5 Significant Retcons In Movie Franchises

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Retconning in movie franchises is more common than audiences might realize. To retcon something means to change the retroactive continuity of events or characters within a franchise. It could be as simple as a character's origin story shifting slightly, to entire plot arcs being undone in the blink of an eye. There are many reasons for retconning, from issues like actors being unavailable to correcting heinous character creations. Retconning itself is not necessarily bad, but it can be.

This article looks at five movie franchises that made significant retcons in their timelines, some good and some bad. There are resurrections, destruction of an entire film's meaning, and meta-fueled character origin rewrites. Even for viewers passingly familiar with the franchises, these are glaringly obvious.

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The original Highlander is a classic action/fantasy film starring Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod, an immortal born in the highlands of Scotland in the 16th Century. In the film, the immortals have been waging war against each other for centuries awaiting the time when only a few remain. MacLeod faces off against his enemy The Kurgan (Clancy Brown) and is aided by Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, a Spanish swordsman from Egypt inexplicably played by Sean Connery.

The second film undoes all the lore and background established in the first by making all the immortals aliens known as Zeistians. It also establishes that Ramirez and MacLeod knew each other before meeting in the Scottish highlands, has a plot that revolves around a shield that covers the Earth to protect it from radiation, and features the resurrection of Ramirez, who died in the first film. It's also widely