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2017-11-30, 12:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
What would make you no longer want a sequel?
I complain about the nature of sequels allot, but I want to find out:
What would make you no longer want a sequel? Or another installment in some kind of story?
I often see people view sequels or prequels in the case of "Well its gonna suck/ Its gonna be awesome!"
But I never see it in a fashion of "Should this even need a sequel?"
I understand its in human nature to desire more. But there must be an understanding of moderation, and how without closure whatever element will continue to loose value and specialness of whatever it was before.
No matter how much you like a meal, if you ate your favorite meal every day over and over forever you would find yourself sick of it.
So why not stop before you get sick of it? Why not be left with pleasant memories instead of being reminded of unpleasantness every time you look at the meal?
Everybody bemoans the Simpsons, but thats the very nature of what happens if something doesn't end. Elements get repeated, "Lessons" unlearned, by the very nature of its inability to end, whatever you valued before would be devalued in some way.
Or do you not really see value in finality or conclusion? If a random number generator could keep putting the "Characters you like" into whatever other scenario, would you just watch that forever? How does the characters beggining matter then if their ending doesn't?
Could you watch a series without even getting to know the characters from the beginning if the random number generator just kept putting new elements out?
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2017-11-30, 01:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
.
Frankly my wife and son make most of the television/film decisions of my house, so my choices don't have much impact, but if I'm asked, if what I'm watching is too boring or too brutal I'm not interested in seeing more.
(Marvel) Avengers? Too boring.
24? Too brutal.
Except that my wife liked it, I probably would have given up on Game of Thrones, as too brutal, which would have been too bad as the episode I watched last night (The Spoils of War), had Dragon action that was pretty good.
I'm sorta interested in seeing more of Vikings besides the first few episodes, but my wife found it boring (which it kind of was), and I found the Floki character annoying.
My son used to watch a lot of Naruto, which seemed creepy to me.
I'd probably have watched more Enterprise but it was kinda embarrassingly bad.
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2017-11-30, 01:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2014
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
For me, it would take an awful lot to commit to putting something away for good. I can appreciate a satisfying ending, and I hate watching things get beaten to death, but under most circumstances I feel there's more potential, somewhere.
Look at, for example, comic book characters; some of them have been running weekly for decades and are still interesting. Some are running multiple concurrent spinoff series with a few twists and still aren't dry; there's an infinite world of possibilities to explore, and I enjoy that. Sometimes a fresh start is needed to facilitate that, but I think it's usually possible.
Take Sherlock Holmes; for well over 100 years, people have added to the already lengthy adventures of the same basic character. Just in recent years, we've had two shows directly about him, and two movies as well. If you count House, that's even more. Now, there is an argument to be made that all of those aren't really Sherlock Holmes, as they all make rather drastic changes from the source, but it does show that the well goes far deeper than one might suspect.
Having said that, there are some works that I feel shouldn't be touched. I would condemn any attempt to expand upon the adventures of the Fellowship of the Ring; their story is over. It might be retold, but never extended. There are other examples of this, but it's a case-by-case thing.
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2017-11-30, 01:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2011
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
*from the back of the room, shouting* WHEN THE STORY IS OVER.
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2017-11-30, 01:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2009
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- Germany
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
Blade Runner is a good example. A great movie that stood well alone for 30 years. Why does it need a second movie now?
The answer is: It doesn't. Someone needed to make money with a movie and went rummaging through old classics, looking for anything that is still welll regarded. That's a poor basis to build upon a classic.We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
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2017-11-30, 01:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
It seems to me that there are two major forces which tend to make a person not want sequels anymore
1) Nothing changes, so it's the same damn thing over and over and over again.
2) Eventually everything has changed, the latest installments are thematically totally different from the first ones, and everything you liked about it is now gone.
With the first, eventually it will get boring no matter what. With the second, there's at least the possibility that although later installments are very different than the earlier ones, at least they've changed into something that's good or interesting. Usually of course this does not happen, or happens for a while and the the series runs off a cliff of suck.
Basically I stop wanting sequels when the ideas and stories that can be reasonably done with the characters have been done. I don't need to see them redone, and if everything changes just to keep the series going, what's the point?Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2017-11-30, 01:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
Id say the opposite. Superheroes are the prime example of this problem. I don't understand how I can treat any character development or event with any seriousness, because it will be undone, forgotten, or revised with the passage of time, and then probably repeated.
Captain America has gone long enough to become a "Not Nazi", Aunt May has died or near died twice, Supermans really crappy death, and really crappy return from the grave, killed off any way that people could treat comics seriously.
Spidermans Deal with the Devil, Mary Janes freakin Miscarriage, all forgotten or undone with the passage of time.
My Favorite superhero universes, end up being those that are like based apon classic heroes but compiled into a singilar whole. I feel like Sentinels of the Multiverse has better writing and character consistency then the comics theyw here based off, and Sentinels of the multiverse isn't even a real comic!
The JLAU, is the best thing thats ever gonna come out of the DC comics. Because it was built with an understanding of longterm consequences and character arcs.
The only way you can care about Superhero stories is by both having the elements you like exist in your head as nostalgia, and selectively delete everything in the past as well, and seletively don't think ahead.
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2017-11-30, 03:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2013
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
An ending that hinges on deliberate ambiguity. I don't mean a 'tune in next week' cliffhanger, but stories like Watchmen or Casablanca where the entire point of what happened is that you don't know what happens next.
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2017-11-30, 03:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2010
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
There being a first one.
Sequels that werent planned at the inception of the property rarely rise above the level of fan fiction. Is it meant to be a trilogy? Great! Make all three. Was it a one off that expanded into a parody of itself? Kill it.
See: Robocop, Matrix, Terminator, Jurassic Park, etc.
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2017-11-30, 03:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
Maybe the other 3 - but I think Terminator II, like Aliens, or TESB, lives up well to the promise set by the first.
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2017-11-30, 03:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
The philosophical underpining of wanting limited copyright is that characters don't belong to the creator, and that after a reasonable period that rewards the creator for their effort, said characters should be allowed to be used by everyone else to create other stories.
I am a believer of that philosophy. Therefore, I do not believe there would ever be a situation in which a sequel shouldn't happen. There are always more stories to be told.
All we can do is nitpick about what constitutes "a sequel" in this context. And I'd say that "any further story with a tleast one common character that occurs after the conclusion of the prior story" is a sequel. But I'm guessing that this topic also would count prequels and simulquels and sidequels and all other *quels in the same bag. In any case, my position applies to all of them.
Grey WolfLast edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2017-11-30 at 03:58 PM.
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2017-11-30, 04:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
Thats a pretty corporate/ consumerist way to view art, and didn't really answer my question. I didn't ask about copyright law (Which I am in agreement with), I asked about when YOU think a story should stop.
"Thats enough, no need for more, the story is done"
It views creations as burgers to be eaten, and not in it of itself elements that come together to form something thats more then just the sum of its part.
Its like saying songs should go on forever.
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2017-11-30, 04:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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2017-11-30, 06:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
That argument only works, though, if you assume that the story itself - the narrative and growth and progression - are the main point of the work. This can be the case, but it isn't universally true. Sometimes the driving force is simply the character or the world, and everything else can remain static or change on a whim without consequence.
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2017-11-30, 07:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2015
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
There's rather a gap between a sequel being possible and a sequel being wanted or needed. Before the more recent Casino Royale, James Bond sequels were basically random number generation. And that was fine, because Bond was an adventure serial without much need for overarching character or setting development. You didn't usually walk out of Bond movies wanting a sequel--the story told in the movie was self-contained and complete--but that didn't mean they'd run out of room to tell Bond stories.
Studios often choose weak sequel ideas and/or execute them poorly while counting on the franchise name to carry the box office, but it's rare to find a property as sequel-proof as, say, Citizen Kane.
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2017-11-30, 07:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
Blade Runner definitely didn't need a sequel, but I'm glad it got one, because Blade Runner 2049 was a pretty good movie.
I don't think there's really a hard and fast rule about what properties deserve sequels. There have been plenty of sequels that we didn't need but got anyway, and some of them have been excellent movies. Mad Max Fury Road was a sequel to a cult classic film series that had been dormant for 30 years, but it's the best one.
I don't think there's any property that exists that you absolutely couldn't make a sequel to. You just have to have a good idea and something interesting to say.
Actually, that's my answer. I would no longer want a sequel if there's no ideas left, and nothing left to say.
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2017-11-30, 08:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
That makes no sense. Its like saying a car is about how well its turning is, not whether its wheels work or not.......Well you need wheels for proper turning!
Sometimes the driving force is simply the character or the world
This rule is universal sans gag a day garfield strip. The very nature of never ending rules means you don't care about what happens to the character or the world.
Its like saying "I like spock because he has a funny catchfrase"
But even if thats the case its still almost a universal narrative law that without change or finallity even the funniest catphrase will wear out until your tired of it.
In refering to Superheroes, how can you be there for Superman when all his words are hollow and his actions moot? When the world doesn't matter and there are no stakes?
I don't think thats caring about the characters or the world. Just the opposite in fact. Its only caring about whats directly in front of you. Living in the now and just consuming every moment without reflection.
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2017-11-30, 08:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
The only thing that would make me want sequels ad infinitum is if it's a fundamentally episodic story. Sherlock Holmes is the prime example. Whether he's noodling around dubious paranormal online forums, poking around 1920s Jerusalem, or fighting the Hun [original canon!], there's always space in which to tell a Sherlock Holmes story. You can't fail by volume; you can only fail by ceasing to portray Sherlock Holmes.
Otherwise, it ends when it ends. (But I'll still watch a sequel if I am assured it's good. Toy Story? Complete story; still better as a trilogy.)
Oh, and the anime tradition of having an endgame set in stone early on, and then putting it off until the sun explodes... worse than the worst that sequelitis has to offer. If The Land Before Time has double digits' worth of terrible sequels, you're at least left with one solid, closed story arc to enjoy.Last edited by DomaDoma; 2017-11-30 at 08:26 PM.
Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.
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2017-11-30, 08:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
No. Quite the opposite.
I did: nothing would make me no longer want a sequel. There are always more stories to tell.
Stories will only stop with the death of the last human. What I or you think is irrelevant.
No, that is a caricature verging on strawman of what I said. You view "creations" as somehow individual units that can end. They aren't. By that reductionist definition of a story, you might as well ask "how many chapters should a book be allowed to have". The question is meaningless.
I suggest you read The Neverending story.
They do. Whether you want them to or not.
Grey WolfLast edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2017-11-30 at 08:56 PM.
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2017-11-30, 09:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
.....Aaannnd?
You don't undo my critism of your viewpoint by just saying "Nuh uh!"
No, that is a caricature verging on strawman of what I said. You view "creations" as somehow individual units that can end. They aren't. By that reductionist definition of a story, you might as well ask "how many chapters should a book be allowed to have". The question is meaningless.
And I did read the Never Ending story but couldn't finish it. Sucks that the book defies all known laws of physics by being infinite.
Its a sad known truth that when the Never Ending Story reaches critical mass, it will create a black hole with enough mass to consume our solar system entirely. Such a shame.
Its funny you mention a book without any Sequels as an example of how sequels should go on forever. A book that intentionally leaves things up to the imagination, that never had a sequels to squeeze any of those stories dry until they where dust.
Heck its like you read the book from the Nega Verse because what your talking about is what the book ISN'T about.
I guess in a fartsy partsy way I guess but in a literal sense they literally do. If they went on forever you would be driven to madness.
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2017-11-30, 09:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
For all the "But that is another story, and will be told another time" illustrating the richness of the world, I don't really have the desire to read the books that tell those stories. The whole point of that phrase is to have horizons you can only glimpse at a distance - to display a vaster world than the reader can actually explore.
(You got me on Michael Ende, and now I'm picturing reality turned inside out by the existence of a franchise based on Momo.)Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.
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2017-11-30, 09:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
What criticism? Oh, you mean your "because I said so" statement? Sorry, if you don't substantiate your criticism, I don't feel the need to substantiate my defence. Or put another way: you argue from personal conviction, so do I.
"shakespear"? Never heard of him. Now, maybe you meant Shakespeare? The guy that took existing characters such as Julius Caesar and the Queen of the Fairies and told new stories about them? That guy?
He would agree with me.
But you know what? You come across as aggressive for no damn reason. You asked for my opinion, I gave it. I am not interested in yours.
Grey WolfInterested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
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2017-11-30, 09:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
We can work this point out, I'm fairly sure. If Disney is cranking out Star Wars sequels, that's consumerist as all git-out; if Shakespeare reworks the myth of a river god into palace politics, and Kurosawa reworks it again to fit feudal Japan, that's a legitimate creative endeavor. The difference is that Disney is coasting off the fumes of the story everyone's excited about, while Shakespeare and Kurosawa are taking an old story and making it their own creation.
Last edited by DomaDoma; 2017-11-30 at 09:37 PM.
Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.
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2017-11-30, 09:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
Or alternatively, you can say that all Shakespeare was a hack that all he did is change the moral of the story of young lovers and that Disney rescued Star Wars from the clearly downward curve, and gave talented storytellers the chance to tell new stories in the setting. You can, to go meta, tell whatever story you want, and some will like it and some will not.
But ultimately, there is no end to the sequels. and like everything else, about 10% will be good and 90% will be crap. But the nice thing about infinity is that 10% of infinity is still infinity, just as large.
Grey WolfInterested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
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2017-11-30, 09:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
Lucas can coast off his own fumes, too, and absolutely did. (But I won't brook Return of the Jedi hate. New Hope plus Empire Strikes Back does not a complete story make.)
An infinity of sequels, though? Good grief, even the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes (which, I'll admit, is commercial in my dichotomy) has fewer than 300 sequels, originals and adaptations put together. That's the greatest success in history, adaptation-wise, and, dating as it does to 1887, it's near the oldest story that pop culture can still get excited about. I don't like any other sequel factory's chances of matching that, never mind infinity.
As to Shakespeare, well, he was a hack. Not that he did sequels, unless you count Merry Wives of Windsor and I don't, but anyone who can tailor his work to the politics of the day the way he did, is a hack. He simply also happened to be one of the most brilliant writers who ever lived. Not a common overlap, but there it is.Last edited by DomaDoma; 2017-11-30 at 09:59 PM.
Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.
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2017-11-30, 10:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
But that's my point: don't judge stories on the basis that they are sequels, or why they were written (most stories, I would imagine, are written because someone wants to make a living, i.e. "for commercial reasons"). Judge them on whether they are good stories or not. And under that lens, the statement "this story is complete and should not get a sequel" is equivalent to "I cannot imagine a new story with these characters or in this setting ever being good". And that is a statement that, based on the experience of human storytelling, will almost certainly can be proven false no matter what stories you are talking about.
Grey WolfInterested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
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Where reality is an intruder
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Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
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2017-11-30, 10:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
Writing is a really terrible way to make a living, on the whole. Yes, paychecks are absolutely a factor in the production of works, but if you picked such a chancy career, chances are it's because you also love writing in and of itself. But that's beside the point I was trying to make. I guess I should have gone with "consumerist" and not "commercial". It's about the audience wanting their comfort food, and the creators and/or necromancers rushing in to provide.
[T]he statement "this story is complete and should not get a sequel" is equivalent to "I cannot imagine a new story with these characters or in this setting ever being good".
I don't know that Star Wars really is so complete in and of itself that the prequels, sequels and novels couldn't have pulled off a real thematic expansion. They just didn't. But I am dead certain that there is no use in a sequel to the Chronicles of Prydain, or Watchmen, or Casablanca. They are units. Rock-solid and veined through with threads of gold, and then they end.
(Despite this, someone really did publish a sequel novel to Casablanca. No, this was not well-advised.)
And above all, when the good of a story has a lot to do with the wonder its blank spaces inspire - Neverending Story, Pan's Labyrinth, Phantastes - then to add sequels and expansions would be to do active violence to the original.Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.
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2017-12-01, 12:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
In more terms:
I guess playing the semantics game, technically if everything is some abstract continuation of something else, therefore everything is a sequel therefore of COURSE I don't want literary development to crawl to a halt.
But thats just widening the goalposts. Thats like blaming the first cave paintings painted by caveman person for Tangled or something.
If we put it down directly, currently every idea has not been exsausted to such a point where only sequels to pre existing franchises can be made.
I mean in in a direct creative sense. I don't care if its 100 years later or 20, by the same or different author. Im saying Sequel to Star Wars, not somekind of abstract connection between Flash Gordon and Princess Liea.
If you watch without context, its a mindset of no past or future but of a purpetual now.
Its like saying you can't judge a scene based apon scenes that happen in front of it or behind it. Just judge every film by the lowest possible measure of time for every attosecond, and no more because then thats an unfair judgement.
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2017-12-01, 04:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
But I am dead certain that there is no use in a sequel to the Chronicles of Prydain, or Watchmen, or Casablanca. They are units. Rock-solid and veined through with threads of gold, and then they end.
That is a completely different story from the original (which is why no movie executive is ever going to sign of on it), it requires a different mood and a different moral and therefore probably a different writer, but it absolutely has the potential to be a good story.
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2017-12-01, 07:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What would make you no longer want a sequel?
It could work for the movie, definitely. Really the only reason it couldn't work, with the appropriate tweaks, for the comic (okay, apart from the fact that it's Alan Moore and there would be riots) is the aforementioned threads of gold: the little subplotlets which are, every last one of them, tied up when you view the work as a whole. It's such a cohesive whole that any attempt to tack on a postscript would set off every antibody our brains possessed.
Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.