Considering the vast diversity and array of options at our fingertips, we humans, as a whole, tend to like doing the same thing many times over. If you were looking for proof of this, you need not look to far from the crop of current movies being served up at your local movie theater. This really does seem to be a summer of sequels, familiar characters & storylines, and all in all, more of the same old Hollywood summer blockbuster shtick.
OK, that’s really not that fair, but at the same time, it kind of is. But can you really blame movie studios from sending sequel after sequel our way? If you look at the box-office figures, audiences eat it up. Why does this happen? Well, when a second or even third part of a movie franchise is released, you can see it in one of two ways: 1) the first movie was so commercially successful that it would be insane to not try & capitalize; or 2) the characters from the first film were so well-developed that trying to tie up a loose end just because the credits start rolling seems almost criminal.
So, in the grand scheme of things, sequels aren’t necessarily that bad. For a time, however, they really were hard to stomach. If you paid close enough attention, you could see how movie studios opted to make the title of a sequel play off of the original title as opposed to the addition of a numeral.
Things have changed, though, and audiences are being given year after year of tremendous movies. These movies are also driven by well-crafted storylines & complex characters that just can’t be contained (figuratively speaking) on the screen, so the sequel becomes a pretty hot commodity. In fact, looking at the movies listed below, some may argue that the follow-up film stands alone in terms of anticipation.
Here’s a look at five current movies & the originals that inspired them:
Jurassic World & Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – Technically, you could go all the way back to the original Jurassic Park from the early 1990s, but looking at the Jurassic World movies as their own franchise, it’s easy to see how a sequel (and what looks to be a third installation at some point) would work. Dinosaurs, evil plots, and the ever-constant battle of mankind vs nature make these movies worth checking out.
The Incredibles & Incredibles 2 – When nearly a decade and a half goes by, and audiences are still blown away at seeing how things have changed for the titular characters, you know you’ve got a killer movie series. Make these movies a priority.
Ant-Man & Ant-Man and the Wasp – Given that the sequel is woven between the story arcs of two Avengers movies (Civil War & Infinity War), you can tell the makers of this unique superhero franchise were ready to tell some serious stories about this minuscule powerhouse.
Deadpool & Deadpool 2 – Love, revenge, and breaking the fourth wall in a movie all make for one of the more interesting superheroes to have emerged in what feels like a glut of comic-driven films. Still, as much as we’re treated to intense violence & bad language by the anti-hero, these movies actually have a touching love story that connects them together. By the way, get familiar with the term “fridging” – your post-movie conversations will certain ask for your take.
Hotel Transylvania & Hotel Transylvania 3 – What do you get when you combine an ensemble voice cast, some of history & literature’s greatest monsters, and combine them with a fairly familiar trope of opposites attracting, and you’ve got the basics for Hotel Transylvania. The events of the third movie in the franchise take place nearly a decade after the first, with family becoming the overwhelming theme.
Yeah, the idea of having many current movies be sequels may not be the most exciting thing in the world at first, you have to ask yourself one important question – did I have fun the first time around? If so, this may turn out to be one of the more movie-centric summers in recent memory.