Keyword Archive:
Sequel

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

Now don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a terminator, right?

You have to hand it to James Cameron. He knows how to spend money. Not only did he spend $300 million on Avatar without blinking, but he was the first to sink $200 million into a picture, that being Titanic. Even before that, T2 was the movie to break Hollywood’s $100 million cherry. Considering the results, none of that money was wasted, but do we really want to keep encouraging this sort of behavior? What happened to the James Cameron who could make the first Terminator movie for less than the loose change he found in his sofa?

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

It’s hard to argue with the results when they look like this. Terminator 2 takes the lean, stripped-down muscle car that was the original and straps on a couple of booster rockets from the space shuttle. It’s sci-fi action filmmaking at such a level of relentless professionalism that it just wears you down and makes you hand over your skepticism like it was your lunch money.

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TRON: Legacy (2010)

Friday, May 6th, 2011

This can’t be good.

The original TRON was most impressive as a demonstration of technology that was, for the most part, still lingering just over the horizon. It was more of a demo reel with a plot, fondly remembered by the geeks who were wowed by its then-revolutionary visuals and couldn’t be bothered by the lack of an engaging story.

Tron: Legacy

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The Dark Knight (2008)

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Do I look like a guy with a plan?

Comic book movies are all grow’d up and, boy, are they gloomy. Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to his brilliant Batman Begins goes beyond its predecessor and gives us a rich, multi-layered story with one of the more original takes on the comic book villain I can remember. With the creative success of this movie, we can officially write off the Tim Burton Batmans as an unfortunate detour (and the Joel Schumacher films as a large pothole in that detour).

Why So Serious

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Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

What would you have me do? Hang half the people in England, or just imprison them?

Some movies are made to entertain us, others to inform, titillate or provoke. This one seems to have been made expressly for the purpose of winning the Oscars for Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction. It certainly wasn’t produced to give us a rigorously authentic account of Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett) at the time of the Spanish Armada or a deeply insightful examination of England’s Virgin Queen as a human being. While 1998’s Elizabeth was fairly sober-sided historical drama, director Shekhar Kapur has this time offered up As Ye Olde World Turns.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

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The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Monday, January 14th, 2008

You start down this path, where does it end?

It was probably inevitable, but a faint hint of repetition has crept into the Jason Bourne franchise. This third movie feels an awful lot like the second, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. There is enough energy to what’s happening on screen that you don’t notice the similarity between the two films.

Matt Damon; The Bourne Ultimatum

Of course, film franchises thrive on a bit of familiarity but we can at least hope that they have the sense to stop long before they have to use ever-increasing numbers of stunt persons to double a geriatric Matt Damon.

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The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Monday, December 17th, 2007

It’s not a mistake. They don’t make mistakes. They don’t do random.

Given his initials, it’s probably not a stretch to think that Robert Ludlum was inviting comparisons between his character Jason Bourne and Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Not being a huge reader of Ludlum’s novels, I’m not able to comment on the literary character, but as played by Matt Damon, Jason Bourne exists as almost a complete antithesis to the cinematic character of Bond.

Matt Damon; The Bourne Supremacy

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Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)

Monday, December 17th, 2007

I was really hoping we could avoid this.

2007 appears to have been the year of thirds, meaning the third entry in some highly visible film franchises. We had a third Shrek movie, a third Jason Bourne movie, a third Pirates of the Caribbean movie and a third Ocean’s Eleven movie. What does all of this mean? Absolutely nothing. It’s just a coincidence but I needed a way to open this review.

Ocean's Thirteen

The real pleasure we get from watching movies like Ocean’s Thirteen has very little to do with storytelling, but derives from watching a lot of rich, good-looking people having a lot of fun doing things most of us just dream about. It’s fortunate that this is actually entertaining because there’s not a lot going on here in terms of story. (more…)

Shrek the Third (2007)

Monday, December 17th, 2007

You had me at “vermin-filled.”

At least Disney has the sense to release its animated sequels direct to video, because no one wants to fork over ten bucks for one viewing of a craven attempt to cash in on our children’s affection for these characters. Dreamworks, of course, doesn’t have the luxury of a vast tradition of animated features. They have one tent-pole animated franchise, the Shrek movies, so they obviously feel forced to milk the property for everything they can until another they produce another hit.

Shrek the Third

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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

Monday, December 10th, 2007

I have no sympathy for any of you feculent maggots and no more patience to pretend otherwise.

Before the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, the practice of shooting two sequels in quick succession had a short and unspectacular history. In the eighties, they tried with the Back to the Future movies and, while those sequels had some charms, they were pale imitations of the original. These efforts, however, were masterpieces compared to the Wachowski brothers’ follow-ups to The Matrix, which managed to completely suck all of our good will for the original into that blank space behind Keanu Reeves’ eyes.

At World's End

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Oh fine! Let’s just haul out our swords and start banging away at each other! That will solve everything!

Dead Man's Chest

In Hollywood, success comes with its own peculiar brand of curses, most notably the expectation that one will follow that success with a sequel that will match, if not vastly exceed, the creative and commercial accomplishments of the original. Since any successful film is a matter of artistic and technical alchemy outside the control and understanding of us mere mortals, it’s little surprise that most sequels end up being pale, stunted, mutated offspring of the first movie. (more…)