Inspired by the revival of the Jean Auel thread I thought I’d ask dopers which series they think follow what I’ll call Walton’s Progression. It’s inspired by this comment from a review of Dune by Jo Walton:
Walton’s Progression then is where the initial installment is good, and then each subsequent book/season gets progressively worse. It could apply to books, Tv shows, movies and albums.
In addition to Dune and its sequels, I think Auel’s Earth’s Children series obeys this trope. As did Lost on TV. What are your nominations?
I’m going to start with a somewhat obscure trilogy: the Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, an interesting fantasy/comedy/mystery series set in ancient china. Although I love all the books, by the third, I’m a little “eh.”
Actually, the same goes for Gene Wolfe’s Sun Cycle. I love, love, love The Book of the New Sun, like The Book of the Long Sun, and am definitely “eh” about The Book of the Short Sun.
“Heroes” didn’t seem to maintain story quality (not that it was excellent to begin with). Anything that’s High Concept is probably prone to this progression, really.
Robert Asprin’s Myth series was like that. The books started out great, but he couldn’t stop adding more and more adventurers to the group with their own stories to tell, and for awhile there he was marysuing like a MF. Near the end the books were so damn full of padding that, with the last one I read, I thought that it had enough actual story to maybe make a chapter or two of one of his first books.
It is a great phrase isn’t it? I think you’re right - most of the examples we’ll see will have a great set-up that just can’t be sustained over a series of installments. Peter Hamilton’s *Night’s Dawn * trilogy is another example.
I’ve only read the Book of the New Sun I’ll get to the rest one day but am sad to hear that even a master like Wolfe can fall foul of Walton’s progression.
The original Planet of the Apes series of movies fit this cycle.
Unlike today when most sequels cost more than the original production, each subsequent entry in the PotA films cost less than its predecessor. Per wiki and not adjusted for inflation:
Planet of the Apes- 1968- $5.8 million
Beneath the PotA- 1970- $4.7 million
Escape from the PotA- 1971- $2.0 million
Conquest of the PotA- 1972- $1.7 million
Battle for the PotA- 1973- $1.7 million
The plots get sillier: the first sequel was dark and weird but at least had some moments, but after that they get into the “well, at least Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter got a little money” territory quick. What really suffered, though, were the visuals: the first couple had that famous John Chambers designed make-up and if an ape had any dialogue, even minor characters, they were personally fitted so they’d have expressive eyes and faces. By the last one the extras were just wearing cheap masks and when they’re supposed to be yelling or talking in the background their mouths don’t open and you can even tell it’s just eyeholes with some makeup around the eyes on a couple of them.
Red Dragon- very good, suspenseful, Hannibal is a supporting character and brilliant but totally sinister
Silence of the Lambs- very good, suspenseful, Hannibal is a supporting character and brilliant but totally sinister, though slightly more nuanced than in Red Dragon
Hannibal- Okay, taking it a little far, Hannibal’s now a main character and we know a lot more than we wanted to about his past and there’s some revisionism to make him not quite as evil as before, and the villain is so over-the-top evil that you expect a “Booooooo! Hisssssssss!” sign to come on.
Hannibal Rising- Okay, now we’re just in “Robert Harris wants to retire and is one step away from making Hannibal a moody teen heart throb” piece of crap
And the STAR WARS series of course:
A New Hope: iconic, would still be a beloved classic if there had never been a sequel, reshaped cinematic mythology
The Empire Strikes Back- the high water mark in my opinion and the opinion of millions of fans- worthy successor if not superior to the original
Return of the Jedi- magic is still there but not as much, it’s become more commercial driven, you can already see the playsets and action figures rolling off the assembly lines and the attempt to revamp the teddy bear industry, but, definitely has its moments and it does wrap things up. Not as good as the first two, but okay.
Patricia Cornwell’s first couple of ‘medical examiner procedural’ novels were pretty readable (Postmortem and Body of Evidence). They got progressively less plausible and more dull.
Actually that’s true for a lot of “name” mystery/thriller/police-procedural authors. You can tell by the fact that the first few books will get good blurbs, but as ‘new-one-each-year’ series progresses, no one has a good word to say. All you get is a giant photo of the now-rich author.
Three factors:
[ol]
[li]If it’s good enough for a sequel, there’s a lot more room below than above[/li][li]The creators are going to put all they’ve got into the first, and will have less and less available for subsequent installments[/li][li]"Good requires things to line up just right, and that can be difficult to reproduce[/li][/ol]
Even L. Sprague de Camp, who wrote the damned things, agreed that his Johnny Black series of stories did this. When your hero Saves The World in the first story, where is there to go but down?
I’ve long said that the Superman movies decreased in quality in geometric progression. Richard Donner’s original 1978 Superman was good, but Superman II* was disappointing, although nowhere near as disappointing as the Richard Pryor/Robert Vaughn/thought-it-was-funnySuperman III. Then came Supergirl, which was even worse, and I would have thought would have ended the streak, but then they somehow re-assembled the original cast for Superman IV – The Quest for Peace and miraculously did even worse.
The progression stops there. The two more recent films couldn’t hope to achieve this sort of awfulness.
*I think we can make an exception for the original Richard-Donner-directed Superman II which has become available on DVD, especially if we toss in that the ending they used for the first film was originally supposed to be used for the second. If you haven’t seen this version, have a look.