A sequel would only be made if the first movie was considered successful and popular, and a movie is only very successful and popular if it has good characters.
I should make a note here that by 'good characters' I mean characters that have been created to a good standard by the writer, I am not talking about good characters as opposed to evil ones.
Well-written characters are ones that the audience empathize with or are inspired by. Good characters can save a predictable story or a mediocre production. What makes a good character? Well, good characters are ones that change over the course of a story, and in many cases this change can be the central point of the story itself. A boy changes into a man, a pauper changes into a king, a son changes into a father.
But the best characters are the ones where the change, and the environment they are in during the process, are tailored to a satisfying and endearing finish. The best characters are often the ones written so that we will witness not just any change, but the biggest or most influential change in their life.
Now that we have identified this, you will begin to see why good characters often end up in bad sequels.
After a writer has created a character, they will seek to identify and then construct an environment and story around the most satisfying change to that character that an audience could witness. This story, tailored to show us the most important thing which the character has ever experienced, entertains us. Enthralls us. Amuses us, or fascinates us. It entertains us so well, in fact, that the film industry consider it worthwhile to re-use the now adored character in a sequel to the original movie. So the writer sits down again to create another story. In this story the character must change again, but here is the problem, here is the fault in the process, here is the writer's dilemma. The best change, the one tailored to every detail of the character, has already been told.
While watching movie sequels, don't you often feel like some of the characters aren't the same? You might assume, perhaps correctly, that different writers have written how they will act, but ultimately I think that the feeling will be there because the meaning of the characters lives has been spent, and anything else feels hollow, or like an echo. The reason for their existence has passed, and we find ourselves watching shells making excuses for themselves.
Of course, none of this matters to the film industry which is usually fueled by the desire for profit. A leftover character is as good as a new one if it makes money, and often a more secure investment.
Of the films which you own copies of, how many are the first in a series of films? How often have you purchased a copy of an original movie, but not felt the need to own the sequels?
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Another part of this phenomenon is that studios will often commission sequels from other writers. The initial screenwriter has usually signed over "sequel rights" to the studio when they bought the script. How many times have we seen movies with the credit "based on original characters created by..."
ReplyDeleteGood post mate, couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteThen you also get the polar opposite, a single story broken over two or three film. We've all sat through them and thought they shouldn't have been more than one film, but greed often drives the film-making decisions.