Go back to previous topic | Forum name | Pass The Popcorn | Topic subject | people like sequels AND new material, but quality counts too. | Topic URL | http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=521652&mesg_id=521661 |
521661, people like sequels AND new material, but quality counts too. Posted by Cold Truth, Mon Jun-07-10 11:29 PM
people love sequels; that's a fact. you go online, you talk to movie "heads", they'll all groan and rant away about how there is no originality these days, sequels suck, movies have no substance, blah, blah, blah.
and they'll be half right; there is truth to all of that. but it isn't the complete truth, and maybe not even halfway, the more you think about it. people have migrated to the trilogy platform in droves; LOTR, The Matrix, two Star Wars trilogies, Shrek, POTC, Spiderman, X-Men, and with the (barely) arguable exception of LOTR, all were a VERY mixed bag with at least one entry of each of those. and people ate them up.
the dark knight itself is proof positive that sequels can be done great and attract big business. plenty of arguments could be made for plenty of other movies- gremlins 2 comes to mind, especially since it took the proverbial bull by the horns and winked, nodded, and hijacked it's way into being one of the best, most fun and imaginative sequels ever.
on the other end of the spectrum, yeah, there is a little bit of sequel fatigue at this point because it's sort of being ran into the ground. but at the end of the day, movies almost always follow one golden rule: If you build it, and build it well, they WILL come.
now, this rule sort of fluctuates because you have quality films that are clearly driven with the mass market in mind, and others with a clearly smaller audience in mind, and sometimes these smaller films can explode onto a popcorn level.
clearly, popcorn flicks aren't always mindless drek and artsy flicks aren't always the intellectual superior they are made out to be; there are always exceptions to the rule. at the end of the day though, it matters not whether a movie is an earth-shattering concept that forever alters the way movies are created and perceived, or if it's yet another chapter in an age old story we've seen and heard since the day we could see and hear. you can apply these rules loosely and you'll generally get predictable results, but a great movie is a great movie is a great movie. if you build it, and build it well, they will come- again and again.
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