Low Culture: Hollywood's incurable case of serial sequel-itis

Earlier this year, Roger Ebert, the premier American film critic, put out an article entitled "Sequels and Unoriginality in Hollywood." In it, he basically rants that the 27 sequels that came out this year were a result of Hollywood's collective money-hunger and our collective stupidity for fueling them (seeing as nine of the top ten movies this year were, in fact, sequels.)

Well, Señor Ebert, if I'm going to pick a fight with you, let it be in a college publication you'll never read. I think that's crap. First of all, yes, sometimes sequels are bad movies. In fact, a lot of the time they are. Most of us can name the bad sequels we've seen more often than we can name the good ones. But that doesn't mean the sequel itself is a bad concept. There are bad movies made every day. Bad artsy movies, bad sci-fi movies, bad dramas, bad comedies, so why should bad sequels be a symptom of the sequel rather than the bad? What is it about the sequel that lends itself to making bad movies?

Ok, honestly, there is some of that. Sequels are an invitation for laziness. Was Sex and the City 2 really necessary? What about Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked? Studios that have successful one-shot movies tend to make a sequel to try and cash in on that wealth. But that, in and of itself, doesn't really lend itself to bad movie making. When Columbia Pictures wanted to make a sequel to Spiderman, they made a great movie that made a ton of money. Was it a cash grab? Sure, but it was a cash grab with enough substance and content that it was a good movie. The same thing happened with The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan directs a wonderful Batman movie? Let's give it to him again, see what the sequel looks like. He made Legendary Pictures, literally, billions of dollars off of a sequel. The list goes on and on. Good sequels, bad sequels: they're all out there, they're all cash grabs.

So, if every sequel is a cash grab, but some are more successful than others, what's really going on? Why do people pay to see these things so much more than other movies out there? Is it that we're all just fearful and afraid of experiencing new things? If my passive-aggressive rhetoric isn't cluing you in, the answer is no. The reason we like sequels is simple. They mimic us. When I first started reading comics, I was so in love with the serial nature. Every issue had another issue after it, every storyline was followed by another storyline, and I could see them all bob and weave. Blend together and separate out. But when a series got cancelled, it hit me hard. Like someone had died, and I was feeling that pain. Now, of course, I was being melodramatic, but the core of what I was feeling was actually pretty genuine. Stories are about lives. And as we've gone on as a culture and our lives have gotten more complicated, so too have the stories that entertain us. They're more dynamic, they move faster and in different ways. There isn't always a beginning, middle, and end. Lives are lives and stories come and go in the midst of us, you know, living.

Sequels are mimicking that phenomenon. The camera never fades out on our lives, and sequels just represent that camera coming back in. Sure, all the piece of storytelling are still there, but it feels more real. We've invested in these characters, we've drawn from these experiences, and our investment is rewarded with a more complete story. We're watching someone's life, not just a few interesting hours or days.