Canon Discontinuity/Film

Examples of in  include:


 * Superman Returns ignores Superman III and Superman IV (and Supergirl), instead having Superman leave for five years at some point after Superman II.
 * Rocky Balboa ignores the premise of Rocky V; as Rocky considers coming out of retirement in the sixth movie, the another-punch-could-kill-him brain injury that keeps him out of the ring in the fifth movie is never mentioned. Word of God has it that in the years since that diagnosis was made, medical science has advanced enough to more accurately treat and/or diagnose the kind of injury Rocky had, leading the doctors to discover that it was less of a danger than was originally feared.
 * The Godzilla franchise is particularly infamous for this. Pay close attention here: The Return of Godzilla (also known as Godzilla 1985) ignored every Godzilla movie except the 1954 original. The Heisei Era movies after The Return Of Godzilla create a new timeline that is very tightly interwoven, with a largely recurring main cast and developing plotlines from movie to movie. The "ignore every previous movie except the 1954 original" reset button was pushed again four movies in a row: Godzilla 2000, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, and Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. The next movie, Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., was a sequel to the previous film, but the next film after that, Godzilla: Final Wars, has an ambiguous continuity that could fit anywhere or nowhere in the series. Vs. Megaguirus, GMK and Final Wars all treat the American Zilla as canon...but have no relation to each other!
 * Highlander is one of the most retconned canons in existence. Almost all iterations of the franchise accept the original movie as canon, with a few various retcons, but tend to ignore each other:
 * The second movie retcons when MacLeod and Ramirez first met, now taking place on an alien planet.
 * The updated version of the second movie re-retcons when MacLeod and Ramirez first met, now taking place on Earth, but in the distant past.
 * The TV series ignores the second movie, and retcons the ending of the first.
 * The cartoon TV series accepts some of the flashback stuff from the first movie (there are immortals, two of them are Connor and Ramirez) and ignores everything else, including the bits of the first movie set in 1980s New York.
 * The third movie ignores the TV series and the second movie.
 * The fourth and fifth movies follows the TV series' continuity, while ignoring the second and third movies.
 * And the fifth movie has been retconned into All Just a Dream via Word of God
 * The second and third installments of the Sleepaway Camp series were rendered non-canon by Return to Sleepaway Camp.
 * On Her Majesty's Secret Service might be taken as ignoring You Only Live Twice, so far as it shows James Bond and Blofeld meeting face-to-face for apparently the first time (neither recognises the other) when they had already met in the previous film. Of course, both were played by different actors, but in-universe that's no excuse.
 * You can blame Pragmatic Adaptation on this, as the book On Her Majesty's Secret Service precedes You Only Live Twice (where Bond goes to Japan to chase Blofeld and avenge his dead wife).
 * Halloween H 20, the seventh film in the franchise, completely ignores the fourth, fifth, and sixth films.
 * The Rocky Horror Picture Show creator Richard O'Brien almost immediately disowned the semi-sequel Shock Treatment, as did the director of both films, Jim Sharman. (Richard has stated that Shock Treatment, originally written as a strict RHPS sequel but soon to evolve into a completely different film, was a mere abortion.) Richard would eventually write both a movie script (Revenge of the Old Queen) and a stage musical (Rocky Horror: The Second Coming) that wiped the events of Shock Treatment out of the canon entirely. However, neither were produced.
 * Predators ignores the events of the two Alien vs. Predator movies and is instead a direct sequel to Predator 2.
 * Word of God says it ignores Predator 2 as well. In fact, Word of God is the only confirmation we get that this trope is even in effect. The actual film doesn't really contradict the others in any discernible way.
 * Director Nimrod Antal said in an interview said that it was mostly just the Alien vs Predator movies they were dismissing, but that Predator 2 was closer to the original, so Predator 2 wasn't being ignored the same way the AVP ones were.
 * It's not so much as Canon Discontinuity as it is just not be able to or not wanting to continue the story of the Alien vs Predator movies. The thing is that with the Predator franchise has a understandable reason as to why the aliens are never discovered. They have cloaking technology and have tons of survival experience in order to be undetected as well as heat seeking technology, laser guns, and bombs to ensure there's no survivors. Aliens while dangerous don't really have such luck. To be honest the only reason that the Xenomorphs have been pretty discovered and exterminated by now is that almost every movie in the Alien franchise takes place in the future, the only people who seem to know about them is one random company that outright let's their employees get slaughtered, and the only survivors to tell anybody about the Xenomorphs are mercenary's who probably wouldn't be trusted any way. To put it simple any Alien vs Predator movie is doomed to either kill off everyone or only have a few survivors that every thinks are crazy and as such making it almost impossible to ever really mention the Alien vs Predator movie due to having to maintain the Status Quo (band) of the movies that take place in the future.
 * Universal Soldier has had numerous sequels with numerous instances of installments ignoring other installments. The first film was followed by two sequels, Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms and Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business, which were ignored by the next film, Universal Soldier: The Return. The next film, Universal Soldier: Regeneration, ignored every previous movie except the first.
 * The third and fourth Pumpkinheads ignore the second, which was tenuously connected to the original anyway.
 * The Jaws franchise ignored Jaws 3-D when creating the sequel, Jaws: The Revenge. The tagline even said Jaws: The Revenge was the final installment in the trilogy.
 * When the rights to the Deep Throat series were bought out, the company made Deep Throat II in 1987, completely ignoring the Deep Throat Part II in 1974.
 * The Mystery Science Theater 3000 film Boggy Creek 2 The Legend Continues is a curious case of this; Charles B. Pierce produced and directed the original The Legend of Boggy Creek, a documentary/dramatic re-enactment about an actual rural legend of a sasquatch-like creature living in the backwoods of Fouke, Arkansas. The studio that owned the film tried to cash in on its popularity and made a full-on fictional sequel, Return to Boggy Creek, without the involvement of Charles B. Pierce. Charles B. Pierce then, out of spite, made his own sequel, completely ignoring the events of Return, combining a fictional narrative about a college nature trip with more dramatic re-enactments of alleged sightings of the creature.
 * X Men First Class officially throws X Men Origins Wolverine out the window.
 * Other than its title, Exorcist III completely pretends Exorcist II: The Heretic never happened.
 * Stanley Kubrick was so embarrassed by his first film, Fear and Desire, that he reportedly bought up any print he could find and burned it. A few do survive, but they are rarely shown.
 * According to American Reunion, the Direct to DVD sequels didn't happen.


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