The new action film sequel Crank: High Voltage is being advertised with the tagline “He was dead…But he got better.” Aside from sort of ruining the ending to the first Crank for those of us who haven’t seen it, this copy from the posters has been receiving a lot of attention for how ridiculous it sounds. Fans of the original have to disagree with the tagline, because they know Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) was not dead; in fact it is clear from the final scene that he miraculously survived that fall from the helicopter. Meanwhile, people less familiar with the movie simply find the idea of a dead character being resurrected for the benefit of a sequel to be laughably unacceptable, as if such an idea is unheard of in Hollywood.

But even if Chelios had been officially declared dead at the end of Crank, the sequel certainly wouldn’t be the first to revive a main character for a follow-up. Obviously horror films do it all the time, and it’s not exactly uncommon in sci-fi, fantasy, action and comic book genres, either. Even while ignoring the invincibility convention of contemporary slasher films, we were able to select six sequels in which a deceased (or presumed deceased) character returns.

Warning: Spoilers may be found after the jump.

Alien: Resurrection (1997)

How do you bring back the protagonist of a popular franchise after that character threw herself into a giant furnace in the last installment? If that character is Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the franchise is the Alien series, you clone her. It is set, after all, so far in the future that cloning is not just a reality; it’s also capable of producing illogical results. You know, like creating a fully-grown version of a person that somewhat, somehow, retains the thoughts of and the parasite within the cloned original. We might have more easily accepted a fourth movie that pretended the suicide scene of Alien³ never happened.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

The prologue of Bride of Frankenstein is interesting for two reasons. One, it’s a clever device to portray Frankenstein author Mary Shelley as she explains to her husband, Percy, and friend, Lord Byron, that the Monster (Boris Karloff) did not in fact die at the end of her novel, thereby setting up the possibility for this sequel. Two, the fact that James Whale’s 1931 adaptation had changed the ending from that of Shelley’s book makes it an odd portrayal, because in the film the Monster seems to perish in a burned windmill while Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) survives. Yet, as Shelley wrote it, the doctor died and the Monster’s fate was left up in the air. In any event, though this wasn’t the first horror sequel ever made (that was likely The Golem and the Dancing Girl, in 1917), it might well have been the beginning of the indestructible villain sequel, even if the Monster wouldn’t exactly be a true bad guy until later installments. This gave way to such resurrections as Kharis in The Mummy’s Ghost (et al.), Count Dracula in House of Frankenstein (et al.) and the seemingly millions of immortal slasher film antagonists in their respective franchises, beginning (?) with Michael Myers’ return in Halloween II.

Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)

The main character from the first Highlander did not die, so this sequel was not entirely dependent on the resurrection of a character, at least not for narrative purposes. But for profit’s sake, Highlander II necessitated the return of Sean Connery, the biggest star from the first film. The producers paid him a huge fee to come back for only a few minutes, and the screenwriters developed a plot that would have his character (Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez) summoned back to life (among other ridiculous and incomprehensible ideas), and the fans have been angry about the whole thing ever since. Fortunately for them, a third movie (and others) completely ignored the events of this installment.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

You may argue that Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) no more died at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest than Han Solo died at the end of The Empire Strikes Back (one of the many blatant parallels between the PotC series and the original Star Wars trilogy), but unlike being frozen in carbonite, being imprisoned in Davy Jones’ Locker is a kind of afterlife, somewhat akin to being in Purgatory. And for the plot of the franchise to continue, Sparrow had to literally be brought back to the land of the living. Of course, he didn’t have to be resurrected for the sequel to exist. We would have actually been happier with the third installment had it been completely set in that surreal desert world.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

Continuing directly after the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which Spock (Leonard Nimoy) sacrificially dies from radiation poisoning while restoring power to the Enterprise, the plot of this third installment mostly consists of the recovery of Spock’s body (shipped off, in its coffin, to a newly created planet at the end of the last film) and the character’s ultimate resurrection. Though the search is initially made in order to properly lay Spock to rest on Vulcan, as well as to save Bones (DeForest Kelley) from being killed by the soul of Spock residing inside him, the character is, to the benefit of his fans, completely brought back to life in order to return for a few subsequent films.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Given the prevalence of resurrections in comic books (they may have more returns from the dead than soap operas and zombie movies combined), it’s surprising that more comic book movie franchises don’t kill off a character in one installment only to revive him/her/it in a later film. One of the many reasons that X2: X-Men United is one of the greatest comic book movies of all time is that it ends with such a premise, in which Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) appears to die while saving the rest of the team (similar to Spock’s demise in Star Trek II). In a nod to a famous plot from the X-Men comics, she’s resurrected, phoenix-like, and villain-like, for the third film. Unfortunately, despite this plot’s attempted faithfulness to its source, X-Men: The Last Stand was one of the worst comic book movies of all time.