Sequels that took big risks

[Loach]

@Ethilrist

I don’t know but I’ve been told, in the making of Star Wars V and VI, Lucas nearly went completely broke each time (and then end up a multi-mega-millionaire). It wasn’t until after he made the three movies (and a few others along the way) that he was able to build ILM and LucasArts into something that could absorb the big-budget movie costs without a staggering risk involved.

I am by no means an expert but this does not sound right to me. I recall hearing that he was wealthy beyond dreams right from the beginning because he was smart or lucky enough to maintain the merchandising rights (before Star Wars such things were not as big a deal and the studio didn’t know any better). I know from personal experience as a kid of the era that Star Wars figures and toys were huge right from the start. Set me straight if I am remembering wrong.

[CalMeacham]

This doesn’t sound right to me, either. Lucas was doing major efects work for other films well before he finished his first trilogy. Dragonslayer (1981) is full of ILM work. So is Lucas’ own Raiders of the Lost Ark, out that same year. It’s very hard to believe that Lucas and ILM were hurting at that time.

[Human_Action]

What about Batman Returns? After the first film was so successful, Tim Burton had more creative control, and used it to make one of the darkest, strangest mainstream films of the era.

@Roger Ebert

Batman Returns," even more than the original “Batman,” is a dark, brooding film, filled with hurt and fear, childhood wounds and festering adult resentments.

@Alex Pappademas

Burton returns to Gotham despite not having much more to say about Batman and ends up making one of the oddest superhero movies of all time; its sympathies clearly lie with Catwoman (a brilliant and boldly physical Michelle Pfeiffer) and Danny DeVito’s sewer-mutant Penguin, and for long stretches the movie seems to forget about Batman entirely.The pacing is gloopy; you can tell Burton’s reluctant to set in motion the traditional movie-narrative machinery that requires that his villains be vanquished and destroyed. But even as it falls apart on a basic storytelling level it becomes more psychologically coherent as the kind of rough-trade dream you imagine Batman having when he’s tired and horny.

[typoink]

@Chronos

Are we restricting to movies? In video games, it seems like more the rule than the exception that the second in a series is completely different from all the rest. Just look at Zelda, or Super Mario Bros.

SMB2 is an outlier because it wasn’t MADE as a Mario game, it was a totally different Japanese game given a Mario facelift to sell in the US. The “real” sequals are more in line with the original.

Zelda 2, though, yeah. That’s a weird one.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@bouv

Well, that was sort of the point of Gremlins 2. I’d say it was a big risk, because they could have done a straight-up sequel, and made another “creature feature” like it’s competitor/knock-off, Critters.

But even by the time Gremlins 2 was being made, the first Gremlins was already looked back on as being campy horror, so whoever was in charge of the sequel took that idea and made a giant, 90-minute meta-joke about campy horror movies.

It has a lot of things you typically see in campy, creature movie sequels being lampooned:
The monsters “mutating” into something worse.
The monsters getting “smarter.”
“Bigger stakes”/“bigger city.”
Etc…

Plus, Phoebe Cates character parodying her own Christmas speech from the first movie over and over again was hilarious. That reason alone makes the movie worth watching.

There are many things that make Gremlins 2 worth watching. It’s hilarious. IMHO.

[Justin_Bailey]

@Human_Action

What about Batman Returns? After the first film was so successful, Tim Burton had more creative control, and used it to make one of the darkest, strangest mainstream films of the era.

Watching it as a kid (I was 11 when Batman Returns came out), I remember thinking that it wasn’t so much different as just bad. The mutant take on The Penguin just hurts the whole thing.

[drastic_quench]

The Godfather Part II was ballsy in that it was both a prequel and sequel – something that’s still not done.

[Hail_Ants]

@Thudlow_Boink

There are many things that make Gremlins 2 worth watching. It’s hilarious. IMHO.

I haven’t seen it since it was on HBO like 20 years ago. I should watch it again I guess, maybe the ‘meta-humor’ self-mocking angle will work for me this time…

[cochrane]

@CalMeacham

This doesn’t sound right to me, either. Lucas was doing major efects work for other films well before he finished his first trilogy. Dragonslayer (1981) is full of ILM work. So is Lucas’ own Raiders of the Lost Ark, out that same year. It’s very hard to believe that Lucas and ILM were hurting at that time.

ILM also created the animation for the Genesis device demonstration in 1982’s The Wrath of Khan, which was considered pretty innovative as the first use of CGI in a major motion picture. I remember what a big deal was made about it being completely computer generated.

[DKW]

In my usual spirit of never working well with anyone here, I’m going to nominate 2 Fast 2 Furious.

I’ll just go down the list:

• The red-hot #1 star of the first movie, Vin Diesel, not in after asking for too much money. Entire story has to be rewritten.
• Only two characters (Brian O’Conner and Agent Bilkins) returning.
• Many, many more vehicles and far more challenging sequences. Major mishaps during shooting an absolute given. (The big freeway pileup, for example: it was completely unscripted.)
• Stunts ranging from wild to utterly insane. The boat jump alone took at least two months.
• Rapper in a fairly important role, frequently a kiss of death.
• One of the drivers, who’s in two lengthy sequences, could not drive at all when shooting began; she had to learn everything from scratch.
• Whole concept (street racing crime story) corny to begin with, a hundred things to criticize, laughably easy to mock, no respect at all from the performance car community and glorifies an illegal activity.
• And of course, REALLY, REALLY EXPENSIVE AND DANGEROUS.

Basically, everyone involved in the first movie bet on a 20-1 longshot, won, and wheeled it to a 40-1 longshot with a no-name jockey. Granted, it was a safe bet after that. But definitely not before.