What makes some film sequels truly awful and some almost as good and sometimes (in a few rare cases) even better than the original?
Why is ‘Aliens’ great and ‘Predator 2’ a cringing suckfest (although far better than both AvP films)? Or for that matter why is ‘Godfather 2’ seen as a classic, even viewed as superior to the original by some and ‘Godfather 3’ a lot less good?
From what I can see there appear to be two main types of sequels:
1. An attempt to build on the success of the previous film by effectively recreating the original.
2. Carrying on the story from the original film.
Both types can be successful, and many sequels are a mix of the two types anyway. However, the former type often produces less good films than the latter – even if successful it can produce ever limiting returns as lumbering franchises are created (e.g. ‘Highlander’, ‘Batman’, ‘Shrek’, ‘Die Hard’ and arguably ‘Terminator’. The latter franchise wasn’t always lumbering but it’s definitely tottering now).
Sequels exploit audience affection for the original film, but without fully understanding what it was that people liked about it in the first place, they risk looking like a poor cash-in.
Bad Sequels and my ideas why they are so horrible:
1. Pseudo-sequels
The first sort of sequel is the pseudo-sequel where a lot of the same cast and production team are brought back together to recreate a previous success, even if the film is not an actual sequel – The ‘Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid’/’The Sting’ pairing is a good example of this being successful and ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’/’War Inc.’ an example of it going horribly wrong.
Film sequels are nothing new – going back a bit, ‘Casablanca’ is the perfect example of what Hollywood does best, allied with a particular time and place in history which gave the film much more impact. Good luck with trying to make a sequel of that.
Which of course the studio tried to do – the success of ‘Casablanca’ inspired a film that, while it wasn’t an actual sequel, it brought together much of the cast and crew. It’s called ‘Passage to Marseille’, I haven’t seen it, so I can’t comment on the quality of it but most reviewers note that it was ok but nothing special. For me that highlights the point that Casablanca actually *was* something special, with a magic almost impossible to recreate.
(There have been many attempts to redo Casablanca, either directly or in different settings – including radio plays, two television series and a couple of films. Francois Truffaut famously refused to remake it when asked. Good man).
2. Normal sequels
Actual sequels can be great films in their own right – two of the films that are often mentioned when the question “Are there any good sequels?” is asked are Godfather 2 and Aliens. Both great movies.
‘Predator 2’ on the other hand is a truly dreadful sequel which also illustrates one of the main problems with sequels – the originals can be successful and popular but it isn’t easy to define what it was that made them so good.
‘Predator’ itself isn’t a great film but it’s fairly enjoyable with a great pace and simple (if fantastical) story. The central story of ‘Predator’ is Arnold Schwarzenegger (previously an unstoppable cyborg in ‘ The Terminator’) fighting a near-unstoppable alien. That’s what the fans liked. Arnie vs Alien. Human low cunning against alien higher technology and hunting skill. I suspect that’s what people wanted more of from ‘Predator 2’ – more Arnie vs Alien. What they got was Danny Glover.
‘Predator 2’ shifts the action to a new location, presenting the city location as the urban jungle counterpart to the jungle foliage of the original (which was a good idea). However the film doesn’t build on the success of ‘Predator’, instead it’s an uneasy mash-up of ‘Aliens’ and ‘Lethal Weapon’ – with mostly predictable action scenes and clumsy dialogue.
‘Predator 2’ had two good bits, both throwaway – one the concept that the Predators have hunting ‘ethics’ (not shooting a pregnant female); the other introduces the idea that the Predators have at some point come in to contact with the Aliens (of the Alien franchise). Sadly the latter point inspired two piss-poor (or at best average) Aliens vs Predator films, annoyingly neither based on the excellent Dark Horse comic series of the same name.
I can’t decide if ‘Predator 2’ is better or worse than ‘Predators’ (which I saw in the cinema last year). I’m probably not going to write-up ‘Predators’ anytime soon because I can’t be bothered to watch it again, I’m certainly not paying any more money for it. I think all I want to say about the film now is that, while bits were good, it was hard to warm to it overall because they quickly established that most of the human characters were horrible people; you therefore didn’t really care about any of them. It’s hard to establish jeopardy when you don’t like the people supposedly at risk.
3. Recreating, remaking and other crimes
The issue that I see with any sequel trying to recreate the original film is that effectively it’s often simply a remake, which to my mind is incredibly limiting creatively and often risks devaluing the original. Look at the Die Hard movies – great original but they have got more ludicrous as time has gone on (although ‘Die Hard With a Vengeance’ is probably a better film than ‘Die Hard 2’ but that’s quite a low bar of achievement. ‘Die Hard 4.0’ is just bonkers).
Remakes are a whole other subject but, like sequels, they don’t have to be bad they just often are. Sometimes they can be great and go on to be the ‘classic’ version (e.g. ‘The Maltese Falcon’ where the version generally considered the classic is itself a remake of an earlier film). That’s very, very rare though, with the possible exception of some remakes in different languages/cultures (more on that another time).
4. Continuing the story
In my view, a sequel that continues the original story is more interesting than a simple repeat of what has gone before. Very few of the bad sequels try and continue the story, wheras a lot of the good ones do.
However, this isn’t a sure fire recipe for success. ‘Alien 3’ while it follows on from ‘Aliens’ wasn’t as well received as either of the preceding films – the problems with the film were many and have been well documented (and few if any can be laid at the director David Fincher’s door. Blame him for ‘The Game’ instead which was rubbish). I do think that the set up didn’t help – from the opener Hicks and Newt/Rebecca are dead, which is a huge downer for those of us who enjoyed the previous film. It kind of devalued ‘Aliens’ the next time I watched it: “Jeez, don’t struggle too hard to save the kid Ripley, she’s gong to die anyway”.
I think a sure fire personal test of sequel viability is your own reaction on hearing about a proposed sequel. The reaction: “Wow, what a great idea!” maybe indicates a potential winner, but the reaction “Oh for fuck’s sake, no!” is probably a bad sign.
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