The Matrix is an often used example, but for me it’s the Alien Prequels - especially Alien: Covenant really makes the Original Alien much worse. When the original was released in 1979 it had the perfect Monster. A dangerous killing machine of unknown origin. The missing background of the alien is a big part of its scary mess. It’s a blank space in its mythology that the viewer can fill with many explanations. As these explanations are not precise they don’t have to be logically coherent.
Covenant (and to a lesser degree Prometeus) wanted to fill this blank space and tell us the aliens origin. But once you fill out this missing piece of information it is fixed and can only be one piece. There exists now only one singular explanation. And its a boring: The Xenomorph is basically a creature with it’s origins on earth (because David, who’s origin is on earth created it).
I find this hugely dissapointing. The biggest dangers of deep space are all human in origin is extremely small minded.
(Star Trek: Beyond had the same boring plot - the mysterious villain turned out to be a human after all. As if only humans are capable to pose (or create) a serious thread to humans.).
What are your examples for franchise-movies that somehow made the original worse?
Star Wars has to be THE prime example here.
We could’ve had live-action Mara Jade. Darth Caedus. Tahiri Vaela!!
Instead we got Mary Sue Palpatine and Darth Emo.
I will never not be salty about this.
How does the prequel/sequel make the og trilogy worst though?
Edit: i’m genuinely curious cus i fell asleep watching ep1
Some examples on top of my head:
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Midi-chlorian - totally unnessary explaintion for the force
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Anakain construction CP3-O in his room - why? This model is obviously already mass produced by some company … and he builds it to help is mom around the house? He’s a fucking protocol droid, not a maid. It makes no sense.
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Giving Yoda a lightsaber - His character used to a wise, calm mentor, above using physical weapons, even mocking them. Now he’s just another yedi NPC flipping around witha lightsaber and having a 100% to jump power or some shit. Also Yoda just is just acting stupid in general during the prequels. Totally ruined his character.
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Anakains / Vaders entire story, really. - The original quote from Obi-Wan remembers Vader as “a good friend”, yet, we never see any real friendship in the prequels. Quite the opposite really, Anakain went from being totally irrelevant in E1 to being a bratty dickhead that that dislikes Obi-Wan in E2. He has no real arc, he basically has always been kind of an asshole.
To add to your Anakin comments, the idea that he was some chosen, that the Jedi we’re looking for some Messiah seemed lame to me. Just make Anakin a regular guy who becomes a Jedi and then falls to the dark side. It’s been talked to death but Ep1-3 should have been from Obi Wan’s perspective.
I’ve been watching The Clone Wars. I’d say that, if taken as part of the prequel trilogy, they repair a lot of the damage caused by Lucas deeming character and plot development unimportant to a film. Especially, your last point, which, I still absolutely agree with (along with the others).
It also greatly improved the characters of General Greivous and Count Dooku, who in the films are really kinda just there with little reason to actually care about them beyond SFX and fight scenes (and Christopher Lee).
I see. To me it’s really just Vader. In the og trilogy, he is feared simply because he’s the last Sith and there’s no more Jedi(as everyone thought) to fight him. He got that whole pure black armour and breathing sound, making him the coolest bad guy. then all the game show him as some super powerful tank that walk slowly to his enemy to kill them, and all the jedi is so powerless against him for some reason. but a new jedi trainee defeat him somehow 😐
In episode 5, he beats Luke easily but didn’t kill him because he wanted Luke to join him to overthrow Palpatine.
In episode 6, Luke is no master but also no slouch, and Vader’s conviction isn’t as strong. Plus Luke uses the dark side to beat him while Vader didn’t have the same emotional drive to beat him, so Luke might have had a stronger connection to the dark side in that moment and surprised his father who was used to dominating any conflicts he had. Gotta keep in mind that in that moment, while Vader was using the knowledge of Leia to taunt Luke, he also just learned he also had a daughter. And one of the main themes of the OT was that even a villain like Vader wasn’t completely beyond redemption, even though the Jedi themselves believed the dark side was a black and white thing that one couldn’t come back from.
Not to defend the franchise overall (honestly, fuck them for not giving the guy that brought Vader to life a cent for Return of the Jedi), but I don’t think Luke beating Vader is one of the problems with it.
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I said it in a comment below, for me, not killing off Palpatine spoils Vader’s redemption arc.
Vader still sacrificed himself to try to end it. His intent and willingness to pay the price spoke more than his results.
I guess he means those Force molecules, I forgot the name. The Force is not something beyond comprehension, you can explain it, even measure it.
It’s the same with Indiana Jones 4. Aliens from another dimension can be explained, the Arc on the other hand is pure horror that we’ll never can comprehend which makes it more scary.
A lot of people hated the scientic explanation of the Force, and Darth jar jar, and dooku being just kind of thrown out there when they scrapped the Darth jar jar idea, and how CREEPY anakin is, and how rough sand is, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember.
Ep 1 gave us duel of the fates though so I give it a pass entirely.
I’ll go ahead and pile on with the others here:
In the original trilogy, one is given to believe that the Jedi were a good and noble order who were betrayed by Darth Vader and then hunted down by the Empire.
In the prequels, it is revealed that they are a bunch of idiots who can’t see what’s happening right in front of their faces with Anakin falling to the dark side, and who are so wrapped up in politics that frankly they deserve to be destroyed.
You don’t have to be a telepathic precognitive to see that Anakin was going down a really dark path. Anyone with an ounce of human empathy could have had a thirty second conversation with the dude and seen that he needed therapy and stability. But instead the Jedi sent the human equivalent of a tanker truck full of nitroglycerin right on into the wars, and then when that went poorly we’re expected to believe that it’s some kind of tragic fall, rather than just piss poor management?
On top of that, the Jedi were emphatically not the “guardians of peace and justice” that Obi-Wan made them out to be in Episode IV. They were loyal to a corrupt and decadent Republic that was not serving its people’s needs. The Separatist movement never would have gained momentum if there weren’t real problems in the galaxy that the Republic was failing to address. But when violence broke out, rather than trying to arbitrate peace and justice, the Jedi became generals fighting at the head of an army of child soldiers.
Virtually every good quality about the characters and systems in the galaxy stated or implied in the original trilogy is invalidated by the prequels. They will stand, possibly forever, as textbook examples of how not to expand on an established universe.
The last season of game of thrones turned it from a huge entertainment sensation to a cultural non-entity.
I never even watched it and still I remember how those last few episodes erased an entire fandom in a snap.
I’ve also never watched it but I’m on the fence about being glad I haven’t spent the time and curious about just how bad it was. Especially considering I liked Lost (including the end) and while the later seasons of Dexter had some flaws, I still enjoyed them.
It’s the only time I think it’s happened at that scale as well. It was a cultural force. A real Watercooler show in the age of streaming.
We’ll probably never see something so big again, and it’s largely forgotten. I can’t even recommend it even though it’s got some of the best episodes of any show.In the same conversation I will use Game of Thrones as textbook examples of both how to and how not to write a complicated story.
I’d say that’s different from a bad sequel or prequel. A plot driven TV show is selling a promise that it’s going to tell a compelling story, and when it falls at the end, it’s like a film falling apart in the third act. Still, man didn’t suck.
Austin Powers (2): The Spy Who Shagged Me. They immediately reveal that Vanessa was a fembot controlled by Doctor Evil, which completely retcons her character and role in the first movie.
Can you really ruin a parody with a very parody way of following the Bond material where there’s a new love interest in every movie?
Like it was so illogical because she had plenty of opportunities to kill him in the first movie or even before she revealed herself in the second movie that it had to be taken as a joke. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the first movie, but doesn’t she even save him and play an important role in stopping Dr Evil?
Came here to vote for Star Wars also. Anything JJ Abrams touches would be the next five.
Star Wars was the immediate one for me. I have never seen 9, I will never see 9. I don’t watch any of the Disney+ series. What i loved most about Star Wars was the mystery that they are going through one by one to write the entirety of the story instead of just creating new stories in the universe.
By not killing Palpatine at the end of ROTJ, and making him the villain at the end of TLJ, you’ve effectively spoiled Vader’s redemption arc
But Palpatine still being alive has been part of the SW EU forever. Disney just said it was all invalid, then turned around and pilfered that same EU (including fan content) to create 7-9.
I mean, most of EU was trash anyway. There were some brilliant stories, but 90% of it could be thrown out and nothing of value would be lost.
Ahh i see what you meant about Palpatine. I didn’t watch ep 9 cus 8 is such a dumpster fire, so i don’t know what role did Palpatine do in that and how he’s still there. i thought 7 is quite okay.
7 was the one where they just took 4 and made female Luke undeservedly more badass, right?
Haven’t you seen all the memes on how he’s still there? “Somehow, Palpatine returned.”
That’s not a made up line, it’s actually in the movie.
I honestly gotta say that I really liked JJ Abrams Star Trek from 2009. I say that as a huge Star Trek fan. It was like a reimagined of the good 'ol fable of captain Kirk and his brave little crew of adventurers. It had all the things that I normally hate (first and foremost: perpetually moving camera, too many lense flares), but in this movie it worked.
His Ep7 would work if it could exist in isolation to the rest of the franchise.
To be honest star wars has been shit for decades. the only exceptional Star Wars after the OG Trilogy was “Rogue One” and the exceptional “Andor”. The rest is for little children.
Hitting a low hanging fruit here but Star Wars. I don’t think that even the biggest prequel fan would say that midchlorians were a good addition and the sequels ment that the entire plot of the OT was pretty much pointless
I have my own thought on midichlorians: Qui-Gon was wrong. No big conspiracy or anything. He was just in-universe misinformed, such that cause and effect were reversed.
You’re not strong in the Force because you have midichlorians. If that were the case General Grievous’s attempt to become Force sensitive by infusing the blood of Syfo Dias would’ve worked.
You have a lot of midichlorians because you’re strong in the Force, and they’re drawn to that like flies.
It’s still a useful measure, but there’s no causal element to them.
Iirc they actually explained Grievous’s lack of force by him just not having enough body left to hold a sufficient amout of midichlorians. He was practically just a brain, face and an organ sack
Considering how little was left of Vader I have to think there was more to it than that.
There was a quite a lot left, most importantly all of his insides.
I like midichlorians and I think they were great as an explanation. Made it less magic, more sci-fi. Original trilogy is boring (though I realize it was pretty groundbreaking when it came out, time just hasn’t been kind to the story). Sequels are… Well, when your main motivation for making a Star Wars movie is money, it’s not gonna end well.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of a lot of older films because the pacing is slooow.
Hear me out on this: Transformers.
When the first one came out people liked it. It had it’s problems, but for the most part it was pretty solid for what it was. The sequels just amplified the dumb bad parts and made everything unwatchable.If there was only the one movie it might be considered a cool send off of the old series/toys.
Some people would say Blade Runner 2049. I wouldn’t say the original is worse, it’s a certified classic. But the sequel really surpassed expectations and a lot fans consider it even better than the original.
The only people I’ve met that think that watched 2049 first. Not that they don’t like it, but not like it more.
i was a fan of the original for many years before the sequel came out and i still think 2049 is the better movie.
it manages to expand on the themes of the original without succumbing to sequel-itis or feeling like a re-tread. it does not over-use legacy characters. and the big one for me is how much the sequel improves on the original’s pacing without sacrificing that slow methodical burn it was famous for.
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Serenity SUCKED! …AND they killed off two of the main cast. Why do writers feel that heroes don’t deserve a happy ending?!
Now you watch the characters in the main series and you know he just ends up spiked through the chest…
(As much as latter seasons of Mandalorian weren’t the most exciting, just watching them kick back and relax was a great ending… they’ve earned to finally be a semblance of family)
So you’re saying that movie was… washed out?
Yes, I hated that death too. Without it the movie would have been perfect!
Why do writers feel that heroes don’t deserve a happy ending?!
why do movies always need a picture perfect “hollywood ending”? it’s hard to build tension when the audience expectation is that everyone will always get out ok and ride off into the sunset.
How does one movie change the quality of another?
Do bad songs in an album make the good songs worse?
By retroactively changing elements of the established story later on, which ruins the context when going back to the original film. As OP points out in the body text of their post.
But that changes you, not the movie.
I think the point is that when a new movie is made, many people put them together so that one informs the other, in the same way that the first half of a movie informs the second half.
it’s relatively easy to imagine a movie that starts great, but the second half introduces a major twist that makes the first half seem dumb.
For sequels/prequels we have the ability to just say “Well that one isn’t canon”, in a way we can’t for a self contained movie. But some people (including me) have a hard time with that, because it seems so arbitrary. The world is no longer something I am experiencing and enjoying, now it is something I am controlling and curating, which hurts immersion.
Are songs on albums usually connected by lore and story beats? Not usually. That’s not a great analogy; very much apples and oranges.
Many albums are made around a theme or idea. Or at least that’s the way musicians I like tend to do it.
That’s still not how franchises are made though. They are often made based around specific plot points and lore, not just theme.
Take Game of Thrones. The first few seasons (I’d say 4) are truly phenomenal. The next 2 are still good. The remaining 2 seasons ruined it so much that I’ll never revisit the first 4 (or 6) seasons, because the conclusion is so fucked up and lazy that it’s not worth it.
That’s how you change the quality of another movie (or season) - by taking a huge shit on its legacy.
