Tragic Trilogies

I admit it - I love blockbuster, high-priced, world-ending, summer movies. Anything that has cars flipping, sabers clashing, and fire – lots and lots of fire – accompanied with LOUD NOISES. Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Mann must be taking cues from my head. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional documentary about penguins or global warming, or dramadies involving comedians branching out (Little Miss Sunshine, Stranger than Fiction), or foreign film (Amelie, Downfall, Joyeux Noel), but for pure entertainment value, I have to go with meteors falling from space and ending life as we know it, or alien invasions, or dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes, or bad remakes (a glaring eye your way King Kong). What they really need to do is to make a film that follows all those movies after the devastation because for some reason at the end of all those movies, everyone is happy - cheerful orchestra music is playing, fireworks, and inspiring speeches – but seriously, like half the world’s population is gone, Paris: whipped out, DC: in ruins, New Orleans: under water (oh, wait, that wasn’t a movie and there was no happy ending), do you think those aliens did have reserves they could call up, put into service for 4 or 5 tours of duty? Come on, that’s just good military tactics – keep sending troops until the people you are trying to conquer give up, pack there bags and say, “oh well.” Those movies never end like that so I’m sure that what the follow up would show would be the aliens or robots coming down after the entire planet has been devastated by city destroying weapons or meteor impact created natural disasters and enslaving the remaining resistance. But no one wants to see that movie. Speaking of which, on to the rant for this post…sequels - more specifically - trilogy sequels.

In most cases sequels are alright, some are even better than the original (I’m looking at you Spidey). But in certain situations, a sequel becomes a trilogy and bad things happen, very bad things. I speak of this because over the weekend I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Don’t get me wrong, for entertaining, mindless entertainment, it was pretty decent, similar to its predecessor, Dead Man’s Chest. But I discovered a disturbing trend of trilogies of this kind. First, Keira Knightly can’t act, and second, when a movie is aware of its on popularity it will implode on itself. Let us take a look at the trends established in history that followed similar paths, at least the ones that I can recall. Now, not all trilogies are the same, in this particular scenario, they are trilogies that released the first act as a singular, successful, and complete debut. Upon large buzz and/or box office returns, the executives choose to “capitalize” on the profit making juggernauts. This in turn drives said executives to make 2 sequels at the same time, with the middle installment ending without resolution, or “to be continues…” I am sure some kind mind for you already:

The Matrix – A mind bending, techno thriller about humans being batteries for self-aware machines. OK, so maybe a slight rip off of Terminator but the debut entered with little notice but the story and special effects got word of mouth motoring faster than a Rosie/Hasselbeck feud. Warner Bros. hit gold, a friend of mine got a job, temporarily, and Keanu Reeves got respect, temporarily. References made in the original, such as Zion and the machine city, left openings for future follow-up sequels, along with the superman-phone booth-fly-away-I’m-gonna-get-you-sucka ultimatum ending, but the movie alone was nothing that had ever been experienced before by a mass audience and hard pressed to be matched. Revelations and Revolutions had its moments, I particularly like the transparent twins, but the multi-Smith, yin-yang profit seeing type philosophical ending was convoluted and confusing. Plus style was lost, The Matrix incorporated metallic, green tint, and filters for inside the matrix scenes with vast contrast for ‘real world’ shots. The blend of technology and live action was much more seamless and somehow more believable. The subsequent reincarnations are, as my dear friend puts it, more like video games. Maybe that was the target audience.

Back to the Future – I know comical/sci-fi/timetravel movies should not apply to our critique but this was the first trilogy I can remember actually seeing in the movie theaters and being aghast and dumbfounded at the end of the second film while staring blankly at “To Be Continue…” then to be offered, as if consolation, scenes from the forthcoming, old-west themed “Part III”. Again, the original BTTF brought a unique perspective on the time-tested time travel theme. Blending humor and action, avoiding overly technical time travel explanations, and 50’s era music, BTTF provided family entertainment. The flying Delorean practically had the fans screaming for more. In my opinion, BTTF II actually succeeded as a movie. It expanded the time travel elements to past and future, alternate futures, adding interaction with the first movie scenes, all the while maintaining the humor it was known for. The third installment may have been enjoyed by old-west buffs but I even doubt that. A love story for Doc? Please. A flying train? Just isn’t the same as a Delorean.

POTC – As previously mentioned, Pirates and Swashbuckling are entertaining when you have a Keith Richards inspired Johnny Depp providing comic relief. Where did Pirates go wrong? Story. I was watching the special features of Dead Man’s Chest (the second installment) and up until like 2 weeks before shooting was set to start, they hadn’t a script. I mean, how hard is it to say, ‘Sparrow is tied to long pole and set atop a bonfire – hilarity ensues’? Or ‘put pirates in bad caged ball, dangling over cavernous pit, cut rope – hilarity ensues’? I guess their problem was getting to those situations with an interesting and easy to flow story. Maybe that is a problem for any movie based on an amusement park ride – great ride but not much story can be squeezed from animatronics (anyone else feel they were paying homage to that with Bootstrap Bill in the ship brig scene?). I also don’t think they knew how to end it and I won’t be giving it away here, but my question…what happened to the Kraken (yes, I had to look that one up)? Nevermind, I obviously missed that, hopefully you won’t. OK, so I am being a little harsh on the follow-ups of POTC, they actually are fairly entertaining in their own right, and Johnny Depp is hilarious in all three, but the Will and Elizabeth storyline was just, I don’t know, uninteresting after the first film, and left a lot to be desired…I blame Keira Knightly. Don’t get me wrong, she’s attractive but she can’t act, but she’s young, so either she will improve or we will be exposed to far too many years of her poor acting.

I could go on, but I wanted to point out why these film trilogies are flawed. Unlike other trilogies/sequels, these films aren’t/weren’t franchises, such as comic book characters (Superman, Spider-man) or even emerging franchises like Jurassic Park, Die Hard, or any horror movie that is successful once. But where they really go awry is their popular self-awareness. Most comic book character movies go in knowing they will do well and have multiple sequels, thus the first, ‘foundation’ movie tends to lack in entertainment, whereas movies like The Matrix and POTC basically had one shot to draw in a crowd before sequels were approved. Once that was accomplished, riding on the tail of their own success was easy. Conversely, movies like Rocky, the Bourne series, Oceans, Die Hard, and Lethal Weapon are complete movies, using elements of their predecessors but separate story lines with resolution – for better or worse. Let us hope that Sin City can avoid the pitfalls of the trilogy non-trilogy sequels….and a lot of things blow-up.