The more I think about it, the more I realize that it's difficult to write a sequel to a story that was originally a fairytale with another fairytale. Neither can a fairytale have a second installment that flows more like a standard story. In order to write a sequel to be aesthetically pleasing, I've observed several methods that work:

1. The Next Generation

Peter Pan was a contemporary fairytale, and several sequels have been written for it, such as Hook. Hook was a good movie, but I think that part of why it works is because it completely reinterprets the character with age. In this case, the sequel to the fairytale was another fairytale, but it worked because the main character was in another stage of his life, and in many ways his children took up his mantle (although in the original Peter Pan, the main character was actually Wendy). Each new generation in real life is like a real-life sequel to the generation before it, so it forms an archetype that can resonate with the reader/viewer that rightfully belongs in a sequel, since fairytales are all about archetypes.

2. The Hero's Anthology

Upon the success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum wrote thirteen sequels, one every year at the request of children. In my mind, it became more like a series, where the Hero's Journey archetype was repeated many times. None are as good as the first, but amalgamated together they make a great anthology. As said, they probably all follow the Hero's Journy, but not necessarily. I like to think of it as "The Adventures of Dorothy Gale".

3. The Epic

In order to write a serious sequel that could potentially stand out even more than the original fairytale, it can serve as the starting block for an epic. Consider The Hobbit, which spawned the legendary Lord of the Rings saga. In fact, I think that a fairytale can be an excellent way of setting up for an epic to give it extra character. It takes the original fairytale and it expands upon it, turning it into a simple archetypal story into something far more complicated, which follows the general rule of sequels that they should feel different than the original.

Likewise, a fairytale can often be converted into an epic. Examples that come to mind are Tin Man and Star Wars. Tin Man was based on The Wizard of Oz and also used the Next Generation method. Star Wars both created an epic for a sequel and, since the original film was in the middle of it all, also converted the original futuristic fairytale film into a part of that epic.

In conclusion, I'm not making "rules", per se, and I don't like to think of things that way, but the hard reality is that fairytales simply make great standalones and it's hard to make a sequel without cheapening it. For this particular brand of storytelling, if the storyteller wishes to continue on with it there are only certain directions that he or she can go. Notice, by the way, that these form completely different types of literature. Let's imagine each of these methods applied to one of the most recent fairytales to score big, Pixar's Brave. I'd be the first to admit that it would be very difficult to make a sequel to it without being cheap, so here we go:

If it was a Next Generation sequel, Merida would be much older, or the story would focus more around her children. The previous story would have to be far enough in the past so that the film could have its own sense of independence. It would work, but the story would have to be darn good, and it would have to be a different type of fairytale.

The Anthology sequel would require a television series. Brave made a good movie, and it could also lend its main character to a good television series. They're two completely different types of media and would therefore be difficult to compare.

To turn Brave into a saga would require some hardcore writing and a whole lot of vision. Due to real world constraints, Pixar wouldn't do this since they have a movie-per-year policy, but setting that aside, Merida's adventure would have to reveal something about a larger universe that has much broader implications. The tale would have to get far more complex and turn into a long-distance journey of a narrative. Brave would be the equivalent of The Hobbit, and the sequel would actually have to be sequels, most likely a trilogy branching off of the original adventure. They would cover a much larger story, one that Merida's adventure merely gave us glimpses of. It would not be an actual continuation of Brave.

Most other possibilities don't have the same satisfaction. I don't think that you could do with Brave what Pixar did with Toy Story.

Merida