I am not a fan of prequels either.  Possibly the biggest reason for me is that prequels by their nature take place before a story really begins.  The most obvious example is found in the Star Wars prequels, a series of 3 movies that add absolutely nothing to the original trilogy.  We can put aside the question of whether they’re good movies or not.  That’s irrelevent.  But do they make the original trilogy stronger?  Nope.  There’s really nothing in the prequels you need to know to enjoy the original trilogy.  If you watched The Empire Strikes Back without watching Star Wars (and yeah, I call the first film Star Wars, not A New Hope or Episode 1), you could still enjoy Empire.  But you’d be missing something, elements that made the story payoff.  You could watch Return of the Jedi all alone, but you’d be missing out on the payoff that comes from the arc of the three films.

But the prequels don’t add anything.  They elaborate on backstory that is already well established and intended to be just that: Backstory.  As in events that take place before the real story begins.  Even if the prequels had been great, it would be hard to make them relevant to the original trilogy because the original trilogy was made to work without them.

This is the prequel’s dilemma.  How do you make something relevant when it is irrelevant by design?  We don’t need to see Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side.  If you do a good job of it, then we are just allowed to watch events unfold in a predestined way that is difficult, if not impossible, to make interesting.  If you do a bad job, you make established backstory seem ridiculous and stupid.  So you can either be boring or harmful.  You can rarely be neither.

I’m not arguing that prequels cannot be commercial successes, which is ultimately all they’re there for.  When a writer is out of ideas and wants to milk a few exra bucks from an established property, prequels work great.  They have the illusion of importance, of being worthwhile information.  If Darth Vader’s eventual redemption is worth seeing, then shouldn’t it follow his corruption is too?  Well, no.  No, it isn’t.  And this can apply to a long list of ideas that don’t really pay off the way they could in our ideal imaginings.

Is anyone really excited to know that the Empire was formed via political manipulation?  Does knowing how Luke and Leia’s parents met and fall in love add anything to their story?  Is any depth added to Boba Fett when we discover that his dad was a bounty hunter too?  And do we care more about C-3po if he was built by a young Darth Vader rather than just bought at a store?  These are unnecessary, unimportant.  They’re the illusion of character development, of world building.  But they are answering questions that don’t need to be answered.

Ironically, the character that comes out the best in the Star Wars prequels is Han Solo because he isn’t in them.  His dad isn’t in them.  We don’t learn that Emperor Palpatine built the Milennium Falcon in his garage.  And because of that, Han remains an interesting character.  His past remains mysterious (which is part of what makes him interesting), and we aren’t forced to hear about every unimportant detail of his childhood in the mistaken impression that if Han Solo, the smuggler turned hero, is worth following then Han Solo, Jr. space ace, is someone we should watch too.

It’s easy to pick on Star Wars.  Heck, all but the most ardent Star Wars fan will admit the sequels are flawed at best.  But the problem with prequels of all sorts is that they just remain pointless exercises.  The Wolverine prequel suffered from the same flaws the Star Wars prequels did.   A meandering story trying to squeeze plot points together into a coherent story, an obsession with making even the smallest details important.  And this isn’t just true for films, but for comic books too.

The prequel’s comic book cousin is the retcon, a reworking of past events to make them fit a current story.  And it is, with rare exception, a waste of time.  I much preferred when Wolverine didn’t have an origin over the one we were finally given.  He worked just fine as a character without it.

Sometimes a story is best served when questions aren’t answered.  Either because they’re unimportant or because any answer we get will be unsatisfying.  I don’t need to know how Bruce Wayne built the Batcave.  I don’t need to know how the Kent’s adopted the young Clark.  I don’t need to know who built C-3po.  I don’t need to know a whole hell of a lot to enjoy a story.  And knowing won’t always make me enjoy it more.

The observation is as true as it is irrelevant.  Prequels aren’t made because people think those stories need to be told.  They’re made because they’re an easy sell.  And if art is all about money, it’s hard to argue that either the Wolverine or Star Wars prequels were failures.  They put butts in the seats.  They make money, and money is what it’s all about.  And I can respect that to some degree.  It’s like dropping zombies into Pride & Prejudice.  You don’t do it for the artistic merits.  You do it for the money.  And, like all artists, the approval.

Having never really gotten that level of approval, I can’t even claim to be immune to it.  If someone offered me a million dollars to write a Gil’s sequel, I’d write it.  I’m not taking the high ground here.  I’m just making an observation.  It’s not a scientific fact, just an opinion from one humble novelologist.  Make of it what you will.

Speaking of unnecessary reboots.  There’s a new Spider-Man film in the works.  Funnily enough, the reason has less to do with any demand for such a film as for the legal requirements that if they don’t make the film, the studio might lose the rights to the character.  That’s pretty common.  As a wise person once observed: “It’s true that Hollywood is the Dream Factory.  Well, the factory part at least.”

Also, I watched The Mechanic this weekend, and it was a good movie.  Nothing mind-blowing but a good story told well with some nice action pieces.  Jason Statham can sleepwalk his intensity through a film like this at this point, and it’s pretty standard.  But SPOILER ALERT, Statham’s character lives at the end.  In the original film (which I recommend by the way) the mechanic as played by Charles Bronson dies.  It’d be tempting to say that it reflects a different society that sees no need to have it’s anti-hero protagonist get is comeuppance.  But it really has little if anything to do with that.  It’s all about sequel potential, something the original film didn’t even consider.  But that was a different world, when sequels were the exception, not the rule.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

This post is just a test.  Nothing really important to say right now.  As if I have anything important to say most of the time.

Truthfully, this blogging takes time.  And it can be a distraction from my real job.  I do it because I’m supposed to, and because I know you all live for these nuggets of wisdom I offer.  But I gotta earn a living so you’ll excuse me if I cut back a little in the near future.  At least until I feel like my newest manuscript is back on track.

So The FInal Destination came out and was #1 at the box office.  I could say something about how depressing I find this.  Not because The Final Destination is necessarily a bad movie, but because there’s nothing new to be done with the final destination franchise.  And the trailers gave away all the deaths, so what’s the point in going to see it other than that’s what we do.  We go see things that are familiar and reliable and give us exactly what we want.

At this point, I’ll say something like “And there’s nothing really wrong with that”, but no, not this time.  This time, I’m just going to call it like I see it.

It think it sucks.

A while ago, I posted a blog about my own struggles with artistic integrity and financial success.  It was long and thoughtful and I think it did a good job of questioning whether I’m willing to “sell out” or if I even think “selling out” is a bad thing.  The internet faeries ate it.  I don’t know what that says, but I do know that I’m getting pretty tired of this balancing act.

When did we stop caring about being challenged, even in the most rudimentary fashion?  When did we decide that we needed 3 versions of Law and Order, 3 versions of CSI, 2 versions of NCIS, 4 Final Destination films, a direct-to-video sequel for any moderately successful movie (Van Wilder 3?  Really?), and Broadway musicals based on books based on films based on books?

It’s no wonder people are surprised I don’t write sequels yet.  Apparently, that’s the only goal of our society, to just wander around on automatic pilot and take what we’re given, not expecting anything but safety and repetition.  That thing I said about zombies a few posts ago?  Take that and apply it to 95 percent of everything around us.

95 percent of everything has always been crap.  I admit this.  But at least it was trying to be original crap.  At least it wasn’t just a rehash of something already done-to-death.  Or at least it tried to hide it.  Now, instead of being embarrassed to be the same old thing over and over again, it’s deliberately designed as such.

And that sucks.  Yeah, I’m repeating myself.  I don’t know what else to say.

I have a reputation for being contrary, for having unusual opinions.  But I can’t be the only one who sees this and finds it tremendously disappointing.  Disappointing in a soul-crushing kind of way.

Well, that’s that, I guess.  Kind of an obnoxious rant for my last post for a while.  Try not to hold it against me.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee