by Benjamin Haines » Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:46 am
As time has gone on, I've realized how pointlessly convoluted it can be for new films in established franchises to act as selective sequels to prior entries while consciously contradicting others. It can actually damage a franchise's relevance with general audiences.
It made sense for Toho to do that with Godzilla in 1984. The original film was 30 years old, there had been 14 sequels and most Japanese audiences wouldn't have seen all of them, so Toho rebooted the series while still maintaining continuity with the first movie. I'm guessing the contemporary press coverage in Japan made that fact clear.
But how clear was it for American moviegoers in 2006 when Superman Returns came out? It was the first Superman feature film in 19 years and the fifth overall, yet it was meant as a follow-up to Superman II which ignored Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. It was essentially meant to be an alternate Superman III that takes place more than 20 years later with a younger cast. How clear was that to moviegoers who saw the Superman Returns trailer and decided to buy a ticket? I don't know, but I do know that Warner Bros. considered it a box office disappointment.
When a franchise jumps through hoops with its own continuity, it's really only the people who already have a vested interest in that franchise who are going to follow the convolution. I mean hell, I've been a fan of Fox's X-Men film series from the beginning. I thought 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine was awful, so as a fan I've been happy to see subsequent films (The Wolverine, Days of Future Past, Deadpool) just totally ignore it and do their own thing regardless of how much they contradict Origins. That works for me because I keep up with that series and disregarding Origins makes sense to me, but I can't deny that it's been a confusing creative choice for a lot of other viewers.
Just look at the Halloween series. That's one giant clusterfudge of continuity! You've got Halloween and Halloween II connected to each other, followed by the standalone Halloween III, then it's back to Michael Myers with Halloween 4, 5, and 6. Then, just three years later, Jamie Lee Curtis returned for Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, a direct follow-up to Halloween II which disregarded subsequent entries, followed by its sequel Halloween: Resurrection. Then Rob Zombie did his remake of the first film and also did a sequel to that. Now we've got another new Halloween on the way and it is - again - bringing back Jamie Lee Curtis for a direct follow-up to Halloween II which disregards subsequent entries.
At some point, I think the folks making selective sequels to established franchises need to take a step back and ask themselves, "Who are we making this new entry for?" That's the $150-million question regarding this new Terminator project. The notion of James Cameron producing a sequel to Terminator 2 with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton reprising their roles seems cool in a vaccuum, but in the real world, away from the entertainment news thinkpieces, who is really going to get excited about it? In 1991, T2 became the third-biggest worldwide box office hit up to that point in history, after E.T. and Star Wars. Between that and its prosperous post-theatrical life on home video and television, it's one of the most widely-seen action blockbusters in America ever. There are certainly a lot more people who have seen T2 than have seen 2003's T3 or 2009's Salvation or 2015's Genisys, but will those general moviegoers be more excited for this new Terminator project than they were for those prior sequels just because this one will have Linda Hamilton and James Cameron returning? If the movie is meant to be an alternate Terminator 3, is that context going to click with viewers beyond us genre nerds or will audiences just find it confusing?