Herman Raucher wrote the semiautobiographical SUMMER OF '42 – which featured Gary Grimes as Hermie, with Oliver Conant as Benjie and Jerry Houser as Oscy – and the coming-of-age story was a surprise hit, grossing $32 million on a $1 million budget.
And so it was followed a couple of years later by CLASS OF '44, with Grimes as Hermie off at college, and Conant as Benjie joining the military, and Houser as Oscy getting expelled from college before joining the military, and it wasn’t a hit at all. But it did come out before STAR WARS, so it’s got that going for it, which is nice.
Of course, Clint Eastwood then moved on to Dirty Harry in 1971, and Magnum Force in 1973, and The Enforcer in 1976 – before following up with Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool in the '80s.
(Was that six, or five? Tell ya the truth, in all this excitement I kinda lost track.)
There were many sequels before Empire, but isn’t it the first movie that intentionally set up a necessary sequel because the heroes didn’t save the day and live happily ever after?
For that matter, François Rabelais’s original Gargantua (1534) was a prequel to Pantagruel, and was followed by The Third Book of Pantagruel, The Fourth Book of Pantagruel, and The Fifth Book of Pantagruel.
Whenever I hear a sequel with “2” in its title, I always imagine a “harder” appearing afterward, like they did with Die Hard 2: Die Harder. The results can be quite … enlightening. Like:
Again, the James Bond movies arguably count: we’re most of the way through the first film when Doctor No reveals that he’s not some independent operator, but a company man who starts pitching our hero on joining up with SPECTRE – and so while that middleman goes down by the end of the movie, the sequel involves Blofeld sending assassins to deal with 007 once and for all…
…and after that fails, Blofeld is still at large, and Bond still has a target on his back, so it’s time for a movie where our hero fakes his death so he can get some freedom of movement and finally meet the Big Bad…
…who of course gets away to fight another day, by which I mean killing Bond’s wife at the end of the next movie, which is why the movie after that opens with Bond coldly taking people apart and asking WHERE’S BLOFELD?!?!
Switching gears entirely, Cheaper By The Dozen dealt mainly with an efficiency expert and his wife raising a whole lot of kids – until he dies, which means she’ll have to raise them on her own in the sequel; cue Belles On Their Toes.