The Problem of Sequels

We all know that sequels are rarely as good as the original. But there is a more serious problem with sequels than just crappy writing. Indeed, there is something inherently problematic in the concept of sequels itself that not only can doom them from the start, but can also harm the original.

Hang with me here. Humans are creatures of logic and emotion. In the real world, logic is superior. Logic gives us reasoning. It allows us to build the world around us. Without logic, there would be no science, no math, and no order. It is only through logic that we can categorize and reason, that we develop patterns of thought, formulas, order and structure. Emotions simply cannot do these things because they are subjective, they vary from person to person and situation to situation. They lack structure, consistency and reliability. Thus, a society based more on emotions than on logic will be an unjust society and a failure.

But story telling is different. In story telling, logic plays only a limited role. It plays the part of the gatekeeper, informing us whether or not the events presented in the story are sufficiently likely that we can suspend our disbelief and accept the story as real enough that we may judge it on its merits. And what are the merits by which we judge a story? We judge a story on the basis of whether or not we "like" it -- which is an emotional decision, not a logical decision. . . you do not "like" an equation, it is simply true or false, but, at the same time, whether a story is true or false does not affect whether or not we like it.

What this means is that story telling is all about emotional manipulation. And since our emotional responses are hardwired, we tend to react similarly to certain emotional triggers. Knowing this allows good story tellers to create emotions, heighten emotions or even suppress emotions. Talented story tellers know how to play these triggers like a musical instrument to achieve the desired result.

What does this have to do with sequels? Consider this. . . movie makers follow a series of well known patterns to create the emotional highs and lows they want. The greater the high or low created, the greater the movie.

To maximize the highs and lows, filmmakers use two age-old tricks. First, they paint the challenge faced by the protagonist as nearly impossible. The reason is simple, the greater the challenge, the more likely the chance of failure, the higher the emotional high achieved when the protagonist succeeds. Thus, you will never see a film about a man planning to cross the street, but you will see a film about a man aiming to climb the highest peak in the world. Unless the challenge is extreme enough, the emotional content for the audience is simply not sufficient.

Secondly, nothing heightens an emotion more than being exposed to the counter emotion moments before the pay off. Think of it this way, a mountain looks a whole lot more impressive if someone digs out a valley before it -- just like you appear taller to someone standing in a ditch. It’s the same thing with emotions. The closer the hero comes to failure, the sweeter (emotionally speaking) the moment when success arrives.

That’s why couples in romantic movies always dislike each other before they fall in love, and why the audience is made to believe they can never be brought together right before they are joined. By giving the audience a negative emotion first, the positive emotion appears to be all the greater.

It’s the same thing in action movies. Ever wonder why the hero needs to appear to lose right before he wins? Because it makes his victory feel all the greater. The scientist in the drama must be brought to the point of giving up before he has his break through. The bad guy must have his moment of perceived triumph right before he’s defeated. The nerds must lose their frat house right before the moment of comedic revenge. In each instance, the film maker is putting you at the top of a mountain or the bottom of a valley before showing you the rise or fall about to come.

Indeed, when a successful film finally wraps up and the story ends, the audience should be brought to an emotional climax that is literally the highest or lowest emotional point of the film.

So what does this have to do with sequels? Sequels are made because the audience was so emotionally moved by the prior film that they want to experience the ride again. They want to relive the highs and lows that befell these characters. And therein lies the problem.

If the ending of the last film was truly the highest point, then the filmmakers must find a way to take that away so the audience can be brought emotionally low again before being lifted up once more -- otherwise the highs will feel flat, or worse, they'll feel like lows compared to where the character had been. What’s worse, the audience wants to repeat the exact type of action that happened the first time, i.e. the audience wants to see the lovers fall in love again, the band of heroes have to join up once more, and the every-man hero who never did anything in his life before must again rise up and meet the impossible challenge.

That’s why the characters who were in never-ending love at the end of Romancing the Stone needed to fall out of love to start Jewel of the Nile, why the Ghostbusters had to lose their business and be spread to the four winds to start Ghostbusters II, and why Ellen Ripley in Alien had to face a bigger challenge for which she was not prepared, but into which she could grow.

But there are two inherent problems with this. First, by undoing the ending of the original, sequels start on a poor footing. Right out of the gates, you’ve killed the never-ending love, and broken up the inseparable team. And how do you make the world’s biggest alien killer back into Joe-nobody? Moreover, when you do this, you change the nature of the characters. Before the lovers merely suffered from romantic mistakes, now we know they might not really get along as well as we thought. Suddenly, those four friends who clung together through thick and thin don’t seem as devoted as they once did? And do we really think Ripley can’t handle this current crisis. . . even though we never would have picked her to survive the first movie?

Also, why should the audience trust that your resolution will be any more real this time? How do we know the lovers won’t break up again the moment the credits stop? If you lied to us before, there is no reason to think that you might not be lying now.

Secondly, the film maker probably told the audience that the crisis in the first film was the biggest crisis of all time. So how are we now supposed to believe something even more challenging has come up? How fake does it feel to hear everyone warn us about the K-10 in the original as if that was the be-all, end-all only to now discover the K-11 standing right next to it. (FYI, you can’t just repeat the original challenge because the audience knows that your character can overcome that. So you must step up the challenge.)

Alien provides a classic example of this problem. In Alien we were told the alien was the most horrific creature in the universe. But Ripley overcame it. Thus, to raise the challenge level, she must now face something worse than “the worst creature ever.” To solve this, they made her face hundreds of aliens. But to make this work, they had to reduce the murderous potency of the creature itself or all the humans would have been wiped out in the first five minutes of the film. Yet, in so doing, the director has now told us that the first alien wasn’t as tough as it seemed. That diminishes her achievement. It would be like learning in Empire Strikes Back that Darth Vader was the sissy brother of Darth Super Vader.

That’s the problem with sequels. To recreate the emotional rollercoaster of the original, most need to begin by diminishing the highs and lows of the original ride. Not only does this leave you with a bad taste in your mouth right out of the gates, but it calls into question the reliability of what we are told about the highs and lows this time around. Moreover, it often requires tainting the characters in ways that make them less likeable or less potent.

That’s why most of the best sequels either avoid trying to repeat the first movie, or they are actually longer story arcs disguised as sequels. Take for example, Empire Strikes Back which doesn’t diminish Star Wars because it doesn’t try to downplay or undo what happened in Star Wars, it just builds on it by adding the next stage of a long struggle.

So if you’re a filmmaker and you’re looking at making a sequel, consider this advice. Do no harm.

Thoughts?