Movie Sequels: The Average, The Mediocre, and The Terrible
Star Wars, science fiction film series and major media franchise created by George Lucas, has become one of the most well-known collection of movies, television shows, literature, and even video games within the past couple of decades.
The name of Star Wars has turned into a household name that has become well known to everyone. Beginning with his first film in 1977, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, George Lucas had started what would be one of the most iconic brands in media history.
And with one of the newest films that has released, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, generating one of the largest revenues for the domestic opening weekend of nearly one billion dollars; it is obvious that the series, along with the franchise as a whole, will remain one of the largest industries for years to come.
However, the film series has not always been acknowledged for their cinematic excellence. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, released in 1999, is arguably one of worst films of the entire series due to its boring story and annoying characters.
How can such an iconic series have such a lackluster sequel? First, let’s look into how the sequel came to be.
The Origin of the Continuation
The Fall of a Nation, by Thomas Dixon Jr., is an American silent film about America’s attack towards a European army lead by Germany. It was claimed to be one of the most controversial films in American history. However, it is also the first ever movie sequel in history as well, being released in 1916, following its predecessor, The Birth of a Nation. This is the cinematic world had experienced the first ever continuation to an original film. Movie sequels would not make a major emergence until the 1970s, with films such as the Nation Lampoon’s Vacation series and The Pink Panther series. Despite the immense development of movie sequels occurring decades ago, the contemporary cinematic universe has exploded with movie sequels with successors such as Jurassic World, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Alien Covenant.
A Sequel of Mediocrity
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Of course, movies can be very subjective. Everyone has their own preferred genre of choice and their own preferred movie of choice as well. Tommy Wiseau’s, The Room, a notoriously terrible movie, has become one of the biggest cult movies in the world of cinema. And after seeing Wiseau’s sub-par acting, it can surely be said that everyone definitely likes movies differently.
However, what if a majority of audiences and film critics agree that a movie is a bust, it’s something to be recognized.
Jaws, one of Steven Spielberg’s most iconic movies, has received one of the highest scores on Rotten Tomatoes, earning a 97% score for being “compelling, well crafted” movie that has “remained a benchmark in the art of delivering modern blockbuster thrills”. However, it’s sequel Jaws 2 has only received a lousy 57%, making it one of the biggest disappointments in the film industry.
This isn’t a stand-alone disappointment either. Many other sequels such as Saw 2, Ghostbusters 2, and Back to the Future Part 2 have also earned their place for Rotten Tomatoes’ list for mediocre movies.
There is an obvious trend that movie sequels do much worse than their predecessors, but why do producers continue to make such let-downs?
A Sequel of Greed
There is a method to the all of the madness.
Even though sequels typically do worse off than their predecessors, producers are still eager to produce them. Why is this?
Tirtha Dhar, Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies in the University of Guelph, explains in his study how parent movies attract more theaters to show their movies in the first week. This is typically considered the most important time period to determine how much the overall revenue that a movie will make. Directors and producers will use this information to decide whether making a following movie will be profitable or not.
Fortunate for them and unfortunate for us, this information is typically always in their favor. The amount of money that the movie produces tends to be a clear indication that another movie will bring in the big bucks.
A Sequel of Naivety
If there is a will, there is a way.
It seems as if almost every contemporary movie is in need of a movie sequel. Audiences have become expectant of having a sequel or even a series of following films after an original is released. It has come to the point where one movie doesn’t seem to do a story justice. The plot needs to be broken down into multiple ninety to one hundred twenty minute motion pictures in order to fully satisfy viewer desire.
And that is exactly what studios intended.
American film critic and theater commentator for NPR’s eight part series, American Stages, Bob Mondello’s , Movie Sequels: This Decade’s Never-Ending Story (2009), looks into the effects that excessive sequel production has towards its audiences. Movie sequels such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter,and Twilight have been fragmented into multiple films, causing audiences to become accustomed to a following sequel.
There is a strategy of how these sequels are set up.
What Hollywood does is it cuts off the conclusion … so you get this rising action to a climax, you stop, and then you’re set up for the sequel.
It is innately processed in viewers that there needs to be multiple movies in order to create the ultimate lasting effect of a good story.
They have manipulated us. And all just for an extra buck. Or maybe an extra million bucks.
The End?
The story goes on…
The trend of movie sequels is still very prevalent in modern cinema and there are no signs that it will stop in the near future. Rather, it is continuing to grow to the point where it is rare to find any movie that is not based on another movie or some sort of literature. It is most likely that the quality and charm found in movies will begin travel an opposite direction and begin to decrease as film mediocrity continues to increase.
It seems as if it is impossible to stop both trends because of the movie studios’ capability to produce these movie sequels but the only way to avoid film mediocrity to completely overwhelm audiences is for audiences to simply stop watching these movie sequels.
As long as audiences do not give in to producers and encourage them to continue the production of movie sequels, they will soon lessen the amount of sequels that are produced. It will not bring immediate change, but if viewers resist the urge to see their favorite film’s newest blockbuster continuation, the world of cinema will regain its excellence.
Works Cited
Briana Jones on March 2, 2016. “Can You Guess The Very First Movie Sequel, Remake, And Reboot Ever?” All That Is Interesting, 2 Mar. 2016, all-that-is-interesting.com/first-movie-sequel.
“Box Office History for Star Wars Movies.” The Numbers — Where Data and Movies Meet, www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Star-Wars#tab=summary.
Dhar, Tirtha, et al. “The Long-Term Box Office Performance of Sequel Movies.” Marketing Letters, vol. 23, no. 1, 2012, pp. 13–29. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41488764.
“Jaws.” Jaws (1975) — Rotten Tomatoes, 7 Nov. 2017, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jaws.
“Jaws 2.” Jaws 2 (1978) — Rotten Tomatoes, 7 Nov. 2017, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jaws_2.
Mondello, Bob. “Movie Sequels: This Decade’s Never-Ending Story.” NPR, NPR, 13 Dec. 2009, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121390889.