5 Reasons Hollywood Needs to Stop Making Prequels
Every time a prequel craps all over movie goers' expectations from high atop a pile of money, there seems to be a common refrain among disappointed fans: How could they waste all that potential?! Afterall, a franchise loses its luster with each passing sequel. But the prequels should reverse the aging process, since they rewind the storyline to back before the original movie was ruined. The brainless jack offs in Hollywood must be trying to ruin these franchises. One thing you rarely hear people bring up is that it might be literally impossible to make a good movie prequel. After all ...
#5.
The Past Was Better Before We Saw It Happen
When a magician hears the audience gasp and say, "How'd he do that?" he does not turn around and loudly announce, "Oh, the rabbit's in my assistant's ass." Similarly, professional writers know that there are some questions that their audience doesn't want answered, even though they think they do. Like a magician, a writer wants his audience to live in that space between knowing and wanting to know. That's what keeps them coming back for more. Unfortunately, when Hollywood studio executives hear the audience asking questions, they hire someone to start writing a prequel.
Questions invite thought, and audiences hate that.
Hannibal Lecter became a pop culture icon in part because he was gleefully engaged in the taboo act of cannibalism without any specific reason motivating him to be such an evil bastard. 2007 brought us Hannibal Rising, which explained that Lecter was a tortured youth during WWII who got tricked into eating his dead sister.
If we're going to call the young Vito Corleone scenes in The Godfather Part II a prequel, we'll go ahead and bestow the same status on the first 30 or so minutes of Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's Halloween. The film delves into the childhood of Michael Myers, making crystal clear exactly how a young boy could commit such brutal murders. The short version is "He grew up in an abusive environment surrounded by a bunch of shitty rednecks."
Queue the tune from Deliverance.
Of course, this completely undermines exactly what was so scary about Michael Meyers. Carpenter went to great lengths to make Meyers straddle the line between inhuman nightmare cipher, and guy next door. He grounds everything in the real world by giving him a name, and putting him in a mental institution. But then he gives him a mask and motives that are intentionally vague. Carpenter knew that the blank mask allowed us to project whatever we wanted onto the character and that this is what we found scary. Rob Zombie apparently knew a few things he picked up about human psychology while watching Law and Order: SVU.
But the grand prize for supplying information that the audience doesn't need or want goes to the Star Wars prequels. The very thing that made the original films cool was that they combined Eastern mysticism with the typically dry sci-fi genre. Well, it turns out that all that mysticism was an accident. As the prequels explain, the Force was grounded in science, not mysticism. It's a bacterial infection.
This is what makes telekinesis possible.
#4.
Characters Need to Be Less Interesting to Make Sense
The natural inclination of a film franchise is to show the main character progressing and changing. If the movie works, the character is a little different at the end. Writers want the characters to evolve and so do we. A prequel hits "reset" on this process. You're starting with a character that is either the same one we wanted to see change when the original movie started, or one that's worse, and had to become more interesting to become that less interesting version the franchise started with.
Badass murder cyborgs > Whiny little shits.
In the Star Wars prequels, Anakin spends three movies whining about the inevitable change we all know is coming. It's the opposite of suspense. It's like listening to a joke that you already know the punch line to being stretched out over six hours. Unfortunately, that's what's needed to make Vaders bad ass nature in episodes IV-VI an act of progress.
Man's inhumanity to man is a terrible thing to behold.
The other problem here is that casting is borderline impossible. Despite giving a much better performance as Sabertooth, Liev Schreiber seems like he's pretending to be someone we've already seen played by Tyler Mane. The problem isn't Schreiber, who can act circles around Mane. It's that his character by nature has to be less interesting. Otherwise, he makes no damn sense.
Speaking of which ...
#3.
... Or They Can Just Make No Sense
The other option is to go ahead and ignore everything we know about what the character becomes in the future, which is what the Star Wars prequels did to Yoda. When we meet him for the first time in The Empire Strikes Back, he's a wise old Muppet who tells Luke that war and battle do not bring glory and that a person shouldn't be judged by his size or fighting abilities.
"Size matters not..."
Unfortunately, the second movie, which took place several decades before he dispenses his wise advice, needed an awesome sword fight for its climax. So we get Star Wars' answer to Gandhi hopping around like a coked up-circus monkey, flailing his lightsaber around before leading clone troopers into a glorious battle against a droid army.
"...as long as you have a laser sword and super powers."
Comparing his actions to what he tells Luke in Episode V gives the impression that Yoda has either:
A) Turned into a bitter old hypocrite who is conveniently neglecting to mention that he didn't always live up to the standard that he's setting for others
B) Conveniently forgotten everything that happened a couple decades ago, making him more deserving of his cultural reputation as a stoner than previously suspected.
C) Is sabotaging Luke by steering him away from the violent tactics he knows get results.
The Star Wars prequels are so excessively guilty of abandoning logic to shoe horn characters in that fans had to make up a bunch of wild theories to try to make a couple of characters fit better. The absolute silliest excuse was when they brought in C3PO so that viewers could enjoy more of his witty banter with R2D2. Turns out that Luke's dad built him when he was a little kid. Fans had to put up with that little gem of WTF so Lucas could have more of his beloved robot comedy duo taking up screen time. But this means that the characters know way too much for any of the subsequent movies that everyone loved to make sense. Are they pretending to be in the dark with everyone else about who Vader really is? Are they secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes?
"Moo-hoo-ha-ha."
Also the original actors get older. Not sure if that was mentioned
ReplyDid any real Star Wars fan truly enjoy the prequels? I thought they were blah with a side of f**k this.
Reply"It was a prequel in as much as an episode of Seinfeld from Season 4 was a prequel to an episode from Season 5."
ReplyNot even close, since season 4 of Seinfield was not filmed before season 5... but, hey... nice try.
By the way... X-Men: First Class FTW.
ReplyOkay, try this: A prequel that logically alters your understanding of the original.
ReplyExample: Wise old mentor explains the history of the big baddie in typical, mostly vague, movie-character (without the actual flashback) style to the protagonist. Then the mentor dies before he confront his old nemesis. The movie continues, focusing on other more pressing plot points that distract the character (and viewers) from a disturbing fact: Several of the facts that the mentor stated, with absolute authority of someone who has experienced them, are dead wrong. The protagonist doesn't have time to reflect, and most viewers won't notice until the geeks explain it in a Cracked list name "5 Movie Mentors (Who Were Full of Shit)".
Then comes the prequel, which has much younger versions of the mentor and the big baddie that can only be vaguely connected with their older counterparts. They also have a third, mostly useless, friend who is the new protagonist. The story shows how the baddie was always kind of a baddie and largely centers on the philosophical conflict between the two which, unrecognized by either, is deeply affecting the new protagonist. This protagonist is only briefly mentioned in the original as basically, "Oh, yeah, I wonder what happened to that guy." By the end of this movie you learn that, after the mentor character ended up in exile or whatever, this protagonist had slipped down the slope to evil and replace who we thought was the original baddie - thus creating a twist ending that explains the apparant decrepencies in the original.
Could fail easily, but it might work.
Note: I apologize for the lousy wording.
Another thing that should be mentioned about Godfather Part II is that most of the Vito flashback stuff was actually in the original Godfather novel. It was cut out of the first film because it would have made that already lengthy film much longer, but both Coppola and Puzo regretted having to lose those scenes and that whole aspect of the story that showed the parallels the lives of Vito and Michael. And so when it came time for a sequel they went back to that deleted "young Vito" material and developed a new complimentary story for Michael to recreate that "parallel story" aspect of the original novel that had been lost in it's translation to the first film. So actually the Godfather Part II more than anything is just building onto the first film to make a more faithful and complete adaptation of the original book.
ReplyI actually liked hannibal rise and the rob zombie´s prequel about myers history
ReplyRidley Scott seems to have realized the prequel problem, since he's no longer describing Prometheus as an Alien prequel, but as a film in the same fictional universe.
ReplyI think one of the best prequels (by technicality) is Shadow of the Colossus. It had almost nothing to do with Ico, but yet it gave an explanation for why the events in that game took place. Just explaining in a small way like that works wonders, and it wasn't even clear that it was a prequel until the very end.
ReplyJust to clarify because a lot of the later comments seem to not know this, but in star wars canon it is commonplace to erase droid memory every time they switch owners, or something important occurs they don't want them squealing about. So yeah C3 has been wiped, and more than once if I recall correctly. R2 on the other hand is one of those rare droids that never has his mind wiped, which is also why he has a quirky personality and is unique. Droids that do not get regular wipes retain so much info that they gain a bit more A.I. than intended and more than one droid in the books and comics and games are like that. As for why Yoda is a hypocrite... it would only be hypocritical if the prequels came later. Ever heard of learning from your mistakes? Yes he went the route of war when given a choice, and look what happened! The Jedi order got wiped clean, and he got stuck living on a mudball planet. So yeah he told Luke to use his head, cuz he learned his lesson the hard way. Sounds like a progressively clean character to me. As for Anakin, well they were just asking too much. Not just storyline wise, but from the actor. Hayden even says in the commentary that he had a lot of trouble trying to portray the extremely volatile emotions that turn him from one of the best jedi to Darth Vader.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesBut why include the droids in the first place then?
Could you elaborate? Why not include the droids? Didn't they kick off A New Hope and provide endless comedic relief?
if Hayden couldn't do it.. maybe they should have hired a better actor. You're other points, on the other hand, make complete sense.
@ therivereti Why not. You're question adds nothing to the debate.
The only way a prequel can work is if the creators have already worked out the details of how the characters became who they were. Then, if they decide to make the things, they'll have their plotlines in place already. In this case, the suspense will be from answering, 'How do the characters get out of this situation?' We know that they did, but not the details.
ReplyDone properly, the audience could have been rooting for Anakin Skywalker one second, then stopping to remember that they're cheering another step on his path to becoming Darth Vader. Not necessarily from a less-interesting character to a more-interesting one, but from a Jedi to DARTH EFFING VADER.
(And Thomas Harris only wrote 'Hannibal Rising' because if he didn't do it, someone else would. This way, he could control the situation.)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was a "good" prequel? Well, it made piles of money to be sure, but it's been critically panned and had so many stupid scenes, like surviving a fall from a plane in a rubber raft, or being slammed against a cliff wall while hanging on to a rope bridge and not breaking every bone in your body and being knocked loose. Also, it's a little weird that Jones sees incontrovertible evidence of the mystical power of the Sankhara Stones, yet in Raiders, he's a skeptic who thinks the idea that the Ark of the Covenant might have mystical powers is absurd. I definitely preferred the sequel (why does the author think the sequel would have to be set during WW2? They DID do a sequel, and, you know, it was set in '37 or '38, which come after '36 but before '39 when the war started), in which Indy fought Nazis again. (We will of course pretend that Crystal Skull and the lead-lined refrigerator never happened.)
ReplyI prefer to think that Temple of Doom sucked, but not because it was a prequel.
I'm sure it's already been said, but Bail Organa is clearly heard at the end of Episode 3 ordering that C3PO's memory be erased. Possibly R2's was too, at least partially, in the years between Episodes 3 and 4.
ReplyYeah, I didn't care for the backstory thing with Michael Myers, either. After all, what's scarier than a man going around killing people for SEEMINGLY NO REASON WHATSOEVER? By giving him his backstory it pretty much just tells us to be scared of the rest of society for totally dropping the ball and not helping this kid out sooner.
Reply(Add in the fact that in the original 'Halloween', Michael's parents weren't redneck bumpkins at all and it makes even less sense. I know, I know, it's Rob's reimagining, but still...)
What's WTF about Anakin building C3P0?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI find it hard to believe that the kid from Jingle All The Way can create such a sophisticated and complex piece of machinery and give it an artificial intelligence.
Also, he's a brat.
The boy says he is building it to "help his mother." If that is the case, why is he building his mother a protocol droid which speaks 6,000,000 languages? Once could think of any number of ways a droid could be more useful to his mother than that.
Furthermore, C3 units are seen in episodes VI and V. Was Annakin mass producing them? Are they sold as a kit?
Not sure about the whole C3 units, but the language thing holds up when you consider that Mos Espa, like all cities on that planet, is a space port. You literally can never know what random language you're going to need to barter in.
I'd actually add the Twin Peaks movie Fire Walk With Me to the list of good prequels. Even though you know one of the characters is going to die (Is that a spoiler?) it doesn't ruin the suspense. The enjoyment comes from the rather beautifully drawn-out inevitability, and the batshit logic of David Lynch.
ReplyTwin Peaks was nothing more than a practical joke that Lynch was playing on his audience. By the time "Fire Walk With Me" was released, most of his audience had caught on to the fact that he was messing with them.
It's mentioned in Revenge of the Sith that C3PO and R2D2 are going to have their memories wiped.
ReplyBest prequel of all time hands down is "Dumb and Dumberer- When Harry Met Lloyd"... Not only is this an example of an absolutley amazing prequel but as stunning is the amazing actors whom portray the young jim carrey and jeff daniels characters... the wrighting is the best weve seen in a comedy since and how this movie is regarded so badly i will never know....... No, im just kinding that movie is clearly a piece of s**t ... and a very valid reason to stop prequels all together .... seriously... just f*****g stop it
ReplyRed Dragons a prequel to silence of the lambs and its a good movie
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesRed Dragon was written before Silence of the Lambs, and only two characters carried over (on of them Lecter, who had, at best, a bit part in the original novel). If anything, Silence of the Lambs was a sequel to Red Dragon, but even that is stretching it. It's more of a story that takes place in the same universe as the first novel.
If silence of the lambs was its sequel, then that would make red dragon a prequel to it.
Red Dragon is technically a remake of Manhunter (The original Hannibal Lecter movie). Silence of the Lambs was made after Manhunter with Hopkins as Lecter.
Rudy1580 - Red Dragon was originally a novel. It was first filmed as Manhunter. After the success of the Silence of the Lambs movie, it was adapted again for the screen.
yes but the article is about prequels made AFTER not part one made first is an obvious sequel to part 2 made later movies.
Temple of Doom wasn't that good. It's the least of the Jones movies, even with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull factored in.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesCrusade is set in 1938, still not during World War II, but yes definitely featuring Nazis as villains ("If he set the film after Raiders, it would have to have taken place during WWII", please do your research. It began in '39, but America wasn't involved until later).
Hell I would have loved an Indy film made in the 90s (when Harrison Ford wasn't really doing anything all that worthwhile) set during WWII and having Indy facing off against the Japanese. That would have been bad-ass. Instead we got Indiana Jones and the Chariots of the Gods...
SO, you're saying the Nazis materialized the instant the war started, and weren't up to shenanigans long before actually trying to re-form the Holy Roman Empire?
Italy = Holy Roman Empire
Germany = Third Reich
The Holy Roman empire was located more in germany than it was in Italy. If the 3rd Reich was Hitlers Germany, the 1st Reich was the Holy Roman Empire.....