Apologies if this thread has been done, I wasn’t finding it in a search
I’ve seen a lot of movie titles today get longer and longer, and include the infamous colon. Meaning only thing: sequel.
It’s being done for actual sequels, I suppose to eliminate the cheesy “2” or whatever (Of course, Legally Blonde 2 and Terminator 3 do BOTH, just to give recent examples). And since there are a lot of sequels these days, of course we are going to see a lot of this.
But isn’t it starting to get pretentious when the colon and subtitle is added to even the first installment of the film? The IMDb says that the colon and subtitle was added to Pirates of the Caribbean simply to make it easier to market a possible sequel (and unlike certain movie franchises, has a sequel even been contracted for?).
Or even the new Star Wars films. They didn’t attach “Star Wars:” in front Empire or Jedi, did they? Now, we have the mish-mosh of Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones. A double offender!
I think the only place I’d be on the fence is the Lord of the Rings. Yes, they were named after books in a trilogy written long ago. But is Hollywood really afraid that moviegoers would not remember that “oh yeah, The Two Towers is the next one!”?
I like it better, at least if you take your film seriously, because numbers after titles sound cheesy. Imagine how silly Lord of the Rings 3 would sound. Something light-hearted like Wayne’s World 2 is okay, though. At the very least, if you make a sequel with a numeric suffix, I think you should rename the original with a 1, because that’s what people are going to call it anyway.
In the old days, if you did a sequel, you’d either use an element from the original title (“After the Thin Man”) or a brand new title (“From Russia With Love”). Then came “The Godfather II” and numbers were used to indicate a sequel.
But that device is getting old, so they want to go back to the older version.
One problem, though: video rentals. “The Thin Man” is filed under “T”; “After the Thin Man” is under “A” (not counting those video stores that keep films together – Hollywood Video in our area has all the Marx Brothers movie in one spot under “m”).
So when you’re coming up for a title for “Charlie’s Angels” and don’t want to call it “Charlie’s Angels II” and, at the same time, want to keep the two movies together in the video store, you name the film “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.” Now they’re filed together until the end of time.
Same for LOTR, especially since they had a pre-sold franchise. Calling the first film FOTR would be confusing to those unfamiliar with the book, so LOTR is part of the title.
[Nitpick]
The title is “The Godfather, Part II.”
[/Nitpick]
Which actually makes a lot of sense. Granted, the whole Michael plot was new, but the Vito storyline was straight from The Godfather novel. In a real sense, the movie was a continuation of the book’s narrative, rather than a standalone story with the same characters.
I think for the first “Title + Number” sequel, you probably have to turn to 1978’s Jaws 2 and 1979’s Rocky II.
You are indeed correct sir, and I had that in mind as I posted. But I beg to differ–they were small words at the top and bottom of the surrounding title image, and I don’t think anyone ever called it Episode 5 at the time of its release (unless they were bitching about how come it wasn’t Star Wars 2). Heck, correct me if I’m wrong, but did anyone really discuss episodes until the prequels came out? I had always know them as Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi.
Meanwhile, wasn’t EPISODE II the biggest part of the new title image, with “Attack of the Clones” set underneath the “Episode”?
In the movie poster, yes, but in the opening crawl sequence, all five movies so far have identical title designs. I don’t think they can be totally blamed for including “Episode I” and “Episode II” so prominently in the marketing. This is because fans were referring to the nonexistent movie Star Wars: Episode I long before they’d ever heard the name “The Phantom Menace”.
Ah yes, I remember well those halcyon days of childhood, riding the streetcar down to the Odeon, where a single dime would pay for popcorn, a licorice whip, root beer, a newsreel, two cartoons and the thrilling serial adventures of the Notorious Colon.
"Midnight! When the streets of the city are the highways of crime. But from the shadows reaches the grim hand of justice. Lawbreakers beware! Fear the masked might of…the Notorious Colon!"*