film theory -- sequels

As a general rule, I don't have anything against sequels. As a matter of fact, when it comes to my tastes in reading materials, I love a good series. Three books or twenty, if the characters keep me involved in the story throughout the first book, then I'm more than happy to follow them to the ends of whatever earth they might inhabit in as many subsequent books as the author can possibly turn out. Quite frankly, I hate to let a good character go. I have made friends with him and we've become close, and I'm not readily going to let him just carry on with his life without me in it. But this relatively simple assertion hinges upon one very key fact: the sequel has to be at least as good as the first, or you can bet I won't make it to the third.

With books, one can quite frequently find series where each and every book is as good as -- if not better than -- the last. Take the Harry Potter series; in my humble opinion, the quality of the writing and the depth of the characters and plots have gotten consistently better as the series has progressed.

With movies, unfortunately, the opposite is frequently true, and I think there is a very simple reason for this: when an author sits down to write a book, she almost always has it in mind whether or not she would like to carry this set of characters and circumstances into a series of books. When a film gets made, it is almost always a one shot deal. Not until the film has been released and surprised everyone by becoming the sleeper hit of the season does the screenwriter/director/actor get signed for a sequel. In fact, many times the screenwriter/director or other key personnel have already accepted other projects and so are unavailable to do the sequel, putting it into the hands of person or persons unknown to the work. And therein lies the problem. Films are made to be encapsulated works of art. They are envisioned by a huge group of people, but all at one time, so that there is (hopefully) a coherence to the work, even if it spans centuries on the screen and hours in the theater. Once a new group of people is assembled, or for many other reasons, this coherence can be lost.

This is not to say that there aren't great film series. There are. Take the Godfather trilogy, for example, or the original three Star Wars films. These are great films, but they work because they form a cohesive whole. A series that doesn't work, like the Matrix, often fails because the films are conceived not as parts of a whole, but as individual pieces, and therefore, do not match up as well as they could. The first Matrix was an astounding feat of filmmaking; it accomplished the (almost) impossible by successfully marrying a stunning, effects driven, visual movie with a compelling plot. The following two films could have been equally effective, but they weren't. My personal theory is that the Wachowski brothers spent too much time (and money) on the visual aspects of the second two movies and not enough time on developing the actual plot. So there ended up not being one.

But I digress.

My point in all of this (and yes, I am coming to one) is that this summer, released mere days from one another, we as a filmgoing audience have the opportunity to see two new installments in two competing film series: Shrek 2, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The former has the dubious honor of being in the category of sequels which are not decided upon until after the first film is made. The latter has the equally uncertain footing of being not only part of a preconceived series of films, but an already successful series of books (which in no way guarantees the success of the film, by the way), yet it also has the distinction of incorporating a new man at the helm, director Cuaron.

My goal in the next two reviews will be to see how these two films stack up against my theory of sequels: will Shrek 2 be a flop because it wasn't conceived as a whole with its counterpart? Will Harry Potter live up to (and hopefully surpass) the first two films and its own hype? Will Harry Potter 3 form a cohesive whole with the first two installments while directed by an entirely new person with an entirely new take on the films? Will Lacy physically explode with excitement before making it to the theater tonight to see Harry Potter 3??

We shall see, my friends. We shall see...