For SciFi Sequels, Taking a Chance Makes All the Difference
There's something almost miraculous about a movie sequel that doesn't stink. And for one simple reason: Hollywood doesn't do sequels for anything other than money.
In fact, everyone who produces commercial sequels does it for the money. I'm as guilty of this as anyone: When my novel Old Man's War became successful, I wrote a sequel, and then another, and then yet another. And the novel I'm currently working on is also a sequel. So I should be careful: Most current writers of science fiction and fantasy are sequel mad.
But when Hollywood does sequels for the money, they really do it for the money. Your average studio movie costs more than most people make in a lifetime, and, if a movie flops, everyone knows about it. So when a film hits, the call for a sequel goes out before the opening-weekend receipts are even counted, and most studios want their sequels to be the same as the original, but with more -- with the volume (action, special effects, actual volume) turned up.
This explains any number of science-fiction sequels, from The Lost World to The Chronicles of Riddick to Men in Black II.
What very often does not make it into a sequel are things that might well make a movie better, like character development, an engaging plot, and a script that has the actors saying things that make it look like they're doing something other than making a studio accountant very happy. But movies that play with an already-established formula are inherently risky, and, for Hollywood, sequels are about risk mitigation.
So how does it happen that, from time to time, a sequel comes along that's not only as good but better than the original? My theory: It happens when Hollywood's determination to stick to a formula is undermined. A few examples:
1. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
In this case, it was the evolution of cinema itself that made the difference: Cameras became unlocked, musical scores matured, and film acting and writing stopped aping a theatrical model. The medium finally figured itself out.
2. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
George Lucas managed to wrangle the rights to the Star Wars sequel from Twentieth Century Fox and was able to made the movie he wanted. He upgraded not just the special effects but also the scriptwriting, which he palmed off to Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett. It's no wonder that so many of the good lines in the Star Wars universe come out of this film.
3. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
The first Star Trek film, from 1979, was expensive and successful, but many involved thought it was a bit of a dud. When Paramount decided to mount a sequel, it cut the budget drastically (from $35 million to $11 million). The cuts turned out to be a blessing in disguise: Khan was the reboot of the Star Trek franchise. That's why the subsequent sequels are like it, not the first film.
4. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
In many ways, Terminator 2 was the "perfect storm" of science-fiction sequels. In the seven-year interim between it and the original, the director and star had both moved onto Hollywood's A-list, allowing for an immensely larger budget ($100 million, from $6.4 million). James Cameron employed special-effects technology throughout, and, though the dictate "Everything the same, but more" was still applied, thicker plotting and characterization and better screenwriting amounted to a superior film. Cameron doesn't get nearly enough credit for stuff like this, but you notice when he doesn't have it (see: True Lies) and when a franchise has lost it (Terminator 3, which was made without him).
Will Hollywood ever see the wisdom of taking some extra risks in their sequels? Probably not, because, at the end of the day, movies are commercial products -- the art happens at the edges -- and it's better for the bottom line to do something reliable than to take a chance. When you see a good sequel, you should salute the filmmaker. He or she got something past the bean counters -- and, these days, that really is a miracle.
Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies and the novels Old Man's War and Zoe's Tale. His column appears every Thursday.
I can't think of a single true SF case to add to the list. The only thing not a million miles away for SF-receptive audiences is Addams Family Values
Amanda: Why are you dressed like somebody died?
Wednesday: Wait.
Well there's always Aliens. I assume by the standard described above that the reasons it succeeded would include the fact that there weren't any real expectations of it -- Alien itself wasn't a huge hit -- and that they changed the subgenre of the movie from monster-in-the-closet SF/horror to military SF/horror.
I don't know if they count, but the Harry Potter movies feel like they have gotten progressively better with each iteration, particularly the Prisoner of Azkhaban. I also felt like the second X Men movie was a vast improvement, and still held true to the "same but more" winning mantra.
I've got one: The Matrix: Reloaded. Uhm. OK. Maybe not that one.
How about: Highlander II: The Quickening! OK, also, not so good.
Man, it's kinda hard coming up with GOOD sequels.
Here's one, for real: Superman 2! Kneel before Zod!
I think you overlooked "The Land Before Time" as an amazing example of a sequel breaking new ground. While the original 1988 movie certainly addressed some sensitive issues regarding self esteem, the deeper issues were that of a time-compressed geological shift in the Earth. The story followed a classic plot curve, and save a few dialog issues, it was a wonderful example of historical scientific climactic change lessons being given to children in a medium they understand.
As if it weren't enough, the sequel followed up with amazing insight into conservation, racial inequalities, and the legalization of marijuana. (Tree stars? Ground stars?) Part 2 goes even further, and demonstrates cross-species pack mentality, self sacrifice under duress, and even hints of the eventual extinction of the larger herd animals. This precursor to the idea of Darwinism is littered through the entire premise of a food shortage.
And what's to follow? 12 full sequels to the original, all with scientific undertones and moral/social hot topics. Even the titling of the films is prophetic in nature, and after about the 9th film, they stopped numbering them. Does this forecast the future demise of the numbering system? Well, I certainly wouldn't buy stock in calculators...
Stay tuned next week, as Shawn explains why "The Boy Who Could Fly" was an amazing example of cinematic genius...
FUTUREWORLD (after WESTWORLD)
MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR
QUATERMASS II and QUATERMASS AND THE PIT
(after QUATERMASS XPERIMENT)
TOY STORY 2
yeah seriously Alien and Aliens are so different in style and tone they might as well be different movies. Alien is a tense character driven thriller and Aliens is a bombastic action flick. And Alien is better.
I should have said "from different series"
Lethe:
Aliens is not to my mind better than Alien -- it's just as good, in a different direction.
Re: Super hero films: Before editing, I had a graph on Super hero films in which I noted that they represent a special class of film in that the sequels have a higher chance of being better because they don't have to waste time on "origin story" and can thus get into an actual story involving the characters. There's also a special category for "reboots" of existing series, which I'll probably talk about closer to the release of the upcoming Star Trek film.
I see you've already addressed it, but I have to ditto the poster who said Aliens. I know it went in a much different direction than the first movie, but I still find it better, and if I'm going to sit and rewatch a movie in that franchise, it will be Aliens, not Alien.
I would also ditto the poster who mentioned the Harry Potter films. So far, Prisoner of Azkaban has been my favorite of the movies, although not the books.
Not exactly SF, but Evil Dead 2 was much better than the original...
Of course, you're right about cinema itself evolving to conspire to make BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN superior to its' original.
But the movie's greatness is all because of James Whale. He apparently didn't want to be roped into doing a sequel to FRANKENSTEIN, so when he got the assignment, he made it a great horror/comedy hybrid that happens in some oddball alternate reality. And the movie gets stolen--positively STOLEN!--by Ernest Thesiger, the meanest, bitchiest old queen in the history of cinema...and it's one of the greatest performances as well. (OK...in my opinion...) Ultimately, what makes BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN a classic is the fact that a genius was allowed free reign.
(By the way, I actually think STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE is the best one of the franchise, hand's down. So there!)
One example in the superhero genre, if not in the strictest sense BETTER, at least not terribly WORSE than the original:
Batman Returns. (1992)
Or maybe that was just my love of Michelle Pfieffer in the Catwoman outfit...
meOW
While Aliens isn't necessarily better than Alien, you have to admit that it took a lot of risks in not following the formula laid by its predecessor.
Also, T2 is drastically inferior to the original (not to mention that it betrayed a lot of what made the original so great). It's still better than most action movies, but the late David Foster Wallace laid the appropriate smackdown in his essay titled F/X Porn:
http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/waterstone.html
Brilliant stuff.
I can't believe you left Aliens, Cameron's other better-than-the-original sequel off the list. Yeah, Cameron didn't direct the first movie, but it's otherwise every bit as worthy as the others.
Part of me feels like I've just bit on a big, juicy piece of comment bait...
Aliens is a brilliant film, but (in my opinion, etc.) it isn't better than the original. The production design was great, but not as fascinating or as original as Giger's designs. Cameron's direction was an excellent complement to the script, but Scott's direction actually elevated what was, on a straight reading in its original "Star Beast" form, a fairly mediocre, by-the-numbers creature feature.
But most of all, Alien had a phenomenal cast that did absolutely incredible work considering what they were given. Don't get me wrong, the characters in Aliens are memorable as hell, but Ripley and Bishop aside, they don't ever rise above the level of characature.
Er, that would be "caricature". Sorry.
Does Airplane II count?
The better sequels that never got made:
Spaceballs 2: The Search For More Money
Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League
Speaking of which, there's a rumor that Big Trouble In Little China started off as a sequel to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension before it morphed into a stand-alone. That would certainly be a better sequel, but the sci-fi elements are scarce to non-existent.
I want to see Darren Aronosfsky make a sequel to Pi called φ.
Return of the Killer Tomatoes was much better than Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
Mark: "Brilliant stuff."
Wow. I actually managed to read that essay. I'll concede it's interesting, but it is sort of vacuous (not to mention whiny). Laws are posited without basis (the cost of a film directly determines its artistic merit, which is, if you think about it, a sort of restatement of too many cooks spoil the soup, which might be true generally, but often isn't specifically), and he compares the artistic output of artists and technicians to pornography, which is intended as pure insult to Cameron, but also comes off as insulting to the artists paid to participate.
It sort of boils down to the fanboyish complaint of anything that either does not match its predecessor 100% or has something else "wrong" with it.
He gets points for mentioning Silicon Graphics by name, but loses them immediately in assuming that the creation of those effects were effortless (even sort of implying that humans had nothing to do with the finished work--apart from Arnie's salary, why do you think movies are so expensive? It costs money to pay the salaries of employees who do the work to make the movie--nobody really wants to work for free, well, nobody with student loans, kids, and/or a mortgage, anyway).
I enjoyed both movies (T and T2), myself. I don't think T2 is "better" more than "different," (possibly even "complementary") but come on, it certainly isn't worse.
@John H - read Bruce's "Leading with My Chin: Confessions of a B Movie Actor" if you get a chance - it's a really great read on how the early Raimi movies were made. As it turns out, ED2 was really more of a remake with a bigger budget and less a sequel, kinda like the ST:TMP/ST:TWoK comparison mentioned above. The true sequel would be Army of Darkness - but the stories between the two movies are so different it's hard to call AoD a sequel as much as the next film in the ED series, which I think is different (think Bond or Pink Panther movies).
I think one other thing that TWoK had going for it was that it was a *double* sequel - it was the sequel to ST:TMP AND the sequel to the "Space Seed" TOS episode.
I definitely agree that Aliens was at least a risky sequel. It would've been so much easier to do carbon copies of the original.
I'm also unconvinced that T2 is better than the Terminator from a storytelling standpoint -- in fact, I think it opened up a huge can of worms storytelling-wise. (One terminator back to 1984, one back to 1991. Ummm, talk about an inferior strategy.) Still, it was a hell of an action film.
Your point about supehero sequels is fascinating. The first sequels in a lot of those franchises tend to be much better than the originals.
I definitely agree that Aliens was at least a risky sequel. It would've been so much easier to do carbon copies of the original.
I'm also unconvinced that T2 is better than the Terminator from a storytelling standpoint -- in fact, I think it opened up a huge can of worms storytelling-wise. (One terminator back to 1984, one back to 1991. Ummm, talk about an inferior strategy.) Still, it was a hell of an action film.
Your point about supehero sequels is fascinating. The first sequels in a lot of those franchises tend to be much better than the originals.
Then again, a sequel just isn't a sequel without Electric Boogaloo in the title...
@critter42: It turns out that "Leading With My Chin" is Jay Leno's autobiography -- Bruce Campbell's is "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor"...
John, I would argue that it's not just "Hollywood" who wants to stick to a formula. "The Empire Strikes Back" is the exception to the (usual) rule of sequels of being worse than the original. "Return of the Jedi" was not as good as "Empire", though it's arguable that it was somewhat better then Star Wars, and Episodes I-III are dead to me.
Lucas is better at coming up with stories than writing scripts, and he is a better writer than director. It's notable that he has no directorial credits (according to IMDB) between Star Wars and The Phantom Menace ('77 to '99), but lots of story credits. I see Episodes I-III as Lucas trying to recapture the accolades of Star Wars, whatever the cost. I will grant that Jar-Jar & midichlorians were aimed at merchandizing and "explaining the unexplained", in typical Hollywood fashion.
@Robin A
ST:TMP was a better novel than movie. The footnote on Admiral Kirk's response to rumors of a romantic liaison with Spock alone is worth the price of the book.
I think the real reason the second Star Trek movie was better than the first is that nearly all movies are.
I'm not one for horror movies generally, but I have to admit that Alien scared me, while Aliens did not. The original has suspense; the second is all shock, shock, shock with hardly a pause for breath. Also, when one alien suddenly jumps out, you jump too; not so when hundreds of them are just everywhere.
I've also heard that The Madness of King George III was released in the United States as The Madness of King George because they were afraid that Americans would just shrug and not go, figuring they'd missed the first two parts!
My general rule of thumb is that if there's a number in the title, it's probably a bad movie (excepting movies whose numbers are legitimately titular, like The Two Towers or The 39 Steps), and the higher the number the worse the movie is likely to be. I have no idea whether this applies in horror movies, since typically I don't go to them, but the fact that Saw is up to V now probably means that horror movie goers don't give a damn if the studio follows the same formula, as long as it can still make them jump.
Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League
Actually, that's been debunked in a couple of interviews.
(and mentioned here: http://www.figmentfly.com/bb/sequel2.html)
Not that I wouldn't mind that being the case, but Big Trouble in Little China wasn't penned as a sequel, though being adapted by the same writer it has a bunch of the same sensibilities. Cool bit from the DVD, though - very few people notice, but Kurt Russell's character in Big Trouble is actually the sidekick... but Jack Burton doesn't realize it, he thinks he's the hero because, hey, he's Jack Burton.
My favorite Star Wars film is Return of the Jedi. But I guess that is implied along with Empire Strikes Back on your list as an "awesome sequel."
The prequels, well, they're another story...
In any genre, sequels are almost never as good as the original... although I think Disney had something with Simba's Pride and Mulan II ;-)
Someone beat me to mentioning The Road Warrior. That's all I have.
I'd argue that Star Trek: The Motion Picture's relative lifelessness (some fans still refer to it as "The Motionless Picture") had a lot to do with Paramount's reaction to Star Wars; they wanted both to capitalize on Lucas' success and to exceed it, and had to work with and against Gene Roddenberry, who wanted to make a Really Meaningful Film, one that would be more on a level with, say, 2001. (Harlan Ellison said once that Roddenberry has had only one Star Trek story idea, that he's told several times, and that's that the Enterprise goes out into space and finds God, and God is either insane, a child, or both. Ellison, of course, has had his own history with Roddenberry, but I find that this comment is right on the money. See also Stephen King's Danse Macabre for two stories about Ellison working on ST:TMP, one fake, one Ellison's version.) The production of the film was so rushed that the last of the special effects shots were spliced directly into the prints of the film that were waiting to be sent to the theater.
Star Trek II may have benefited from having less riding on it (and, for that matter, from having a lot of the sets already built), but I think that the real factor is that Nicholas Meyer was a fan of the original series, and it shows in every frame. Just as the original Trek episode "Balance of Terror" was a submarine movie with warp nacelles strapped on, STII was a navy-and-pirates movie with the added McGuffin of the Genesis Project. The real difference, though, was that the cast seemed a lot more comfortable with each other; whatever personality conflicts had been in place (most notably Shatner vs. Everyone Else; also, Nimoy had had a long-running feud with Roddenberry over the use of his image in advertising, and had signed onto ST:TMP at the last instant) seemed to have been worked through.
@ScottE
Ok, so maybe the essay wasn't "brilliant" but I do think he has a point, and I do think T2 is worse than T1, if only because the entire plot of T2 is essentially a betrayal of what makes T1 work. It's fine to do something different (the aformentioned Aliens is great in that respect), but I don't think this criticism of T2 is a "fanboyish complaint" that it didn't match T1 100%.
Batman: Begins
Batman: Dark Knight
DK is better than Begins