Another One?
Image: Unsplash, Brett Jordan
One is just fine, boo boo.
I sat down to watch Dumb and Dumber 2 a while back and turned it off about 45 minutes in. I had hoped that it would be at the same level of comedy, or at least close to it, but it was just bad. Dated jokes, sub par gags, and an almost identical plot as the first one made me realize, sometimes you just can’t go back.
There’s been a couple of announcements recently about movies that are getting a second or third installment after many years. For example, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is about to be released in about a week. After getting through the trailer, all I could do was give out a slight moan of disappointment.
The first film, Bridget Jones’s Diary, was so good! The second film, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was okay, and the third installment, Bridget Jones’s Baby was meh. So, why, if the last film in the franchise wasn’t a hit, would they then make another one? I mean, let’s not beat a dead horse that was already sent to the glue factory ages ago.
When a movie has a 10–20 year hiatus, it’s tough to create a script that isn’t just a repeat of the past, as well as a final product that will be popular. Not that it can’t be done and hasn’t been done, but some movies are meant to be one-offs.
Why not take the actors that were in the original, you know, the ones everyone was fawning over for their onscreen chemistry or what not, and throw them together in something new and completely different?
Look at Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. They were in Titanic, duh, and that movie was a mega hit! The two had such undeniable magnetism with each other, and because of that, they have a friendship that grew from making the movie together. So audiences were excited to learn they were going to be paired up again in Revolutionary Road because they got to see Jack and Rose together again, but in a very fucked up kind of way, and mostly liked it.
It’s one thing when a movie franchise keeps pumping them out every couple of years because they’re mostly successful and audiences are still willing to see them. Case in point: the Fast & Furious franchise. Personally, I’ve never seen one of them, but the films do well in the theaters, so there must be something there that audiences like. Therefore, why wouldn’t a studio continue to build the franchise?
But if a film has a sequel, and its reception is more of a yay than a YAY, why keep going with them? Not every movie is meant to build itself into a franchise.