Clint Eastwood Only Directed One Official Sequel In His Entire Career

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Everyone knows that Hollywood loves a sequel. The industry is so enamored with milking IPs that even box office bombs often get follow-ups, like when somebody greenlit a sequel to Keanu Reeves' 2013 flop "47 Ronin" or when 2011's "Atlas Shrugged: Part I" was savaged by critics and then another one turned up a year later. Because of this, actors will frequently push back against studios' insatiable appetite for sequels and refuse to return for another go round if they think they can see the writing on the wall. 

Case in point: Clint Eastwood moved on from his Sergio Leone Western era after his Dollars trilogy had wrapped up, refusing to star in Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "Duck, You Sucker!" (which, while technically not sequels, were very much in line with the prior movies Eastwood had made with Leone). Why was the actor-filmmaker so averse to returning? Well, after portraying the Man with No Name for three movies, he felt the whole thing had run its course. As he revealed in "Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979-1983:"

"I felt at the time, after 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,' that [Leone] was going in a different direction than I wanted. He wanted to go more into a kind of spectacle thing. I think Leone more envisioned himself as a David Lean à la Italiano, and that's understandable. He just wanted to make bigger, more elaborate projects."

Ironically, Eastwood wound up moving on to his own "bigger, more elaborate projects" when "Duck, You Sucker!" debuted in 1971, which was the same year the esteemed star played Harry Callahan in "Dirty Harry." The character soon became one of Eastwood's most recognizable, and can you guess what happened after that first movie proved successful? Yep, sequel city. There are now a full four follow-ups in the "Dirty Harry" saga (five if you count the spiritual sequel "Gran Torino"), none of which quite managed to live up to the original movie. At the same time, they're significant in their own way, whether it's because they spawned famous catchphrases or because one of them is the only sequel Eastwood himself ever directed.

Plenty of actors have refused to return for sequels, and the same is true of directors — though it's not always their choice. When Warner Bros. brought in Joel Schumacher to direct "Batman Forever," for example, it was a huge relief to Tim Burton, who'd overseen the previous two franchise installments and was ready for something new. But even Burton would eventually return to familiar ground when he helmed the legacy sequel "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." Clint Eastwood, on the other hand, has mostly steered clear of sequels as a director (less so as an actor). In fact, he's only ever helmed one official sequel, and it happens to be one of the most brutal "Dirty Harry" movies.

Eastwood certainly hasn't avoided returning to characters he feels are worth revisiting. Evidently, that's how he felt about his role as the truck driver Philo Beddoe, whom he first played in the 1978 action-comedy "Every Which Way but Loose," alongside a trained orangutan. The star then returned to the role for the 1980 sequel "Any Which Way You Can," capping off a decade in which he'd already reprised the role of Harry Callahan twice with 1973's "Magnum Force" and 1976's "The Enforcer." By the time Callahan made his fourth on-screen appearance in 1983's "Sudden Impact," Eastwood had decided he was ready to also take on directing duties, making that film the first and only time he directed a sequel.

At this point, it's worth remembering that 1971 was a big year for Eastwood. Not only did he debut as Harry Callahan in Don Siegel's celebrated (and controversial) action thriller "Dirty Harry," but he also made his directorial debut with his well-received psychological thriller, "Play Misty for Me." By 1983, he had directed eight more features and was ready to oversee an entry in the "Dirty Harry" franchise. Sadly, the result wasn't quite the seminal crime thriller that Siegel's original movie was.

The fourth movie in the franchise, "Sudden Impact" saw Clint Eastwood's rogue detective tracking down Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke), a woman exacting revenge on her attackers for a sexual assault that occurred a decade prior. Though Harry Callahan is known for carrying out his own brutal form of justice, he simply can't let this sort of vengeful vigilantism go unchecked (he'd already taken out a group of vigilante cops in 1973's "Magnum Force"). This time, however, Harry is on an involuntary break from the force, and after he develops a relationship with Jennifer, things become even more complicated for an increasingly conflicted Callahan.

The movie's most significant contribution to the "Dirty Harry" saga, and wider culture generally, was the line "Go ahead, make my day," which has since become ingrained in the cultural fabric, even being uttered by former president Ronald Reagan — though, he used it as a threat to democrats hoping to push through tax legislation and not, as Eastwood's character did, to threaten a robber holding a waitress hostage. Otherwise, "Sudden Impact" wasn't the most well-received follow-up.

The film bears an unremarkable 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics seemingly taken aback by the sheer brutality of the thing. Harper Barnes of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch surmised that while the movie "can be fun, if you do not take it too seriously," it was also "so unrelievedly brutal and ugly, particularly in the last part, that even hard-core Dirty Harry fans may find themselves recoiling from the experience." The New York Times' Vincent Canby also gave the film a negative review, writing, "By my count, more than a dozen people are murdered on camera, about half by Miss Locke and most of the others by Mr. Eastwood. This gives them something in common as lovers." Indeed, in /Film's ranking of the "Dirty Harry" movies, Jeremy Smith wrote that Eastwood "never made a film as cruel or bigoted as 'Sudden Impact,'" which might be a badge of honor for the man himself but for most makes his one and only sequel as director a bit of a letdown. Still, he wasn't fazed and followed up "Sudden Impact" two years later with the widely praised "Pale Rider."