I'm not the only one who's sick of sequels.
“If a movie makes even a shred of money at the box office, they rush ahead and make a sequel without even sitting down to bother to produce them or write a decent story,” said Maxim magazine editor Charles Coxe. ...Thanks for the newsflash. I think the key to the closing sentence is Hollywood. It's no surprise that such a closed, incestuous system is running out of ideas.But there's only one real explanation for all the movie déjà vu, he added.
“I think you can narrow it down to five words: Hollywood’s running out of ideas."
As any unconnected person who has tried to shop around a script knows, studios are only interested in talking to people who have generated big bucks in the past. They're afraid of taking risks on new people, new themes, new ideas, and so forth, because it costs an incredible amount of money to produce a modern movie. It's easy to throw together a script for Scary Movie 4 in a week or two once you get a few actors signed on to guarantee an audience. It's also easy to advertise such a movie -- "Just like Scary Movie 3, except better!"
What's hard is sifting through hundreds of terrible scripts by people you don't know hoping to find a rock that will be revealed as a gold nugget only after you invest millions of dollars. The business model is what dooms the film industry to mediocrity. (And don't be fooled into thinking "independent" films don't require money and connections to produce.)
Fortunately, just as technology is undermining the traditional print media and the music industry, the movie industry will eventually be de-assimilated as well. Profits will be lower, variety will be larger, and quality (at the top) will be better. Instead of hundreds of terrible scripts we'll get hundreds of terrible movies -- but on the plus side, we'll be able to decide for ourselves what's golden.
I don't know, Michael. This summer we saw a whole lot of kick-butt movies that also were sequels: Spiderman 2, Shrek 2, Harry Potter 3. Despite the large number of sequels being released, the overall quality of movies this summer was much higher than last summer, at least in my opinion. I was really surprised that a bunch of sequels could be that good!
I think that serial movies like the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Star Wars series have set a new standard for sequels: a broad, overarching plot that goes over from movie to movie (even when characters change), instead of the usual boring-sequel formula of putting the same characters in a new plot and re-hashing all the favorite bits of the first movie.
Although I agree that Hollywood is running out of fresh ideas, there is a lot of truth in what Wacky Hermit says.
I believe that it all starts with the writing, and most knock-off sequels just don't have a good script, whether it's because they don't bother to get one in the rush to start filming or because the original idea is spent. recently there have been a number of movies based upon ideas that I always thought would make good movies, but they've turned out to be less than stellar since a good idea doesn't mean a good story or script. But the same rules apply to non-sequels. Many of them suffer from the same shoddy writing and weak story ideas.
I think there are more good sequels coming out lately, but there also seem to be more sequels than ever before. At least it seems like it to me.
More than sequels, I'm concerned about all the remakes that have come out in the past five years or so. I don't mind remakes at all, when they're done well. But there seem to be a ton of them, including remakes of old TV shows, that are just hollow attempts to cash in on a known product. The same rules about a viable story and a well-written script apply to remakes, but they're in the position (similar to sequels) of having to live up to the audiences pre-defined expectations.
Too bad there can't be a rule that remakes and sequels need to be at least 10% "better" than their predecessor to give us a safety margin.
To be honest, I'm hoping that technology like cheap high-quality video cameras, PC-based editing, and internet/recordable-DVD/print-on-demand distribution possibilities will help break the stranglehold the biggies currently have on feature film production.
WH: I liked SM2, but not Shrek 2 or HP2. I thought Shrek 2 was particularly stupid and unfunny -- but then, I didn't like Shrek 1 much either. I did like X-Men 2, which came out recently.
I agree that serial movies are better than plain old sequels. Are they a new phenomenon?
m: 10% better how? The studios just care about making a profit, and profit isn't always related to quality.
Michael, if you're looking for something original, try Hero. Some people hated it, I loved it, but in any case you can't claim that it's more of the same.
BB: I saw it a couple of years ago and really liked it.