#3 Sequels and Remakes - Olivia

In the event that I was ever kidnapped, bound, taken to an abandoned movie theater, and forced to watch either a sequel or a remake ... I would have take a moment to choose.

I would probably bite my lip.

"Time ees teeking, meesy. Choose or ve vill choose for you," say my Russian captors.  I'm guessing that they're Russian from their accent, but I suppose we could also assume they're Norwegian.

"I don't sink you vould vant dat." They laugh heartily to each other.

I look from captor to captor, and then to the blank screen and then down to my wrists, duct-taped to the arms of the theater chair.

"Remake," I say clearly, without even a flicker of fear.

I can sense some of you shaking your heads, wringing your hands.  You're nervous.  You're secretly repeating "Sequel! Sequel!", thinking back on all the bad remakes you've ever watched.  You're not sure what these men are capable of ...

I stand by remake.  I'm not scared.  This is what I'm thinking:

A remake really has nothing to lose.  If the original film was terrible to begin with, then it can only be get better.  Or remain terrible.

And if the film is awesome, one should expect nothing but straight up A-game.  By trying to redo something that probably doesn't need to be redone, I should be so impressed that I perpetually make new friends just to see the movie repeatedly.  I mean, the film better come with seat-belts.

If it doesn't meet those expectations, I can shrug my shoulders and smile fondly on the original.

But the sequel is different.  I think it's far riskier to sequel than to do a remake of even a good film.

I will always be suspicious of the sequel.

A sequel can be like the generic brand version of something I would normally spend a little more on.
A sequel can be like the unnecessary cousin in an already packed car.
A sequel can be like the extra seasonings in a soup that was delicious before you gambled on it needing something.
A sequel can be like the nice man you met online who was cool at first on your first date, but was bumming cash from you by the second date.
A sequel can be like those long minutes you will never get back between being deposited in the room where you sit on paper and actually seeing the doctor.

Sequels make me nervous because it's obviously additional.  Adding a person here, throwing out a conflict there, can feel like tampering, especially if I liked the original story.  Especially if the addition is not necessary.  Especially if it's poorly done.

Frankly, there is a fine line between telling a longer story and milking something for all it's worth.

The soundest choice (although not fool-proof) is setting parameters ahead of time.  Trilogies, especially if spread out carefully enough, serve their purpose well.  Or filming a book series, where the audience knows what to expect, often is successful.  Those are safe choices.

But by making another movie, the story often becomes more vulnerable.

And if you do lose the integrity of the story, you've killed your cash cow.  We all know if it weren't for the poor choices in the third portions of Pirates of the Caribbean, or Spiderman, they probably could've kept making those films forever.

I don't mind spending time or money in the name of entertainment, as long as I'm not being suckered into into sloppy excessive storytelling.  Puh-lease.

"Zees ees an interestink choice you make," says my captor with a sinister chuckle.  "Deed you hear her? She said remake.  Vell, ve will give her remake ..."

The lights dim.  From the darkness I hear one of them shout, "Put een ze Pink Panther!  Zee von veeth Steve Martin!"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Don Responds --


It's too bad that you know Steve Martin from later in his career because the first few films he made right after he quit being a standup comedian were awesome.  If you ever get a chance to see any of his early films including The Jerk, The Man With Two Brains, or Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, you'd understand why he is still revered in Hollywood today.


As to your overall essay, I'm pretty much in agreement: I think remake offer more in terms of artistic vision than sequels do.  With that said, however, I also think there are lots of TV and film roles that are so iconic that they should never have been remade; two examples of this would be The Beverly Hillbillies and The A-Team.  A lot of times when I see what sequels or remakes are coming soon, I think what a shame it is that so many original scripts go unmade because someone wants to redo something that should just be left alone.  When I go out to the movies, I want to be transported to some place I've never been before; remakes and sequels make it just that much more difficult to discover something fresh and original.

#3 "Sequels and Remakes" -- Don

It’s funny how some memories decide to stick to the back of your brain like gum on the soles of your shoes and other memories fade quicker than chalk on a sidewalk.  Although I’ve only been out to the movies three or four times this year, I’d be hard pressed to remember which ones they were (okay, I definitely remember seeing Avatar; that was this year, right? And a 3-D cartoon, How to Train Your Dragon, but the other one or two, I’d really have to work at trying to remember what they were).

Now this may sound weird, but when I started to reflect on the topic of “Sequels and Remakes,” my imagination shot me with a recollection so vivid that it might as well have been yesterday:  I’m a sophomore in high school and I’m sitting in a movie theater in December of 1976.  I’m hanging out with a couple of my buddies, and we’re waiting to see, The Pink Panther Strikes Again starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.  Now for people Olivia’s age, you should know, that in 1976, Peter Sellers pretty much represented the absolute zenith of film comedy.  Although Monty Python had released The Holy Grail the year before, none of us, at that time, had ever heard of it because it only became hugely popular in subsequent years as a cult film that we watched repeatedly at midnight showings throughout my college years, and furthermore, the utter revolution to film comedy that was to be Airplane! wouldn’t be released until the summer of 1980, nearly four years later.

Okay, so I’m sitting in the movie theater, the lights go down, and just as The Preview of Coming Attractions are getting ready to roll, I hear for the first time, some blaring trumpets playing what is now immediately recognizable as the introductory notes of the theme to Star Wars.  “Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah, Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah!”  A somber voiceover remarks as a blur of action-packed clips begin to whirl past our eyeballs, “In a galaxy, far far away.”  Wow! My brain is in immediate overload.  Spaceships, laser swords, aliens, robots, and some evil dude dressed entirely in black who looked as though he had traded his entire face for the front of a Buick!  It was almost too cool for words.   As the trailer ended, the screen faded to the message “Coming Summer 1977” and for a moment, the theater grew deadly silent as though the entire crowd had sucked in their breath and forgot how to exhale.  At that moment, before the next trailer began to roll, I heard someone sitting behind me say, “Next summer?  What the heck?  I bet they haven’t even made it yet.”

Well, they made it all right, and as they like to say in Hollywood (or so I’ve been told) “And the rest is history.”  Stars Wars, as far I’m concerned, represents both everything that can go right in a film’s sequel and also everything that can go wrong.   When its first sequel The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, I don’t know if the American public would have been more excited if real freakin’ aliens had decided to land on the White House lawn.  The first sequel did everything a great sequel is supposed to do:  it started to answer the questions we had about the conflict and the characters from the first film, it introduced us to Yoda (who -- being a Jedi muppet who could lift spaceships with his mind -- took cool to a whole new level) and it kept us on the edge of our seat with special effects and sets that contributed to (rather than swallowed up) the narrative.  I guess you probably would have had to been there to understand just how mind-blowing it was to hear Darth Vader tell Luke that he was his father and to see him chop his son’s arm off with a light saber.

By the end of the third film, Return of the Jedi, however, I’d basically had enough.   If forced to say why (and what kind of subliminal pun is that), I guess I’d have to say it was the Ewoks that ruined it for me (for those of you who don’t remember, the Ewoks were, you know, basically aboriginal Teddy Bears).  The problem with the Ewoks is they weren’t just cute, they were too cute, and nothing can ruin good Science Fiction like the odor of too cute.  Years later when the next installments finally came out, I ended up, of course, handing over my ticket money for these three other sequels (excuse me, prequels), but I ended up going to these movies almost as though I had an obligation to go.  At first, I had high hopes for The Phantom Menace, but because of Jar-Jar, this movie ended up smelling even cuter than ROTJ (and look,  here’s Darth Vader as a little kid, isn’t he adorable?)  I mean really, let’s take the most notorious villain in movie history and turn him into a Little Rascal.  Blaggh.

Okay, before I run out of room here, here are my rules of thumb when it comes to sequels and remakes:

1) Sequels and remakes shouldn’t make us feel like we’re being exploited for merely liking the original so much.  I completely understand that the point of making movies is to make money for the people who are producing the films, but I don’t want to be reminded of that while I’m watching the movie or the deal’s off.    I know I’m watching a bad sequel when in the midst of the movie, I’m trying to spot the toys, video game, or other merchandise that’s going to be shoved down our throats whenever we visit Walmart for the next few weeks.  A bad sequel or remake crosses the line of the audience’s willful suspension of disbelief and makes us feel stupid for going along with it.

2) I have little tolerance for sequels that basically have nothing but a tenuous connection to the original, or feature few (if any) characters from the first movie.  Carrie died dramatically at the end of that first movie ever inspired by a Stephen King novel, so what the heck was up with Carrie II (oh, a previously unheard of half-sister who basically goes through the same story years later.  Well, that’s just lame.)  When the Sting II came out in 1983, Jackie Gleason and Mac Davis took over the roles of Paul Newman and Robert Redford.   Really, they bore such striking resemblances, I'm sure no else even noticed.  Now you could argue that Gleason and Davis were playing similar, but different characters who just happened to share the same last names, but considering the point of the story of the sequel was the villain from the first film was trying to get his revenge in the second, that doesn’t make any sense either.

3) Any movie with “Final” in its title should have to offer a refund to viewers of the first film before being allowed to make a sequel.  Before being allowed to buy a ticket to a sequel in which the death of the main character was an essential part of the original film, potential moviegoers should have to pass an intelligence test.  Why the heck, by the way, did The Never-ending Story need a sequel?  That just boggles my mind.

4) Even though I’m a staunch believer in Freedom of Speech, if I had the power, I’d still pass a law restricting sequels with numbers in their titles from being allowed to be remade.  There are two Halloween II’s, and another Halloween III is supposed to come out next year. Now even through there are already more than a dozen Halloween films, how in the heck is this supposed to be Halloween III when the original Halloween III came out in 1982 (and even it had nothing to do with continuing the story of the first two Halloween movies).

5) Finally, a good remake or sequel must (if nothing else) create its own aesthetic that demonstrates a fresh outlook on the old material.  Take the recent Batman movies for example, what made Batman Begins and The Dark Knight so terrific was the artistic vision of their director, Christopher Nolan.  What made Batman such a great film in 1989 was the artistic vision of Director Tim Burton.  If a film is nothing more than a mere imitation of the original, then what’s the point?  I’d just as soon watch the original.

My favorite sequel?  It’s probably a tie between The Road Warrior (a sequel to Mad Max) and The Godfather Part II (which, by the way, was in 1974 the first sequel to use a number in its title).  Go figure.

Olivia says:


You know, I really don't think my generation has a Star Wars moment.  


Wait - maybe.  I think the closest we've got is Lord of the Rings.  


I remember sitting in the theater somewhere in the Cleveland suburbs.  I was riveted to every finite detail of the first film - they're in mid-mele, Frodo and the ring in jeopardy -  when the projector stops.  It slows and flickers into black.  And the theater is in absolute uproar for almost a whole minute.  Drinks were thrown!  It was absolute pandemonium!   


Yeah, that doesn't even touch the wonder of Star Wars.


After much reflection I've decided that my favorite sequel is probably Ghostbusters 2.   And I'm not settled on a favorite remake, but I do really appreciate Oceans 11.

#2 "The Apocalypse" - Olivia

We’re not messing around folks.  Right off the bat, we’re going to talk about death and destruction.

Leave it to us to begin with ‘the end.'  Yes, the apocalypse. 

From what I’ve gathered, the apocalypse should be something like a flexible fruit pie recipe. Perhaps the seasonings differ a little, a little cinnamon here, a kiss of sugar there, but the fruit is the only real variable. 

While the apocalypse is all about the same basic idea, at least for cinematic depictions: some force of doom or destruction comes into play, terror ensues, chaos reigns, cue exit music. 

Bake all that at 350 degrees.  Serve with ice-cream.

However, I’m convinced that if the world is going to end, we are totally not going to see it coming.  People are going to worry about their dry-cleaning right up until there is nothing left we can do. 

I'm not here to prophecy doom.  Any speculation would ruin the surprise, if the world does indeed intend to end.  No, instead of guessing about exactly how the fat lady will sing, as it were, I want to suggest what I guess will be the best parts of the worst part.

I present to you ...

The Top Ten Best Things about the Apocalypse

1. The soundtrack to the apocalypse will be incredible.  
 Let's face it.  If thing's aren't looking good, everyone is going to be pumped with adrenaline.  And I'm gonna want to dance it out.  Like every good/extremely bad horror film, a Bee Gees "Stayin' Alive" is hopefully going to be refreshingly ironic.  Stay tuned for my own "apoca-mix."  (Question:  What would you listen to during the aftermath?)

2. You can wear whatever you want.
Congratulations, you no longer have to impress anyone.  If you're pajama clad in the worst way possible, it's all forgiven.  Even if you're wearing those shorts with the stains and the holes.  Even that over-sized tee shirt with the embarrassing pun on the front that you have no idea how it made it into your house, let alone your rotation ... you get the same understanding that hurricane victims get.  Plus, look what everyone else is wearing.   It might be fun to revisit old Halloween costumes.

3.  Now is your chance to use all those skills you've learned through video games. 
I have this strange feeling that gamers of all varieties are going to crawl out of their basements and have surprisingly valuable knowledge.  They may not have the incredible aim with a cross-bow in real life that they had in virtual reality, but I'll be darned if they don't try, or at the very least know how to load one.  I have no idea how different post-apocalyptic life will be compared to today, but I'm just going to assume that there will be plenty of opportunities for people to finally try what they've always pretended.

4. Your closet stash of Twinkies no longer seems like a bad idea.
Neither does your weird sword collection.  Your penchant for knitting, your back yard garden, your bizarrely trained pets, just may come in handy.  Even your decision to buy three hundred packages of toilet paper/ramen noodles/band-aids because they were selling them for a nickle a pop seems like a brilliant stroke of genius.  

5.  You will never be more creative in your life.  Ever. 
Everything you own will take on new purpose.   Those DIY-ers suddenly got nothin' on you.  Your tribe-mates will look at your fish-catching machine made of tongs, a business sock, and dental floss with the same awe you one had for the last five minutes of MacGyver.   You'll be ready if you and your people ever find a lake.  (People will begin doing crazy things for rolls of duct tape ... )

6. Social classes will be obsolete.
When no one has a paying job, no one cares what your last one was.  Suddenly, being a carpenter, a farmer, or a nurse is way cooler than being a poet, a computer-programmer, a DJ, or a banker.  Unfortunately, my job, giver of surveys over the phone, will never be cool.

7.  You finally have the time to _________.
Ok, this may not apply to everything on that list of yours.  You may or may not get to watch that movie in your Netflix queue.   There may or may not be Netflix anymore.  But!  Remember all those books you bought in the 90's?  That guitar your friend left?  That novel you were going to write?  Your time has finally come.

8.  You can stop worrying about French tests.
No one you know speaks French anymore!  You're home free, brotha!


9.  Every day is an adventure! 
Who knows what you'll get to do when the foundations of civilization are crumbling!  Hunting followed by scavenging?  Or maybe today you encounter new people?   Encounter a beast?  Either way, I'll bet every day is something new!

10.  The longer you live, the cooler your stories are going to be.  
And really, isn't that what it's all about anyway?

And I'm just going to put this out there now - if the apocalypse happens, as a general rule, just assume there will be a party at my house.  The party will last for no longer than 16 hours.  After that, you should, you know, probably find some shelter or something.

Bring your 'apoca-mixes'.

Don’s Response –

Since we’re still near the beginning of this weekly blogging routine we’re instituting for ourselves, the first thing I want to say (and I’ll do my best not to repeat this weekly) is just how amazing it is that you write so well.  Really, I know this isn’t actually a competition of who can write better, but dag, girl, cut your old man some slack.  That post was a comic tour de force, which I believe is the French expression for “look at these guns, will’ya?” while showing off your biceps.

When I think of the soundtrack for the end of the world, I can imagine nothing better than the opening credits of Stephen King’s The Stand with Blue Oyster Cult blasting out “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”  As I mentioned in my post, when the end of the world comes, I hope I go down quickly; I have no interest in either watching it happen or being one of the last remaining few.  When the apocalypse comes, I don’t expect there will be grand prizes for the ones who “Outwit, Outlast, Outplay.”    So, if I’m still around at the end of the last few notes of “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” go ahead and start REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” and I’ll do my best to check out before this song ends.

Because I’m the dad here, I’m going to invoke my parental prerogative and offer some fatherly advice (if it helps, imagine me in a cardigan and smoking a pipe while Nipper, the RCA terrier, stares vacantly at the Victorola), so here it is: “Don’t wait for the end of the world to do those things on your list!”  Seriously, it’s too bad that (not just you but) most of us feel as though we need some excuse to wear whatever we want, give up caring about social classes, or seek adventures.  I say don’t wait, go ahead now and use those skills garnered through video games, whatever they may be.   Although keeping a stash of Twinkies in the closet may attract cockroaches, I say go ahead and take that risk after all if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the cinematic depictions of the end of the world, it’s that the cockroaches are going to make it even when we don’t.  Thus, even if the Twinkies go bad perhaps during those few weeks you expect to outlive the rest of us, you can feast on roaches.  As for me, if  I’ve got a choice between feasting on bugs or letting them feast on me, I guess I’d rather be the host than the guest at those dinners.

Speaking of cinematic depictions, don’t forget we’re yakking about “Remakes and Sequels” in this Sunday night’s blog.   I’ll bring the popcorn, and if you promise not to mention how I made you watch the Hanna Montana Concert film (you and your sister had been out wayyyy past curfew, I must add in my own defense) then I won’t mention how you made me sit through The Power Rangers Movie when you were eight.

#2 "The Apocalypse" -- Don

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.   -- Robert Frost

I have no idea how this particular topic came to rest at the top of our list of basically random writing selections, but I’m okay with it.  I guess if we want to start the blog off with a bang, yakking about how everything is going to end off with a bang is as good a topic as any other. 

I’ll take the risk of sounding cynical or aloof by just putting it straight out there that the end of the world is not a particularly big concern for me.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy enough with my life and if I live to be a hundred and the world’s still here, fine by me.  On the other hand, however, if the world were to end tomorrow, and everyone and everything I care about were laid to utter ruin, I don’t expect I would be too upset about it because it only figures that if the world is destroyed, I’m going to go along with it.  Furthermore, although I’m in no rush to shuffle off this moral coil, if the aliens land tomorrow, I sincerely hope they eat me first.  I’d volunteer for it.  Perhaps I’d taste just nasty enough for them to fly off in search of something a little less fatty and a bit more tender on some other planet, and I could then go down in the annals of history in addition to the anals of some aliens.

Traditionally, the phrase “The Apocalypse” comes from the last book of The New Testament, which is also known as The Book of Revelations.  In fact the word “apocalypse” comes from the ancient Greek meaning “revelation” or “the lifting of the veil.”  As far as I’m concerned, The Book of Revelations pretty much exemplifies everything that is wrong with Christianity.  First off, if you’ve ever read the text for yourself (and I have), you can’t help but notice that John’s explanation for how God plans to resolve everything is expressed in such vivid and complex imagery that I contend his fantastic, lurid, and rambling metaphors are beyond the capacity of anyone living today to really say what it’s actually supposed to refer to.  We are approaching a 2000 year distance from the context in which these images were first set down, and even if we were able to get into a time machine and speak with John face to face, I sincerely doubt that anyone could step into his dreamscape and understand exactly who or what he is referring to when he’s going on and on about such characters as “The Whore of Babylon” or those four weird creatures that were hovering around the throne of God.  Now I know there are scads of people who would like to claim that they know what all of the imagery means (a Harris Poll from this past spring showed that nearly a quarter of Republicans believe that President Obama is The Antichrist, a key figure of The Book of Revelations whose name when spelled in Hebrew is supposed to add up to 666 or 616 depending on which ancient manuscript you’re going by), but even if there were one person (or even a handful) of people who actually knew what it all meant, how would the rest of us know who we could trust in offering “the right” interpretation?  If you want a one sentence summary of my take on religion, it’s this:  I have plenty of faith in God, but I have excellent reasons to doubt all those people who make the claim they have God’s authority to speak on His account.

Furthermore, I argue that even if we are unable to connect the dots and make reasonable conjectures regarding what the metaphors in The Book of Revelations refer to (if anything specifically at all, really), the underlying rhetoric of the narrative completely undermines its own authenticity. The underlying message of “The Apocalypse” is that eventually God gets fed up with the human race and throws everything He’s got left in his toolbox at our ultimate and supreme annihilation.  According to the story, while God is massacring the rest of humanity with The Four Horsemen (Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death), a small minority of the human race (made up of the diehard faithful) is spared by floating up into the sky to meet Jesus in the clouds.

The rhetorical engine, then, of the machinery that drives this Biblical narrative is fueled by fear and selfishness.  In other words, the point of the story is to motivate people to trust in the authority of the ones who are telling (or retelling) the story out of their audience’s desire to avoid the threat of Hell and to secure the reward of Heaven.  It’s not for the faithful few who get swept up in the nick of time to spend any time worrying about the eternal sufferings of those who get left behind; that’s none of their concern – after all, those poor suckers had their chance to accept what they were being told and they turned it down, right?  Unfortunately, this argument melts when the reader insists upon a reasonable God instead of one who is merely angry and fed up with it all.  Here’s how:  if God is more intelligent than I am (and there’s no doubt about that), then He would certainly understand what is perfectly clear to me – that there’s a vital difference between a reason to believe something and a motive to believe something.  If (for example) you believe the brakes are beginning to fail on your car, you then have an excellent motive to believe that your car’s brakes will last until payday (when you can afford then to get them fixed), but you do not have a good reason to believe that your car’s brakes will last until payday because there is simply no relationship between the physics of your car’s brakes and the amount of money you have in your bank account.  In short, threats and rewards are excellent motives to believe, but they are irrelevant as reasons to believe.  Thus, when authorities use threats of punishment or bribes of rewards to induce belief, they are employing an illogical and (I argue) immoral form of argument.  Since I expect God is both reasonable and moral, I don’t expect He would authorize anyone speaking on His behalf (as if an omnipotent deity would need someone to speak on His behalf anyway) to use such underhanded tactics as to scare people into believing in such a shady and nefarious form of authority.   Thus, I conclude I’d rather put my faith in the benevolence of a God who, if He had something to tell me, would do it, rather than trust in those who, to secure their power over of the people who can’t recognize the difference between a motive and a reason, would portray God as the ultimate boogeyman as a means of distracting others from noticing their lack of credibility.

Olivia says:
Ah yes, good old Revelations.  You would bring that to the table in round one.  


This is how I feel about it:
I'm not bothered by the complex imagery of John.  
I'm not disturbed by the message.   


The Bible, or really, any experience that persuades our belief, is a story of oppositions.  That said, I don't believe that the sides are separated into God's tolerance vs. us.  As you pointed out, "apocalypse" is described as the "lifting of the veil" or "revelation" which at least to me, suggests significant change.  And while I don't feel like God is getting out his super massive pink eraser in this scenario,  there could be some serious remodeling.  


Beyond the complex imagery or intent of the message, the nut you'd have me crack is why one would either submit to being 'frightened' or 'bribed' into believing something.  


Let me assure you, my beliefs are not cultivated by either 'motive'.  Frankly, (as you know) those motives do not work well in terms of long term conviction.  


My beliefs are founded on what I feel is a more substantial reasoning:  experience.  


When I am presented with information, I can immediately choose to believe it or discard it.  Experience has taught me to consider my source, the effect of the message, the likelihood of truth based on what I already know.  Or, instead of basing my belief completely on assumption, I can search it out myself. 


The culmination of my experience is what feeds and grows my faith.  


I know now that if I am unsure in something, I can ask God.  I know this from my experience.  


The same applies in regards to the words of others.  "But why wouldn't God just tell me?"  Maybe He did.  Maybe you were playing Mario.  Or maybe, just maybe, He is speaking to someone who can share a message effectively.  Or someone who is ready.  Or someone who is listening.  


But when you hear that message, it is your responsibility to discern if it is true.  Not out of fear, or reward, but because you should genuinely desire the truth.  


No one is asked to believe blindly.  As you suggested, that is foolishness.  


That's just what I believe.  
-------------------------------------------


(On your alien scenario: What if the aliens come and eat you first, and then decide that you were tentacle-lickin' good, then what?  Then, what?!)