Notes on Hollywood Sequels
August 28th 2006 03:37
One hour into Pirates of Carribean: Dead man’s Chest I wondered whether I walked into the wrong movie. Nothing that was happening was making sense to me. There were new characters and new plot lines all around which did not have even slightest connection to those I remembered from the first movie. Then, the narrative settled itself and I began to enjoy the movie. The same kind of bafflement would be felt I am sure if you had watched The Matrix Reloaded or the Chronicles of Van Riddick or Ocean Twelve.
I am not piling up random examples of movies which belong to different genres. What they have in common is a successful well-liked first movie and the second movie which invariably gets bad reviews. More than that, the structure of the second movie which tries to build a mythology around the first movie rather than continue with the adventure. The characters instead of having fun are now part of secret society of all their own, full of connections and relations which we never given even the slightest inkling; they look at us from their lofty heights of a mock mystique;they have a hierarchy and history; when they speak to each other, it is with meanings embedded from their past and future which were never shared with us.
Unlike other franchises like Superman or Spiderman which are based on an existing literature and therefore, have to be at least minimally faithful to their originals, these new franchises were all developed by Hollywood itself. The story does not move forward as in the second set; it moves in circles. What they betray is that current generation of myth-makers of Hollywood are fed on the college-bred theories of myth and fantasy. They might for the sake of business deign to design a first movie that follows the conventions of a thriller but once successful will spin, jack and entangle their narratives into a closed loop of speculative fiction which they try hard to emulate. And lose fans in the process.
I am not piling up random examples of movies which belong to different genres. What they have in common is a successful well-liked first movie and the second movie which invariably gets bad reviews. More than that, the structure of the second movie which tries to build a mythology around the first movie rather than continue with the adventure. The characters instead of having fun are now part of secret society of all their own, full of connections and relations which we never given even the slightest inkling; they look at us from their lofty heights of a mock mystique;they have a hierarchy and history; when they speak to each other, it is with meanings embedded from their past and future which were never shared with us.
Unlike other franchises like Superman or Spiderman which are based on an existing literature and therefore, have to be at least minimally faithful to their originals, these new franchises were all developed by Hollywood itself. The story does not move forward as in the second set; it moves in circles. What they betray is that current generation of myth-makers of Hollywood are fed on the college-bred theories of myth and fantasy. They might for the sake of business deign to design a first movie that follows the conventions of a thriller but once successful will spin, jack and entangle their narratives into a closed loop of speculative fiction which they try hard to emulate. And lose fans in the process.
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