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Several martial arts movie sequels have managed to greatly outdo their predecessors. Martial arts films are like any other genre, in that some of their stories are specifically designed to be one-offs, while others are the beginning of a franchise. The latter tends to be a fairly common scenario, and has often led to such popular martial arts movie franchises as The Karate Kid, Kickboxer, and the Ip Man movies.

There are also numerous examples of the second installment of a martial arts movie series completely surpassing the original. In some cases, it is simply the case of a superior sequel with bigger and better action scenes being made. In other cases, part two of a martial arts franchise even ends up being so good as to become regarded as the true beginning of its respective series. Here are 10 martial arts movie sequels that are significantly better than their predecessors.

The French biopic The Conquest (La conquete) recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and also opened in France last week. The film’s music is composed by Academy Award-winning composer Nicola Piovani (Life is Beautiful) and has recently been released commercially. The soundtrack album featuring 14 tracks from Piovani’s score is currently available to download on Amazon. For a preview of all tracks, check out the audio clips below. The Conquest takes a look at French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s rise to power. The film is directed by Xavier Durringer (Chok-Dee) and stars Florence Pernel, Bernard Le Coq and Samuel Labarthe. Music Box Films has acquired domestic rights for the film and is planning a release to precede the upcoming American presidential primary season.For more information, watch the trailer below and visit the French official movie website.

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Having a nonactor play himself in a movie is always a risk, but Dida Diafat, a French-born champion of Thai kickboxing, makes a more than credible hero in Chok-Dee, an entertaining true-life story by Xavier Durringer. The quiet intensity and determination Dida demonstrates in boxing carry over into his acting. Chok-Dee makes a great festival film, but chances for North American distribution appear slight. The film plays in the ongoing City of Lights/City of Angels festival.

Dida is a punk in prison when he meets Jean Bernard Giraudeau), a fellow con who teaches him Thai boxing. When Dida gets paroled, Jean urges him to go to Bangkok to train at a famous fight school. Refused admission because he is foreign, he lays siege to its entrance and eventually gets a job washing dishes and moping toilets. When he finally receives training, he turns out to be a quick study and moves up quickly in the caliber of his fights.

At Jean's behest, Dida looks up Kim (Florence Vanida Faivre), Jean's long-lost daughter, who initially wants nothing to do with either him or her father's letters to her. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of Kim and she becomes involved in Dida's life.

The movie never gets inside the world of kickboxing. It watches Dida train in montages but never eavesdrops on his instructor's words of wisdom or strategies of combat. In the fight sequences, the camera often sticks too close to the action, making it difficult to tell how the fight is going.

Melodrama develops over Jean's return to Thailand and crooks who stage illegal no-holds-barred matches. These may be true to Diafat's story, but they feel like Warner Bros. circa 1938.