Dan Shick – We’ve already recieved our fare share of movie sequels this year, and with The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies steadily approaching in a few weeks, I thought it might be a good time to examine the idea of movie sequels and what we expect of them.
When a sequel to a movie you admire is announced, it’s natural to get excited. The idea of seeing characters you love on the big screen again is an enticing thought, but as movie history has shown us, it’s often very difficult to capture the same spark that made you fall in love with the original in the first place. Sequels often prove to be underwhelming, disappointing affairs.
Now, there have been many sequels over the years that have managed to take the series to new and exciting places; The Dark Knight, The Godfather Part II, Empire Strikes Back, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and Spiderman 2, to name a few, but it’s often rare that a sequel meets or exceeds our expectations.
So what does a movie sequel have to do to get it right again?
1. Hire the same director.
There are exceptions to this rule, as Empire Strikes Back and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes have shown us that sometimes a change in the creative lead can be a good thing, but most instances of sequel-gold have shown us that the director of the first film should always direct the follow up.
What would The Dark Knight or Spiderman 2 have been sans the director who made the originals worth getting excited about in the first place? The director of the original film, assuming said film was good in the first place, has a deep understanding of the characters we love, and therefore should continue to tell their stories.
2. Honor the original, but don’t be a carbon copy.
We don’t want to see a sequel that tries to copy or heavily reference the first film in order to win us over. It doesn’t work. In fact, it can often be the very demise of a sequel’s success. This is a fault that has plagued many sequels, including The Hangover II as well as the recent Dumb and Dumber To. When the same plot is thrown at us a second time, the excitement of seeing the characters we love up on the screen again is tainted by the staleness of the “been there, done that” feeling that we just can’t shake.
The recent comedy 22 Jump Street attempted to address this by turning itself into a meta commentary on tropes often found in sequels, and it proved to be incredibly insightful and hilarious in exploring the idea of a sequel and how it should relate to the original film. It relied on this meta approach too much, however, and therefore found itself to have a somewhat hollow center, becoming a shadow of its former self; a hilariously entertaining shadow, but a shadow nonetheless.
The bottom line is that you should never try and replicate the success of the first film by copying it. The best sequels always strive to find new and unpredictable places to take our characters. Look at Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight; two sequels that broke free from “sequelitis”, if you will, by exploring territory uncharted by the previous film. These two films, in particular, lead me to my next point.
3. The darker you go, the better.
Though this doesn’t always pertain to comedies, most sequels that are deemed successful are often much darker than their respective counterparts. It’s a much more emotionally resonate experience when we see the characters we love get dragged through the dirt. You can feel Batman’s pain when he’s left cleaning up the unexpected mess he’s made in Gotham from the previous film. The byproduct of this mess, found in Heath Ledger’s show-stopping villain The Joker, makes for an exciting direction for the series, and presents our hero with thrilling and edge-of-your-seat tension that makes you root for the hero on a much deeper, albeit more depressing, level.
Likewise, previously starry-eyed farm boy Luke Skywalker finds himself in a similar situation in Empire Strikes Back, where he is quite literally tested to the very limits of his right hand- er, his emotional boundaries. Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the film in the last 30-plus years.
The point here is that the experience of the sequel is transcended not by merely trying to top the previous film in terms of budget and special effects, but rather in emotional depth and thematically challenging material that elevates the character to new levels.
4. Continuity in the music is essential.
Use the main theme again, but don’t change it too much. We want to hear a familiar score that eases us back into the world we know and love. Now, that being said, the music shouldn’t strive to be a carbon copy of the original, in much the same way that the story shouldn’t repeat itself. We want something that is familiar yet fresh at the same time.
It’s good to bring something new to the score, but don’t change it too drastically. Mark Mothersbaugh’s score from 21 Jump Street, for example, was surprisingly deep, quirky, emotional and, at times, atmospheric. His score for the sequel 22 Jump Street, however, acted as a pop-remix of the original. This created a disconnect between the tone of both films, as his pop-remix version of the original’s main theme often felt shallow and uninspired, eliminating, in the process, many of the aspects of the original’s emotionally resonate theme in favor of a DJ-style dance floor zaniness.
One of the many things that Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy does so well lies in its soundtrack’s progression from film to film. There are many new pieces of music and themes introduced in each subsequent soundtrack, but the main themes that so memorably inhabited the previous films comes into play again in familiar and sometimes inventively show-stopping ways.
When you hear Hans Zimmer’s familiar Batman theme soar once again into the surround sound of your local cinema, it makes you want to stand up and cheer. The soundtrack of a sequel is incredibly necessary in bringing back the emotional punch of the previous film that we have come to love so much.
Those are just a few aspects to consider when crafting a sequel, in hopes of making it a successful companion piece to the original film. If you have any thoughts or suggestions to add, feel free, as always, to let your voice be heard in the comments section below!
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