These days, it's hard to find sequel stories that live up to the original one. When a movie does well enough to get turned into a franchise, it's usually because the studios know they can make a ton of money off of it, and so sequels (especially for animated kids movies) tend to be cash cows more than anything else. Often, creativity and good storytelling are put to the side in favor of fan service and awkwardly placed callbacks to the jokes from the first movie that became iconic. There's a reason that Minions became such a hated franchise despite their roles as the silly side characters in the original Despicable Me.