito consuming the blood of a dead alien from a spaceship that crashed in the swamps. The mutant mosquitos were dealt with by the end of the flick. But it wouldn't surprise me that some survived. Or more than one skeeter feed off that dead alien's blood. And this one, or the next generation's mosquito's mutation took a different course than the others. It ended up growing much bigger the larger it grew due to its mutation. Requiring a plentiful source of food it made its way to Miami. Where we're introduced to it when it encounters Godzilla and the H.E.A.T. team in the episode S.C.A.L.E. . And gets dubbed Skeetera by Randy.

[NSZ]

Not exclusively movies being connected here, but recently I've taken up the opinion that, once divorced from its sequels, the first Resident Evil film slots into the game canon just fine.

[Omegamorph]

My cousin felt like Godzilla 98 and Godzilla 54 could work together. Japan kills Godzilla in 54 and is able to cover up a lot of what Godzilla did. When Godzilla 98 appears the name Gojira sticks because of a mistake.

I'm doing something similar. Behind the scenes material suggests French Godzilla first appears in 1968

I then informed her of GMK and now she's convinced the films work together.

Tell her she shouldn't be then!

[GoKelley86]

There are no connections in terms of story or universe, but the Hulk Hogan film "No Holds Barred" feels like it was made by Canon studios. It has all the qualities of those off the wall and lower tier but insane action movies, but it wasn't released by Canon.