This weekend, for the first time all year, none of the new films on release have a number or a colon in the title. That means no sequels, prequels or reboots cluttering up screens. Hollywood hasn’t suddenly decided to change their tactic of squeezing every dime out of every tried-and-true concept in their back catalogue. Nope, it’s because after American Thanksgiving, one of the biggest movie times of the year, the studios figure everyone ate too much turkey to bother going to the movies this week.
That means we have smaller, not-ever-likely-to-be-sequelized movies like Lovesick, Antibirth and The Other Half on offer. All, depending on your taste, are worth your dollar and each ticket bought sends a message that moviegoers won’t be content with constant rehashes of stories we already know.
Recently a tentative deal to make Bad Boys 3 and 4 was announced. While the prospect of a third and fourth movie in that decades old series is about as welcome as a plantar wart, we did this to ourselves by supporting endlessly repackaged stories and ideas.
Hollywood wouldn’t spend the time or effort to make photocopy quality sequels if we didn’t line up to see them, so why not your buying power to demand better movies? Read these easy-to-follow rules for sequel avoidance:
Generally speaking, shun movies with numbers in the titles. This sounds straightforward, but movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Three Days of the Condor, 8½, and The Seven Samurai muddy the waters.
By all means go see or stream those, but when choosing a movie beware of titles containing colons (Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace), the word “part” (Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D), unless of course it’s The Godfather Part II, a subtitle like “This Time It’s Personal” (Sister Act: Back in the Habit), roman numerals (Superman IV: The Quest For Peace) or any combination of the above (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan).
Other trouble spots include titles containing the words “Beginning” (Psycho IV: The Beginning), “Bride” (Bride of Chucky), “Return” (Return to the Blue Lagoon), “Vs.” (Gamera vs. Jiger), “Boogaloo” (Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo) or “Revenge” (Jaws: The Revenge).
Worse than numbered sequels are movies which substitute a homophonous word for the number (Look Who’s Talking Too, Teen Wolf Too).
Avoid movies that recycle ideas while simply changing the tense of the movie title. Examples? What was funny in Analyze This became less so in Analyze That and there is a reason I Still Know What You Did Last Summer sits at a 7% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
And finally, as a matter of principle, steer clear of any movie in which Ben Stiller plays supermodel Derek Zoolander.
Of course I’m joking, except about Zoolander. Any movie that subtitles itself with “No. 2” is really asking for it. Go see whatever you want, but keep in mind when supporting bad movies the joke is on us. It feeds the notion that audiences are as creatively bankrupt as the studios. Not so. If you are given a steady diet of dog food, pretty soon you get a taste for Alpo, but if occasionally you have something better, soon enough you’ll crave foie gras. Sequels are the dog food of the movie industry. Don’t let them force feed you.
Why I am left nursing a nasty Hangover after drinking in too many movie sequels?
There is a great scene in Ken Russell’s 1971 forgotten masterpiece The Devils. Oliver Reed as the whiskey priest Father Grandier has been tortured by a church sanctioned witch hunter. His legs crushed, his tongue pierced, he refuses to confess to heresy. His tormentor leans in one last time to question the priest’s commitment to his faith.
“Do you love the church?”
After a long pause the broken and battered holy man says, “Not today.”
I bring this up because I have just read that 2011, with a sum total of 27 movie sequels scheduled to hit theatres, is the biggest year yet for sequels and I feel like my cinematic church has been defiled.
This weekend alone offers up two part twos, the imaginatively titled The Hangover Part Two and Kung Fu Panda 2.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with movie sequels. Arguably The Godfather 2 outstrips the original, and The Bride of Frankenstein is unquestionably a better movie than its predecessor. So are Aliens, Toy Story 2 and Dawn of the Dead. It’s possible to make sequels that improve on the source, so why doesn’t Hollywood do it more often?
Because they don’t have to, that’s why. Audiences get the movies they deserve.
Need proof. Look no further than last week’s box office. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which I called a “monstrosity” in this space just seven days ago, soldiered on despite my scathing review to gross $90 million domestically, $260.4 million world wide.
Hollywood wouldn’t spend the time or effort to make these photocopy quality sequels if we didn’t line up to see them, so the next time you’re wondering why you haven’t had a truly great time at the movies recently, think back to the amount of movies you saw with a 2, 3 or 4 in the title and hang your head in shame.
I love going to the movies, sitting with strangers and getting wrapped up in the images flying through the air, but when I leave the theatre after watching—or should I say, enduring—PotC: On Stranger Tides and its ilk, I feel like Grandier. I love the movies, but catch me on the right day, ask me the question, and my answer would be, “Not today.”
I get paid to watch these things, what’s your excuse?
Call me a prophet if you like, but seven days ago in this very space I foretold of a future littered by sequels and threequels. And lo, just days after I made that pronouncement a tentative deal to make The Hangover Part 3 was announced.
Now before you start calling me for stock market tips or to predict whether or not bird flu will mutate again this summer keep in mind that it didn’t take ESP or a special connection to the movie gods to predict The Hangover’s tsunami sized box office would begat a sequel. And while the prospect of a third movie in that series is about as welcome as a plague of locusts at least my pronouncement didn’t have people selling their homes and moving underground (I’m looking at you Harold Camping). No, instead, the news should have moviegoers—at least those silly buggers who bought tickets to the film—bowing their heads in shame.
Why? Because their dollars made the threequel possible. Want to know how to stop the cycle of abuse and prevent sequels from clogging up your local multi-plex? Use your buying power to demand better movies. Want to know how? Read these easy-to-follow rules for sequel avoidance:
1. Generally speaking, shun movies with numbers in the titles. This sounds straightforward, but movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Three Days of the Condor, 8½ and The Seven Samurai muddy the waters.
By all means go see or rent those, but when choosing a movie beware of titles containing colons (Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace), the word “part” (Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D), unless of course it’s The Godfather Part II, a subtitle like “This Time It’s Personal” (Sister Act: Back in the Habit), roman numerals (Superman IV: The Quest For Peace) or any combination of the above (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan).
Other trouble spots include titles containing the words “Beginning” (Psycho IV: The Beginning), “Bride” (Bride of Chucky), “Return” (Return to the Blue Lagoon), “Vs.” (Gamera vs. Jiger), “Boogaloo” (Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo) or “Revenge” (Jaws: The Revenge).
2. Worse than numbered sequels are movies which substitute a homophonous word for the number (Look Who’s Talking Too, Teen Wolf Too).
3. Avoid movies that recycle ideas while simply changing the tense of the movie title. Examples? What was funny in Analyze This became less so in Analyze That and there is a reason I Still Know What You Did Last Summer sits at a 7% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
4. And finally, as a matter of principle, steer clear of any movie in which Eddie Murphy wears a fat suit.
Of course I’m joking (except about Eddie Murphy). You can go see whatever you want, but keep in mind when we support bad movies the joke is on us. It feeds the notion that audiences are as creatively bankrupt as the studios. Not so. I think if you are given a steady diet of dog food, pretty soon you get a taste for Alpo, but if occasionally you have something better soon enough you’ll crave foie gras. Sequels are the dog food of the movie industry. Don’t let them force feed you.
This weekend for instance sees Beginners, Midnight in Paris and (if you’re in Canada) Good Neighbors in theaters. All good movies with great reviews and not a sequel among them. What are you waiting for? Do yourself a favor, have some foie gras with your popcorn.
Hollywood is so into recycling you’d think Al Gore was running a studio and green-lighting movies. This year alone we’ve seen reimaginings, reboots and redos galore, from Straw Dogs and Footloose to Conan the Barbarian and The Mechanic.
It seems Tinseltown never met an idea it couldn’t endlessly recycle.
This is particularly true in the horror genre. In the last 12 months, Colin Farrell clipped on Chris Sarandon’s used fangs in a remake of Fright Night, and this weekend, The Thing is, according to IMDB, “a prequel to a remake of an adaptation of the novella Who Goes There?” Whatever it is, original it’s not.
Not that all original horror films are better than their remakes. David Cronenberg’s dark vision enhanced the story of The Fly, delivering the real scares that the campy 1958 version lacked, and 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers is far creepier than its cinematic predecessor.
The Blob, the tale of what happens when germ warfare goes awry, has been made a couple of times.
The original is an unintentionally funny flick with more giggles than gore, but it inspired a sequel, a remake and, if the rumours are true, a bloody revamp by horror maestro Rob Zombie.
I have a soft spot for the low-budget charm of the 1958 version, although the 1988 reboot has a smarter-than-it-needs-to-be script co-written by Frank Darabont and a cool tagline — “Scream now! while you can still breathe!”
Count Dracula is one of the most portrayed characters on the big screen, having appeared in more horror films than any other famous monster of filmland. Eighty years after he first portrayed the vampire in the 1931 film Dracula, Bela Lugosi is still the most famous blood sucker of them all, although for my money, two British actors — Gary Oldham in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Christopher Lee in Horror of Dracula — are tip-top Transylvanians.
Unlike his work in Scream, Wes Craven’s early films didn’t have any of the self-depreciating humour to go along with the scares.
His first movies were brutal, bloody and grim, usually all at once. Recent remakes of The Last House on the Left — rated R for “sadistic violence” — and The Hills Have Eyes — “The lucky ones die first!”— don’t have quite the impact of the Vietnam-era originals but still require a strong stomach.
Twenty three years have passed since the original film won an Academy Award for lead actor Michael Douglas and a Razzie for supporting actress Daryl Hannah which means that many current second year university students weren’t even born when Gordon Gekko made the words “Greed is good” famous.
Twenty-three years is a stretch but it is more common than you think for years, and sometimes even decades to pass between source and sequel.
Return to Oz, based on the second and third Oz books and made forty-six years after the classic MGM film, picks up the story six months after Dorothy returned to Kansas. The film held a Guinness Book of World Records notation as the sequel with the longest gap from its original until it was bumped off by Fantasia/2000, which came a whooping fifty-nine years after Fantasia.
Not record breaking, but still substantial are The Color of Money, which trailed The Hustler by twenty-five years and An American Werewolf in Paris which bounded into theatres sixteen years after An American Werewolf in London.
Sci fi fans also had to wait sixteen years for the follow up to 2001 A Space Odyssey. 2010: The Year We Make Contact featured a whole new cast (save for Douglas Rain who reprised his role as the voice of HAL 9000) but original director Stanley Kubrick was given a cameo of sorts. He can be seen as the Soviet premier on the cover of Time magazine.
Speaking of directors, it’s unusual for the original director to come back and direct a sequel a decade later, but Troy Duffy, stuck to his guns (literally) and ten years after The Boondock Saints came The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. “To me, the successful sequels in the past have given you everything you’ve loved from the first film, plus a brand-new storyline that you could never have predicted,” said Duffy.
Oliver Stone, who had never made a sequel to any of his films before remounting Wall Street, seems to have followed Duffy’s advice filling his new film with touchstones from the original, but let’s hope he’s joking when he says, “I should go back and do ‘Son of Scarface’ or something!”
Everyone thinks they have the secret to making a great sequel. Troy Duffy, director of Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day (in theatres this weekend) has a simple theory for sequel success. “Give them everything they loved about the first one inside a curveball plot they never could have seen coming.”
More scientific is a study from Cass Business School in London. They’ve devised a mathematical formula which Professor Thorsten Hennig-Thurau says takes the risk out of the sequel business. “The idea here is to put some more analytical thinking into the process,” he says.
Does this mean no more disastrously bad movies like Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde? I doubt it, but if it works, which I doubt, it might mean more Godfather II, less Psycho 4.
Sequels take a bad rap, but every now and again a good one comes along that not only equals, but improves on the original.
Toy Story II was originally a direct-to-DVD release but played so well at test screenings Pixar overhauled the film for a theatrical run. Woody, Buzz and crew became the third highest grossing film of 1999, making more money than any other animated film (including the original) to that date.
Also scoring big box office was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Much darker than the first two this one saw the franchise mature without losing the appeal of the original films. Rolling Stone said it was the “most thrilling of the three Harry Potter movies to date” and it set an opening weekend box office record in the UK.
Post-apocalyptic thriller The Road Warrior, the sequel to Mad Max, can not only boast a rare 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating but also earned the Ebert stamp of approval as “one of the most relentlessly aggressive movies ever made.”
On the gentler side is Before Sunset, the wonderfully romantic sequel to Before Sunrise. Set nine years after the original it sees Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy), the two lovers from the first film, reunited for a romantic walk through the streets of Paris before he must catch a plane back to the US. Heartfelt and compelling in a way that no mathematical equation could have ever predicted (take that Professor Thorsten Hennig-Thurau!) it contains the sexiest last lines in sequel history:
