# In cinema, does a prequel ever actually help the story? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 14, 2018, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514 "2018-11-14T18:21:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2018, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/21 "2018-11-14T22:23:52Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > (Yes, I include _Rogue One_, whose only reason for existence was to answer a fanboy nitpick that came from the fanboys not being particularly smart). I’m curious what you think that nitpick was. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2018, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/22 "2018-11-14T23:16:21Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I’m curious what you think that nitpick was. Possibly, “_why did the DeathStar have a big design fault so that it could be destroyed by a single shot from a one man fighter_?” In the Narnia books, The Magician’s Nephew was written 6th out of 7 books, but is chronologically set first. It’s my favourite of the books, and it’s a worthy prequel, It provides explanations for a number of weird details in the first book, such as why there is a lamp-post in the middle of the forest. I wonder if this was a back-story Lewis had thought out when he wrote the first book, or if it was a retcon. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2018, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/23 "2018-11-14T23:39:48Z")
In a rare example of a prequel being called the “Best of the series”, the video game “Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater” is often cited as being the best game of the series. I think it accomplishes this with two very important things, first it’s a prequel that done from the viewpoint of the bad guy in the series and shows why exactly he became a bad guy, it’s not just rehashing the same old formula of prequels where it’s the exact same cast of protagonists just all slightly younger. Second it throws out much of the technobabble and constant multi-layered conspiracies that made up the bulk of the other Metal Gear Solid games and instead just focused on a single core story (with the remaining rest of that stuff being pushed way into the background) ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/24 "2018-11-15T01:00:41Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I’m curious what you think that nitpick was. If John Knoll is a ‘_fanboy_’ every writer in the world is too. (full disclosure I use to work with him) ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/25 "2018-11-15T01:22:27Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > In the Narnia books, The Magician’s Nephew was written 6th out of 7 books, but is chronologically set first. It’s my favourite of the books, and it’s a worthy prequel, It provides explanations for a number of weird details in the first book, such as why there is a lamp-post in the middle of the forest. I wonder if this was a back-story Lewis had thought out when he wrote the first book, or if it was a retcon. [from Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magician%27s_Nephew#Writing): > [@](#): > > Lewis had originally intended only to write the one Narnia novel, _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_. However, when Roger Lancelyn Green asked him how a lamp post came to be standing in the midst of Narnian woodland, Lewis was intrigued enough by the question to attempt to find an answer by writing _The Magician’s Nephew_, which features a younger version of Professor Kirke from the first novel. > > _The Magician’s Nephew_ seems to have been the most challenging Narnia novel for Lewis to write. The other six Chronicles of Narnia were written between 1948 and 1953, _The Magician’s Nephew_ was written over a six-year period between 1949 and 1954. He started in the summer of 1949 after finishing _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_, but came to a halt after producing 26 pages of manuscript and did not resume work until two years later. This may be as a result of the autobiographical aspects of the novel, as it reflects a number of incidents and parallels very close to his own experiences. > > He returned to _The Magician’s Nephew_ late in 1950, after completing _The Silver Chair_. He managed to finish close to three-quarters of the novel, and then halted work once again after Roger Green, to whom Lewis showed all his writing at the time, suggested there was a structural problem in the story. Finally he returned to the novel in 1953, after finishing _The Last Battle_ in the spring of that year and completed early in 1954. And I agree that it’s an example of a “good prequel.” ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/26 "2018-11-15T01:30:50Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > If John Knoll is a ‘_fanboy_’ every writer in the world is too. Who? ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/27 "2018-11-15T02:31:20Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Who? John Knoll, the ILM employee who pitched the story for Rogue One, and has the writing credits. He was the VFX supervisor or animator for small films like The Hunt for Red October, The Abyss, and Avatar. > **[John Knoll | Visual Effects, Additional Crew, Actor](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0461306/#writer)** > > Known for: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Pacific Rim, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/28 "2018-11-15T02:33:00Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Isn’t the entire Godfather series just an adaptation of parts of the same book? I’m not sure that it would really be a prequel if it’s just that the first movie jumped to “somewhere in the middle” and later they determined that they needed to include some of the earlier material, in order for things to keep making sense. The OP specifically asks about prequels _in cinema_. _The Hobbit_ movies are prequels to the _Lord of the Rings_ movies, but the _The Hobbit_ as a book is not a prequel, since it was published first. So I don’t think that the fact that Vito’s backstory is in the novel disqualifies _Godfather II_ as a prequel. They could have made it just a sequel by continuing Michael’s story (material which is not in the book). ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/29 "2018-11-15T02:52:20Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > John Knoll, the ILM employee who pitched the story for Rogue One, and has the writing credits. > > He was the VFX supervisor or animator for small films like The Hunt for Red October, The Abyss, and Avatar. > > [John Knoll - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0461306/#writer) Okay, thanks for sharing. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/30 "2018-11-15T02:54:32Z")
> [@Disheavel](#): > > I can’t think of any; however, I also can’t think of any reboots that improved the story significantly either. Battlestar Galactica improved the original show quite a bit The recent Planet of the Apes are cinematic reboots that work really well. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/31 "2018-11-15T02:55:32Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > John Knoll, the ILM employee who pitched the story for Rogue One, and has the writing credits. > > He was the VFX supervisor or animator for small films like The Hunt for Red October, The Abyss, and Avatar. > > [John Knoll - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0461306/#writer) I forgot to add that John Knoll and his brother Thomas are the original programmers for a program called _Photoshop_ that some posters may have used at some point. ---
**Author:** ![Stonebow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Stonebow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stonebow)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/32 "2018-11-15T21:35:10Z")
Some great replies, thanks. I will happily concede Godfather II and Rogue One as exceptions in my working theory. Maybe because they fill in bits of the story, but don’t really contradict other facts/relationships in the ‘main’ series? I honestly don’t know. Haven’t seen GFII in forever, and my best summation of R1 is that it ‘felt like Star Wars.’ The weakest points in that film, to me, were when they shoehorned in OT characters and references like the two dudes from the Mos Eisley cantina. Not sure how helpful the TV citations are here, since they are, to me, fundamentally different media with different storytelling conventions. But, I had been dubious of them as well, so maybe I’ll give them a second look! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/33 "2018-11-15T23:33:26Z")
I’m not sure whether it counts, but just to put it out there: as far as I can tell, the reviews for **Batman Vs Superman** boiled down to _“yeah, it wasn’t great; but, wow, Wonder Woman, she was the highlight of the movie.”_ And cue the better-received **Wonder Woman** movie, explaining who she is and how she got that way — and set decades prior, against the backdrop of WWI. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/34 "2018-11-16T01:12:35Z")
> [@Driver8](#): > > It is TV and not film, but I think Better Call Saul was a worthy “prequel” to Breaking Bad. It probably helps that it is about a character who wasn’t the central protagonist in the original, and that it is possibly an accident of casting that the character in question became so interesting in his own right to justify filling out his backstory. It is a prequel in the technical sense, but in a way stands alone as a separate series. A completely different story in the same universe. Among the reasons that those work as prequels for me are that while Saul & Mike were interesting characters, I was never watching BB wondering “how did Saul become the man he is today?” And BB never told me - so I don’t feel like I’m watching a story I already know (or one that I’ve already filled in enough of the blanks of) even though I’ve seen the ending. For a lot of prequels do the opposite - “find out exactly what happened when Pat met Chris!” Well, I know that Pat & Chris met, and I know that they were friends, I know that they had an argument, and I know what the argument was about because that was central to the conflict in the story that I’ve already seen. I don’t really care what color shirts they were wearing. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/35 "2018-11-16T01:15:15Z")
I think that the prequel Monsters University does help the story of Monsters, Inc. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/36 "2018-11-16T02:05:25Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > I’m pretty sure the A&E series wasn’t intended to tie-in to the _Captain Horatio Hornblower_ continuity at all. They’re separate versions of the same story/character. Kind of like Ang Lee’s _Hulk_ vs. _The Incredible Hulk_ movies. How can they not be? They’re both based on C.S. Forester’s novels, and the ones that the A&E series was based on are definitely in the same continuity/universe as the earlier Gregory Peck movie. I don’t think that A&E intended their series to be watched before watching the Peck film, but I don’t think that’s relevant. If they had made a series based on Forester’s “disowned” Hornblower stories – the ones that don’t fit in with the basic Hornblower universe (and which weren’t reprinted until well after Forester’s death – “The Hand of Destiny”, “Hornblower and the Charitable Offering”, and “Hornblower and His Majesty”), then I’d view THAT as a Hornblower series that wasn’t a prequel. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/37 "2018-11-16T08:18:57Z")
_Temple of Doom_ is a prequel, and it’s great. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/38 "2018-11-16T09:17:45Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > How can they not be? They’re both based on C.S. Forester’s novels, and the ones that the A&E series was based on are definitely in the same continuity/universe as the earlier Gregory Peck movie. They are two different adaptations of the same source material. Each of therm adapt the source in different ways. Adaptations are rarely 100% faithful, adding details, omitting others, merging characters, changing the ending, etc. Different adaptations will make different changes, and thus are not “in the same continuity.” Would you consider \*Batman Begins \*as a prequel to the 1989 \*Batman \*movie? ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/39 "2018-11-16T09:49:06Z")
A prequel’s aim shouldn’t be about improving a story that already exists, it should really be about telling a new story in the same world. If it adds detail, fine, but that should be a tertiary goal at best. I think those making prequels, and some cynics view of prequels do not align. If an audience has some expectation of worth being added to the original story and it doesn’t provide any, whose fault is that? The makers had no intention of doing that, they didn’t provide any, so what they’re really doing, a whole new story, is not being fairly judged. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514/40 "2018-11-16T14:08:12Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > They are two different adaptations of the same source material. Each of therm adapt the source in different ways. Adaptations are rarely 100% faithful, adding details, omitting others, merging characters, changing the ending, etc. Different adaptations will make different changes, and thus are not “in the same continuity.” > > Would you consider \*Batman Begins \*as a prequel to the 1989 \*Batman \*movie? The _Batman_ and _Hulk_ adaptations aren’t relevant. There are vast changes from the source material, which is actually a vast, inconsistent mass of comic material. The Hornblower books, on the other hand, are fixed and consistent\*, and the changes made between the source and the final film aren’t all that large. You could very easily read the A&E series as the first part of what became the Peck film. The Batman films, on the other hand, are grossly inconsistent in tome and timelines. So are the Hulk films. It’s often the case that films from different companies can fit together well, often by design. The Ray Harryhausen _Mysterious Island_ can be read as the sequel to the Disney _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ – they copied the design of the Nautilus surprisingly closely (although not exactly) from the earlier film, despite the fact that the design is grossly at odds with the description in Verne’s book. Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island is, of course, a sequel to 20,000 Leagues. Is the movie _Silence of the Lambs_ a sequel to the movie _Manhunter_? I’d say it was, since both are based on books that are in a series, despite the fact that the look and the mood changed with the different directors and production companies, and they even changed the spelling of Lector’s name. The later film _Red Dragon_ is obviously intended as a prequel to Silence of the Lambs, and has trhe same look and feel (and actor and spelling), but it doesn’t dethrone Manhunter. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-cinema-does-a-prequel-ever-actually-help-the-story/824514.md?page=3)