Nothing Would Be Better

Of George Lucas' stated intention to make two more made-for-TV Star Wars films, Tyler Cowen remarks "better than nothing." I'm not so sure. Is what's almost sure to be yet another bad Star Wars movie really "better" than no more Star Wars at all?

How you answer this question, I think, depends on whether bad sequels actually reduce your enjoyment of an excellent original. If they don't - if your love for The Empire Strikes Back is unaffected by your loathing for Attack of the Clones - then "better than nothing" makes sense, because after all there's always the infintesimal chance that Lucas will surprise us and make something halfway decent. But if you're like me and find unhappy memories of, say, Matrix Revolutions creeping in when you're watching the original Matrix, then nothing is better than a something that has a ninety-five percent chance of being God-awful.

This is particularly true, I think, when bad sequels aren't just bad, but deliberately undercut themes and plot points from the earlier films - as the "midichlorians," among other atrocities, did with the mythology of the Force in the original Star Wars movies, or as the whole storyline of Terminator 3 did with the arc of the first two films. A bad sequel that exists more or less in isolation from its predecessors, by contrast - The Godfather Part III springs to mind - is easier to quarantine, and thus less objectionable.

Comments

Yeah, I've said often they sort of need a better term for these things than "bad." I mean, the badness of "Phantom Menace" simply wasn't contained in the film itself. Two day before walking into the theater, I would've told you that the _Star Wars_ films of my youth were pretty good and set a really high standard, and I hope _PM_ can live up to the hype but maybe it'll suck, oh well. Two days after seeing _PM_ I realized I now thought of _Star Wars_ as a film which wrecked American cinema: a simple minded piece o' crap that transformed big-time movies into brainless romps. It's like the "bad" in _PM_ spilled out, destroying my whole _Star Wars_ retrospective experience Daniel Gilbert style. So while _PM_ is not as "bad" as, say, Gigli, there's a whole 'nother negative "something" -- something so common there should be a word for it --- which _PM_ is more of.

Possibly a good question for Walraff.

Posted by Sanjay | May 16, 2007 5:33 PM

I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment of T3's storyline as one that "undercut themes and plot points" of the earlier two films.

WARNING -- PLOT SPOILER TO FOLLOW

To wit, T2 eneded with the possibility that Sarah Connor had actually changed the future by destroying Skynet. Clearly, time travel as a plot device in general raises all sorts of philosophical paradoxes, but if T3 was never made, then again, we are left with at least the hope that the Earth will not be taken over by machines in the future.

Along comes T3 and by the end of the film we discover that Sarah failed in preventing the machines from taking over (and nuking a bunch of people), but we also learn how John Connor comes to lead the human resistance against the machines. Sarah's failure does not seem to me as a betrayal of the first two films, as their logic didn't PRECLUDE the possibility that there would be future attempts by the machines of one possible future (does that make sense?) to go back in time and once again try to take over the world.

Again, I suppose the real problem with the Terminator movies from a plot standpoint is how one interprets time travel plots, but from my standpoint T3 does present us with a plausible interpretation.

Posted by Jeff Singer | May 16, 2007 6:22 PM

I actually have a fondness for the Matrix sequels because I thought the original was hugely overrated, just coasting on its cool premise but failing actually to accompany it with a good movie, rather than the dumb, lame one that we got. The mess of the sequels helped everyone to understand (as if waking up into the real world for the first time) what I'd been trying to tell them, namely that the whole thing always sucked and they were just distracted by the possibilities of the premise. And the special effects.

Posted by Alex Kranz | May 16, 2007 9:16 PM

Has anyone not seen the Alien movies? If you haven't, this would be a spoiler.

My personal least favorite example of this is the Alien trilogy. We spent the whole of Aliens getting attached to the surviving characters, then at the beginning of the third movie they get written off with a brief "by the way, they died anyway" prologue. Ugh.

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