Sequels

Over at Pajama Guy, LAGuy weighs in on Entertainment Weekly’s look at the 25 Worst Sequels of all time and also what they consider to be the 10 Best. For the most part, I agree with his take on sequels. It’s easy to beat up on them, since most of them are done strictly for money – that’s why William Goldman calls them “Whore’s Movies”. I notice that EW stayed away from most of the “franchises” (no Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Harry Potter, etc), picking only on Batman and Robin (what, no Superman III or IV?). And why anyone would bother to rate any of the Friday the 13th or Leprechaun movies is beyond me. Maybe they had trouble filling out the list.

The rest of the movies – as LAGuy points out – are movies that were either good enough to stand by themselves or bad enough to not justify the effort of a sequel. But in Hollywood, if it makes money, think sequel! I would also agree that the most troubling part of the article is the sidebar rating the “best” sequels, where it does seem to imply that sometimes the sequel is actually better than the original. Where I would disagree is his statement that “when sequels are superior, it’s usually because the original stinks”.

Most sequels are simply different movies using the same characters. Exceptions to this would be the Star Wars movies, the Matrix trilogy and the Godfather I&II. Those were attempts to tell one large story over the course of more than one movie. Star Trek II is a sequel to Star Trek I only because of the order in which they were filmed. The same is true with Toy Story 2. While there may be references to the earlier film, the sequel is really a stand-alone movie and as such, it is almost impossible to objectively compare the two.

The best example of this – for me – would be the Alien series. LAGuy dismisses the first Alien as a “…cheap slasher film in outer space…” and categorizes the sequel Aliens as a "...superior action film." What he’s really saying here is that these are two completely different genres. Alien, despite its Sci-Fi trappings, is, at its heart, a horror film. Aliens is Sci-Fi Action all the way. It builds ingeniously on the remnants of the original film and then veers totally into a world of its own. To say that the second film is a superior action film is to forget that the first film wasn’t an action film at all. It’s easy enough to say that you liked Aliens better than Alien but to say that it is a better film is like saying you like apples more than oranges. I mean, they are both fruits, aren’t they?

Having said all this, I should admit that I claim no expertise whatsoever when it comes to rating movies. And I’m happy to admit that I liked the Matrix Reloaded, so you may take that for what it’s worth. And my favorite story about sequels concerns Star Trek V. A friend of mine saw it and came up to me afterwards and said “Now I can’t wait for Star Trek VI: The Apology!”