Best sequel? (Please read the criteria)

Let's just throw out Godfather II because everyone knows that's what you're supposed to say.

And let's also exclude films that were conceived outright as parts of a series (e.g., The Empire Strikes Back)



Your thoughts?

And unexpected!

I would have gone with "Empire Strikes Back", but alas....

Same basic characters, setting, and plot.

Completely different take. They did a good job switching genres from horror to action.

I can't think of any other sequel where the actual genre changed.

And welcome to DU! :hi:

How was TESB "conceived outright as parts of a series?"

I got in a fanboy awhile back over whether or not Lucas was referring to the Bush admin. with his prequels.

The guy was convinced that couldn't be the case because Lucas had the whole arc worked out thirty some years ago.

Anyway, see my reply to jobycom for an explanation of my iffy requirement.

Oh, wait a minute...


Anyway, "conceived as parts of a series" means that the original film wasn't intended as the start-and-finish of the tale. The fact that 1977's Star Wars was subtitled "Episode IV" indicates that a series was conceived even if not developed (or perhaps even expected). Other examples of this include The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

I grant that this is a loose criterion, but--hey--it's my thread, so don't be a wet blanket. :P

The "EpisodeIV: A New Beginning" stuff came about later. The first film was just "Star Wars," and when it went supernova, Lucas came up with the idea for the next two films. It wasn't originally intended to be a series. Sometime during or after "Empire" Lucas began talking about going back and making prequels. Kind of like "Pirates of the Carribean."

I defer to what's-his-name in Scream II (you know, the asshole from Son of the Mask), who set TESB apart from sequels as a group.

Though dated now (and much lampooned), it was an effective play on the genre, which was especially cool considering whose film it was.

Scream II was less effective. Scream III was awful, though you get to see Jenny McCarthy get offed.

Not quite true. I remember seeing Star Wars for the first time in the theater, and being completely flummoxed by the crawl at the beginning, because it began Episode IV: A New Hope. My first thought was "Wait! I missed the first three?"

Actually, I had the same reaction that you described. I first saw it when I was six, so it's entirely possible that my memory was faulty, but I was certain that my friends and I debated the meaning of "Episode IV" and what it might entail for future films.

I think the point being made in this thread, though, is that Lucas gave the film that title to instill an automatic sense of history and to harken back to serials. At the time, there might not necessarily have been any real thought given to what Episode I through III might be like (and goodness knows he didn't give them any thought from '99 onward), but the subtitle gave the sense that the film was part of a larger whole.

George was never the most prolific, consistent writer--more like struck by flashes of brilliance--and IIRC he has said that he practically has to be shackled to his desk to work on a script. I do believe the supposition he only came up with the original movie for fun--"hey, cowboys in space with some war-movie dogfighting thrown in like the movies I used to see as a kid"--and then went "oh crap" when he was asked to write another. By the time he was faced with coming up with a third, he was tapped out--hence the second Death Star :eyes: .

I think Eps I-III would have been great if they had been completely turned over to another writer and director (the writer given carte blanche to come up with the story while adhering to the mythos and with approval by George).

The '77 original was just Star Wars. I think a lot of people had this experience, since it was rereleased so many times early in its history (this being before VCRs really took off.)

To make it look like an old-fashioned serial. You could just as easily have had the same gimmkick with "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

If Lucas had the sequels in mind, he'd never have had Luke flirting with Leia and then turn out to be her brother, or a second Death Star, or all the typical sequel gaffes.

Howzabout I edit the OP to say "Exclude Godfather II and The Empire Strikes Back" instead?

Well, not THE greatest, but one of.

He's running maybe two for six. Or three for seven if you include American Grafitti. We can even give him a few points for Raiders, but Spielberg's influence can't be isolated, so George can't get full marks for it.

If we're feeling charitable, we can throw THX-1138 on the "good" pile, but I find it plodding and a bit pushy in its message.

in say the last 30 years. Certainly more watchable than LOTR. I'm not comparing it to unrelated romances or dramas, just to serial movies with a basic fantasy adventure format. Okay, I'd probably put Pirates ahead of it.

And "Attack of the Clones" only worked when Annakin and Wassername weren't on screen at the same time. So maybe I'd say five and a half good films.

And don't forget Willow.

We can go round and round about LOTR, or we can just reread our thread from two weeks ago...

But Willow was surprisingly good, even if it was unfairly criticized as "derivative." Certainly it was the best live action fantasy film to date, and it stands up reasonably well, even if some of the effects are cheesy. It had the most original dragon seen up to that time, and any film with Billy Barty is cool. Well, except Legend.

Heck, IIRC, Willow even includes the first use of "morphing" in a cinema release.

He's my seventh favorite living director, trailing Herzog, Polanski, Scorsese, Nolan, Spielberg, and Malick.

I wouldn't care if I were the only adult who dug the prequels...I absolutely loved them.

And quite a change of direction from the first.

It wasn't as good as the other two, but it was still a good film.

I say "other two" because the last one doesn't count.

My own theory goes like this. "Raiders" was the first precursor of the modern plotless blockbuster continuous action flicks. It rarely came up for air to develop the plot, but it still was connected enough to the past to spend some time on plot and characters, despite its string of one-liners and sight gags and action sequences.

But "Temple of Doom" cut out the whole plot/character thing and went for just action and laughs. At the time, people weren't ready for it, still wanting a little story with their gratuitous violence.

Now, though, films have imitated and followed the Spielberg blockbuster format for so long, and so many bad films have been made following that format, that audiences have gotten used to them. And while "Temple" wasn't that good a film, it was still Spielberg, and still better than much of what came later. So watching it now, it seems like a better-than-average film, because what came after it wasn't as good.

Just my theory.

As for the last film, I'd be more inclined to boot "The Last Crusade" from the series and keep "Crystal Skull." I liked "Skull" as a whimsical revisioning of the old characters, but to me "Crusade" was formulaic and lifeless. The only part I liked was the early segment with River Phoenix.

In fact, I know a Sanskrit professor who did some work for them.

All I remember watching it as a kid was the Shorty character, the bridge finale and the monkey brains business.

But the writing turned out to be much more intelligent than I thought. Shiva linga... Kali cults... it's not just some dumb cliches they strung together. They put thought into it.

She's a retrograde damsel-in-distress whose only purpose is to be grossed out and dainty.

They can't all be Marian Ravenwoods.

:puke:

Temple of Doom is a prequel, so it doesn't count for this thread!

It's a throwback to the old one reel serials. They're all one off stories in no particular sequence, so it's good enough for a sequel, even though technically it occurs chronologically earlier just so they could set it in pre-war China.

was pretty good; all the Bourne movies have been (and I've heard a 4th one is in the works). I don't think the sequel was planned until the studios saw if the first one was a success or not...

That "constantly-in-motion-cam" annoys the hell out of me. It's not because of vertigo or anything like that; I just can't stand the technique.


Anyway, were the films adapted from books?

is the same, but the first book had him as a Vietnam vet and was decidedly low-tech (no technology intrigue, if you know what I mean). And the first book revolved around New York, the love interest was an American, etc. The screenwriter just took the premise of the Ludlum book(s) and went off on a tangent, but a good, modern tangent.

The technique didn't bother me, and bouncy cameras usually do. The series so far is The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum... the first two were better than the last one, which had too much action, in my opinion, and not enough still time. But it had great additions to the cast - Albert Finney and David Straithern in addition to Joan Allen... Brian Cox and Chris Cooper were in the other two (though Cooper only as a flashback in the second one).

in an action flick. That chase scene through Morocco was one of about three chase scenes ever where I didn't want to go get popcorn. I usually treat chases as commercial breaks.

The one I didn't like as much was "Supremacy." It violated one of my main peeves in films by knocking off the female character just to get the hero mad enough to kill again. Seemed like a mirror of the first one. "Ultimatum" had a more complex plot with a bit of a message behind it, and I didn't see that in the other two.

Just my opinion. But I hated LOTR and liked Star Wars, so nobody around here likes my opinion. :rofl:

So no doubt the producers knew they would have plenty to make a sequel if the film succeeded.

Bored the shit out of me, both of them. And Toy Story has this nauseating washed-out pallor that I just can't get past when I watch it.

I can appreciate it as a technical achievement for its time, but on the whole I don't care for it.

:rofl:

hands down!

"Alright, you primitive screw-heads, listen up! See this? This... is my boomstick! - - It's a twelve-gauge, double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt-blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right... shop smart. Shop S-Mart... You got that?!! "

For a second there I thought I was gonna have to kick yer ass! :)

:eyes:

Punk-ass.

that's what you are

I am a lover of the books...hated the first movie...fell in love with this one. :hi:

:spank:

Thanks for chiming in, though!

:cry:

Almost saved it for me. I disliked but didn't quite hate the first one. The Two Towers worked a lot better, and raised my hopes that they whole series could be saved. About halfway through ROTK, though, a physical pain and revulsion set in like I've never experienced in a film before. I literally almost cried in agony when Frodo dangled above the lava, faded out, and then for no reason any sentient being could grasp, faded back in for another seeming six hours.

But Towers almost saved it.

Frodo should have gone into the fire with the Ring, perhaps with Gollum or perhaps not.

In any case, just how long do we think a de facto human can hang out inside a volcano or perched on an outcrop in a lava river before dying and/or bursting into flame? I saw a recent program about volcano research, and the guys in protective gear--who make a living by walking around on just-cooled lava--couldn't get within 20 feet of several of the featured lava streams. And that's in the open air!

The long-since-exhausted Frodo would have passed out before they even entered Mount Doom.

Or something.

As for who to blame, Peter Jackson could have bought a stopwatch. Hell, he could have just hired an editor. That fiasco was his fault, from the tired cinemagraphic cliches to the pretentious and sophomoric dialogue... Oh, never mind, you've heard it before. :)

I'm still not sure what you mean by "tired cinemagraphic cliches," and I still blame Tolkien for the pretentious and sophomoric dialogue. If Jackson had un-pretentified it, Tolkien zealots would have eviscerated him. And if he'd added new dialogue that wasn't in the same tone as Tolkien's deliberately stilted style, then it wouldn't have fit.

It's like watching Dr Seuss movies. You can tell when they've gone off Seuss and written their own script.

A few of the TCCs that cluttered every scene: Cameras zooming in over a character's shoulder just as he spins to peer over said shoulder (esp with Legolas), for instance. Or having wizards or elves grow and darken and echo when getting more serious. Or having quick camera cuts between Orcs running in the forest--focused only on their feet splashing a puddle or stepping on a log--then cutting back to the heroes peering intently towards where the director wants the audience to think the sound is coming from. It's even more cliche to try to fool the audience into thinking they are about to encounter each other, only to discover that the events are happening far apart, and not at all related.

It was just constant. It's like listening to "Shadow of the Day" and trying not to think of "With or Without You." Or more accurately, it's like listening to Green Day and realizing you've heard every guitar lick, bass line, and ryhthm in a dozen other songs, to the point where junior high bands are playing them at football games.

There are cliches, and then there are conventions. I, for one, hate that period films invariably show the lead cast to have perfectly straight teeth as white as moonlight, but I accept that it's a convention of modern film. It's a conceit of the medium, and although it's inaccurate, it's not really trite, so it doesn't (IMO) qualify as a cliche. Jackson likewise follows certain conventions, but I think that you're too quick to blame him for cliches that are drawn directly from his source material.

Let me start with this bit, because I don't quite understand what you mean:Are these a single, combined objection, or three separate ones?

I confess that I'm not entirely sure when this occurred as you describe--can you give a specific example? I can't think of a single scene in which it was implied that the heroes were anywhere near the orcs, except when they actually were. Maybe I'm just forgetting.

Oh, come now. Do you really think that Tolkien's dialogue was any less stilted and ponderous? Let's grab a few examples from The Fellowship of the Ring:
"I think you should still follow through that plan," said Gildor. "I do not think the Road will prove too hard for your courage. But if you desire clearer counsel, you should ask Gandalf."

"I do not know anything else that could have hindered him, except the Enemy himself," said Strider.

"Elrond commanded it," answered Gandalf. "The river of this valley is under his power, and it will rise in anger when he has great need to bar the Ford."

"So it has been for many lives of men. But the Lords of Minas Tirith still fight on, defying our enemies, keeping the passage of the River from Argonath to the Sea." --Elrond, during his Council.

These four quotes are chosen at random, but I think that they represent the chosen tenor of the dialogue throughout the entire series. The hobbits have a certain colloquial manner, reminiscent of "real" people, but everyone else speaks in grand style befitting an epic. I don't see how Jackson's dialogue differs from this in feel or style. If anything, I find that he (rightly) toned it down quite a bit when Tolkien's writing becomes too ponderous for the screen.

You're kidding, right? That's straight out of Tolkien, almost verbatim! Off the top of my head, I can only think of three times when this happened in the films, and all of them occurred in Fellowship. If you'd care to point out the others, we can discuss those in turn.

Sounds like what I saw on the screen.

I'd say that Jackson actually toned it down here; having the Elves "stop their ears" would have made them look like wimps. But otherwise his portrayal seems accurate.

That leaves Galadriel, and I admit that the transformation from pretty Elf-queen to high-contrast valkyrie is a bit strange. I can see why he did it, because the moment is actually much bigger than Tolkien's text makes it out to be, but I'm not sure that I care for the particular stylistic choice.

Are there other examples of this wizard/Elf-darkening?


One thing that you didn't mention was Bilbo's brief morph into a rabid-looking horror when he tried to seize the Ring from Frodo. I found this to be a really clumsy move on Jackson's part, though he clearly wanted to show the corrupting, destructive influence of the Ring. Thankfully, nothing else like it happened anywhere else in the films.





Additionally, since you've named yourself as a Star Wars fan, I would point out that no director in the past fifty years has been less skilled at conveying the passage of time than George Lucas. The problem you describe above re: "events are happening far apart" is all the more glaring in Star Wars, because we're talking about relativistic distances, yet Lucas handles them as though they're at two ends of a coffee table. How long, for instance, did the events of Revenge of the Sith take to play out? The only on-screen evidence that it took longer than part of an afternoon is Padme's pregnancy, which is glossed over in any case, so it seems as though a civilization spanning thousands of generations comes crashing down in less time than it takes to watch the prequel trilogy.

In other words, Lucas is guilty of at least as many cliches as Jackson, and Lucas is worse because he can't write or direct dialogue.

filmmaking techniques than about storyline cliches.

What I mean by cliches is that Jackson's techniques are so overused that they have become melodramatic farce. The Orc scene is from the end of Fellowship, as the Orcs carry the hobbits off as the rest of the survivors canoe downstream. It's not the portrayal of time or the storyline that bothers me, it's the way Jackson directs it. Watch the scene again, and watch how Jackson cuts from the Orcs to Legolas. Legolas peers out from the canoe, then the camera snaps to a shot of Orc boots running in the woods, then it snaps back to Legolas as he stares even more intently into the woods, and then the camera snaps back to Orc boots stomping on a log, etc. This is such a technical, stylistic cliche that Monty Python mocks it several times in "The Holy Grail," most specifically as the young prince watches as the knight (I forget which one) approaches the castle. It's such an overused technique to heighten drama and tension that it becomes farce.

Jackson does this over and over, the couple of random examples were just a sampling to illustrate. Almost every scene was dictated by them. It's like reading a book where the author continually says things like "It was the most awesome thing he could ever imagine," or "He knew he was going to die (especially when it's obvious he isn't)" or any cliche lines from Harlequin romances or Mickey Spillaine mysteries. It wasn't the story, it was the way it was presented.

As for dialogue, it's a truism of long standing that lines that work in books do not work in movies. A bit of dialogue in a book also has to convey a visual sense, and set the scene, whereas in a movie the visuals are built in. A book might say "It's a beautiful day. See, the sun is shining, not a cloud in the sky, and only the songbirds interrupt the silence." In a movie you show the sunlight and lack of clouds, and you hear the songbirds, so the character only has to say "It's a beautiful day," or even better, skip the line altogether and go straight for the heart of the matter, since the qualities of the day have already been established by the set. Early in "Fellowship" when Gandalf first meets Frodo, for instance, there is a lot of dialogue about being late and a wizard never being late. Some is cute, and overall it is meant to convey the sense of two old friends meeting and teasing each other fondly, while defining the characters. But Jackson drags the whole scene out long past where the point has been made. He has them stare sternly at each other in silence, remaking the point that the dialogue had already made. Then he has one of them begin to smile and smother the smile, then the other, until both laugh and thus acknowledge that the sternness was a just an act (another overused and farcical cliche). The whole scene drags on so much longer than necessary that it insults the audience's ability to understand it, while pretending to a dramatic tension that it has already overplayed. In a book, where the characters' lines might be separated by a paragraph of prose, dialogue can be longer and more sylistically turgid. In a movie, the dialogue has to fit the scene better.

That's what I'm talking about with the cliches and formulas and dialogue. Once or twice and it's no big deal, and might even work as the director hopes--that's why formulas are used, because they work. Many times, and it's annoying, but the movie can still shine through. But Jackson does it continuously. Every scene is defined by these cliches and melodrama and farcical over-directing. Now and then it worked. The scene of Gandalf and the Balrog, for instance, which screamed for melodrama, was exceptional, and I loved the scene of Borimor's death (though maybe because I just like Sean Bean). But overall it just wore me down, making me despise each scene a little more than the last one, until by the end I was almost crying in frustration for the movie to end (and I promise I mean that literally).

A director adapting a book to film has to make the story his own, and make the movie work for itself. That's hard with a long classic (Chris Columbus had the same problem with Harry Potter). Purists want the book on film, moviegoers want an entertaining film. What Jackson accomplished was impressive, pulling together an unmanagabe text with a large and skilled cast and some of the most ambitious special effects, costumes, and set designs ever attempted. I give him credit for all that, and pretty much agree that he deserved an Oscar just for the sheer accomplishment of it all. But I still can't watch it. As a movie, as a story, as an entertaining experience, it was awful to me. Some directors do it well--Coppola with "The Godfather" or Speilberg with "Jaws" for instance, made masterpieces by finding a narrative and sticking to it, and discarding the rest.

A director has to judge when to rewrite and when to edit. I'm sure some of the lines that bothered me were in the books, but I'm not judging the movie in comparison to the book, I'm judging it as a film on its own.

The LOTR "films" were horrible. Each one worse than the last. I've never been able to sit thru the entire ROTK. I got to the part where Faramir took Frodo to Osgiliath??? and just had to call it quits.
I bled from my eyes a little...

I just got lost over there for a few hours.

They have a writeup for that too:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife

I really like that site.

One of the few "II's" better than the original, and seeing those South Africa fucks get theirs was a real stand-up-and-cheer thing.

It gets harder and harder to like Mel as the years go by, but that was an entirely solid sequel. Some bits were rather heavy-handed, and the "diplomatic immunity" thing was pushed too far, but overall I likewise prefer it to the original.

if I let politics into my entertainment I'd have to scrap a lot of what I like. It's hard to admit it publicly these days, but I still love a lot of Ted Nugent's music.

Mel is a fucking asshole, but he was perfect for the part. The way he messes with the shrink in those movies is priceless.

:D

If it was, don't you think that Ash would have remembered what happened the last time that he went to a cabin in the woods and summoned demonic forces? Wouldn't it have come up some time?

It certainly feels like a remake, but there is a ED I recap at the beginning, and the plot is a *little* different.

Call it a requel. It is better, both in writing and in having a bigger budget to work with though.

Evil Dead 1 still gets massive cred for inspiring Joel Coen to get the financing together to make Blood Simple.

Thanks for the link!

:rofl:

God, that film scored BIG at the box office. What's the deal?

The Squirrel Scene:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=HdiXSsFp29s

“The shitter was full.”
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=4fyS5CLBgyM&feature=related

Not really. I'm just pissed that you excluded Godfather II right off the bat. That was my answer before I even opened the thread.

Bake

On the first day Godfather 1 and 2 cast their will upon the firmament and made the heavens and the earth.

That's why I excluded it--because it's always everyone's answer before they open the thread. :eyes:

That was based on a book in a series, along with its 26 predecessor films.

Good call!

Awesome special effects and great story. It was like reading a Spidey comic book from the 70's.

Oh, and the Spidey movies have nothing in common with each other, other than Spidey and his supporting cast.

For my money, it's the best sequel ever.

it was huge when it happened. it continued the storyline in it's own unique way. it was generally better than 99% of most sequels.

edward furlong still sucks however.

I think that one counts. Now if I said Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, I think that would be outlawed under your second criterion, seeing as it was the second movie in a trilogy within the series.

And I therefore declare 10 to be an odd number.

Two textbook examples on how sequels should be properly done.

Don't believe me? Just watch them.

Dream warriors.

At least my favorite. Don't remember which number it was.

sequel to Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire

www.wim-wenders.com/movies/movies_spec/farawaysoclose/far_away_so_close.htm

:D

I thought that Far Away, So Close really lost some of the tone and magic of the first.

However, I'm a big Willem DaFoe fan, so the film gets points for his presence.


Great answer, though!

:)

And yeah, DeFoe was a great addition. Then again, so was Natassja Kinski :P

The first movie to come to mind for this list was Aliens. Then I thought of 2010, but I did not like Cameron's work on that one. I've never read it, partly because I don't think Clarke really thought through just how much a second sun would have screwed up the environment on Earth. The other thing is that a "star" made out of Jupiter wouldn't last very long at all ;)

so i'm a little puzzled trying to think of a non obvious answer

not much of a sequel watcher actually so i don't think i'm gonna get this one right

Cheesy but lots of fun.