Can you think of a film that really needs a sequel but one was never made? I don’t mean just because there was more money to be squeezed out of a franchise. I mean you would look forward to sitting through a sequel and hope it might even be better than the original.
Here’s 3 movies that definitely needed no sequel and one should not have been made:
Here are 2 sequels I’d like to see, both by the same director.
A more difficult question to answer than it at first seems.One that comes to mind for me is Diner,because the banter between the characters is so entertaining and familiar.It’s like revisiting a get together with friends every time I watch it.Not that I think it should have had a sequel.
No doubt. I’m killing myself trying to think of some.
Personally, I’m still waiting for them to make BUCKAROO BANZAI AGAINST THE WORLD CRIME LEAGUE.
Dark City and Spaceballs come to mind. As long as the sequels are not “just to make money” but are in the spirit of the originals.
Here are 2 sequels I’d like to see, both by the same director.
- THEY LIVE By John Carpenter
- THE THING By John Carpenter
They Live didn’t register enough for me to comment whether it needs a sequel. I’m guessing Cleve just wants to watch two men wrassle in a back alley over a pair of sunglasses.
But I disagree about The Thing. The movie reset to the status quo beautifully, with MacReady and Childs dying in the snow so the thing could be frozen again. What would happen in the sequel? Yet another Antarctic base uncovers it? No thanks. The Thing was a pat self-contained story where the only hopeful ending was a nihilistic one.
I’m mainly opposed to sequels to these movies because I’m afraid John Carpenter would want to direct them. Based on his last few projects (Ghosts of Mars, Vampires), I’d really prefer it if he left his good movies alone.
-Tom
Oooohh, aaaahhh.
Trivia note: There was a Team Banzai, with a unit commander
named B. Banzai, in Michael Stackpole’s Battletech novels.
Hey, if you think The THING should have a sequal, you should give one of the video games a rent. It picks up where the movie left off, and is pretty entertaining for most of it’s length.
They Live, on the other hand, isn’t even worth mentioning. :P
Another of Carpenter’s neat concepts hacked to pieces by his complete and utter lack of anything resembling competent directing ability.
I’d love to see what became Max Fisher’s next obsession after Rushmore Academy. Not sure whether we’d find Max in college, or perhaps even carrying his pretensions of grandeur in a regular grind of a job. A fascinating character, I’d like to see his enthusiasms remain undimmed and explored into adulthood.
And though not technically a “sequel”, I’d love to see the creative team behind LA CONFIDENTIAL tackle the remainder of the Quartet. That Curtis Hanson was somehow able to make coherent, interesting, and “true-to-the-source-material” out of both the former movie and WONDER BOYS is a small miracle. If anyone could pare down BLACK DAHLIA, I have faith in his ability to do so.
Well, you’re in luck, because they didn’t make a sequel, they made a PREquel. :roll:
I can think of a number of films that are absolutely dying to be sequelized. (Is that a verb? It is now.)
Another Picnic at Hanging Rock – starring the girls of t.A.T.u. This time, only their clothes disappear.
Not-So-Funny Girl – 30 years later, Fanny Brice has grown into an irritating meta-celebrity living in a beachside estate, threatening environmentalists with frivolous lawsuits.
Flaming Saddles – Gus Van Zandt updates Mel Brooks’ zany western… with a twist.
The Wizard of Oz – this time, Dorothy wakes up in a maximum security prison. Parental discretion advised.
Smart and Smarter – Jim Carrey plays an excitable computer game developer being stalked on the internet by a disgruntled customer (Jeff Daniels). They decide to take a cross-country road trip together in a Miata to work out their differences. Many sarcastic conversations ensue, none of which we can hear due to the wind noise (the top is down).
Unfortunately, serious movies tend not to lend themselves to sequels very well, which is the peril of attempting to make a self-contained artistic work with a cohesive, internally logical aesthetic message. This is why great novels tend never to have sequels. On the other hand, pulpy stuff always leaves you craving for more.
I’d love to see another Conan sequel. The Robert E. Howard books go up to the point when Conan is like 60, and since Arnold Schwarzenneger is closing in on that pretty rapidly. Schwarzenegger said he would come back and do it if John Milius directed again. That’s pretty smart, since I think the original Conan film is the only movie ever to capture the true spirit of sword and sorcery, outside of Excalibur.
28 Days Later actually left itself open pretty well to a sequel, since the ending is ambiguous. Even if it wasn’t, there’s no need to feature the same characters as the first film - you could make the sequel concurrent with the first film.
Tom, I think Carpenter’s Thing movies could be made into some decent sequels. There was a series of Dark Horse comics a few years back about what happened after the film - you know, sinister government gets involved, wants to make the Thing into the ultimate biological weapon, for some reason moves the organism into a base in the jungle, etc. As lame as that sounds, it was pretty good, and moving the Thing into an environment (although lacking the Ten Little Indians suspense of the first film) would probably go a ways to making the concept seem fresh again.
And, of course, the Woman in Black 2 is just dying for a greenlight.
The Wizard of Oz – this time, Dorothy wakes up in a maximum security prison. Parental discretion advised.
I think this movie was already made in the surprisingly good, surprisingly dark Return to Oz starring Fairuza Balk, except the maximum security prison is an insane asylum where a mad scientist performs twisted experiments on small children. I get the joke, just wanted to plug the film.
See audiences gasp at the incredibly real dinosaur effects, and Jeff Goldblum as a smart-alecky chaos theorist!
28 Days Later actually left itself open pretty well to a sequel, since the ending is ambiguous. Even if it wasn’t, there’s no need to feature the same characters as the first film - you could make the sequel concurrent with the first film.
I would love to be wrong, but I can’t imagine a) the movie will do enough business for a sequel or b) Danny Boyle is a franchise kinda guy.
Besides, I don’t think the ending was ambiguous at all. Maybe we should take this to another thread, but I was pretty clear on what happened in the end and I think the movie was, too.
Tom, I think Carpenter’s Thing movies could be made into some decent sequels. There was a series of Dark Horse comics a few years back about what happened after the film - you know, sinister government gets involved, wants to make the Thing into the ultimate biological weapon, for some reason moves the organism into a base in the jungle, etc. As lame as that sounds, it was pretty good, and moving the Thing into an environment (although lacking the Ten Little Indians suspense of the first film) would probably go a ways to making the concept seem fresh again.
Ugh. The Thing was not about the organism, it was about the people. Just like Ten Little Indians is not about the judge who perpetrates the murders, but about how the victims react and interact. The last thing I want is another movie about an alien that lurks inside people with government forces involved, especially if John Carpenter is involved in any way.
Woman in Black is sitting on my shelf. I think I’m going to use it as a date movie. Good idea? Bad idea?
-Tom
Tom - For the kind of girls I tend to date, who all tend to be big-brained Henry James/Charles Dickens fans with masters in Victorian literature and know what I mean when I use the word “amphisbaena” in a sentence, the Woman in Black is a great date movie. For frizz-permed girls with a penchant for liquid tan in Eel Aye, though, maybe less so. I’d say anyone who is capable of watching, say, PBS and not flicking to the Martin reruns on cable should appreciate it. If you can get yourself a date like that, you’ll finish off the evening with her squirming in your lap with her white knuckles wrapped around the nape of your neck - the ending is particularly creepy. Make sure to watch it with the lights out.
After looking it up, how can you possible use amphisbaena in a conversation? Unless it’s a conversation about myths, which I guess isn’t that uncommon.
I always felt that THEY LIVE didn’t even break the surface of what was possible. THEY LIVE was the original low budget Matrix before the Matrix. I’ve often visualized the THEY LIVE sequel as a journalist finding the contact lens on Roddy Piper’s body and a far more subtle paranoid story built around his gradual discovery of what they do. Maybe THEY LIVE was hitting too close to the bone for Hollywood to begin with.
THE THING II would be to THE THING what ALIENS was to ALIEN. Government base, more shapeshifting and more distrust and paranoia rampant amongst the personnel. The alien gets smarter, learns a lot more about concealing itself convincingly.
I’ll take that recommendation for the video game, I’ve been pondering picking it up for some time.
That criticism of John Carpenter was spot on. John Carpenter’s films have the most terrific ideas in them as premises - their biggest shortcoming is that they get directed by John Carpenter. After seeing GHOSTS OF MARS it was obvious this guy is really losing his touch altogether. That movie was just plain piss-weak and 1/3 of a real film.
Actually, ahem, John Carpenter himself already sort of did. Big Trouble in Little China was based on the script that W.D. Richter originally wrote for Buckarooo Banzai Against the World Crime League, which was destined to languish unfilmed because the first BB film did so poorly in its theatrical release.
Also, I got the impression from the commentary on the BB DVD (which is funny btw – it’s done as if the movie was a fictionalization of real events, with Earl Mac Rauch pretending he’s the “real” Reno) that W.D. Richter hates directing. Kurt Russell and friends are poor substitutes for the great Peter Weller and the rest of Team Banzai, but at least the movie got made in some form, and a pretty good one at that.
He can because he is a DVM. Doctor of vocabulary medicine.
I would like to see a sequel to Mrs. Barrington. It was a film I saw on Skinemax at 1:00am or 2:00am in my early teens. It was the first film during which I saw two completely naked women grinding their naughty bits together in scissor-like fashion. My life changed for the better that day, but did spoil good ol’ man-woman softcore porn for me.
I would have loved a decent Lawnmower Man sequel. I think they made a shitty one, but I did not bother to watch it.\
JASON EDIT: I loved Kurt Russel’s John Waynish silliness. I still watch Big Trouble in little China now and agin.