How to handle “original movie” tags when there's a sequel?

Question

I was reading through the questions under the tag independence-day and realized that quite a few of them were about the sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence.

I checked the tag description for independence-day, and it's specifically for the original 1996 movie. There isn't yet a tag that describes the Independence Day universe (encompassing both movies).

This is a multi-part question:

• Is it okay to replace the independence-day tag with independence-day-2 if the question is clearly about the sequel? (I'm assuming yes)

• Should we create a third tag for the universe that encompasses both movies? Or should we repurpose the independence-day tag and make a new one called independence-day-1996?

Answer 1

It's worth having a universe tag.

The 2016 film is not a remake of the 1996 one, but a bona fide sequel, the two (and possibly more) forming a single story in a single universe. That universe deserves a tag, since there may be general questions which are about the world or the characters without being specific to one or the other film.

But the individual films probably also deserve their own tags.

I don't know enough about this franchise to judge properly whether both films need their own specific tags. I'm assuming the second one does at least - after all, you thought it was worth making this meta post and creating the new tag - but I'll leave it to others to decide whether or not to create a film-specific tag for the original 1996 film.

In the meantime, I've:

• rewritten the independence-day tag wiki, making it a franchise tag rather than an individual-film tag;
• renamed the second film tag independence-day-resurgence, with independence-day-2 as a synonym;
• ensured that all questions tagged independence-day-resurgence also have the franchise tag.