thePULSEA Big Pile of Thirds
Why three is not a magic number for movie franchises
By Robert Newton
“Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity/You get three as a magic number.”
~ “Three Is A Magic Number” (1973, “School House Rock”)
There is nothing ancient or mystical about Hollywood, which is all about making money, not art or beauty. From time to time, art and beauty are byproducts of commerce (just as Silly Putty was the happy accident of a lab tech at Dow Chemical looking for a rubber substitute during World War II), but money is the mission.
Another Hollywood truth is that movie threequels ~ the third movie in a series ~ usually…and yes, there are exceptions, as I’ve noted below…suck. This year, Tinseltown is offering up a whopping seven high-profile threequels: Spider-Man 3 (weak), Shrek the Third (middling), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (bloated), Ocean’s Thirteen (exceptionally good), The Bourne Ultimatum (out August 3 and looking as plain as the first two), Rush Hour 3 (out August 10 and already looking to be foaming at the mouth) and Resident Evil: Extinction (out September 21 and smelling like the rotting zombies that star in it). Why do threequels suck? Let’s ask a dog breeder.
“The limited gene pool cause by continued inbreeding means that deleterious genes become widespread and the breed loses vigor,” says the Dog Breed Info Center on their website. Heck, even kids knows not to let puppies have puppies with their puppies, else they be forever stuck with a roadside box full of crazy-eyed leg-humpers that cry, “Narf! Narf!”
So why the inbred movie thirds? Again ~ the studios don’t care about you.
The studios care mainly about their shareholders, and if they can put enough spit-shine on a ball of guano and pump up those opening weekend numbers enough so that the natural second- and third-week numbers add up to a budgetary wash (recovering at least what it cost to make), then all ancillary markets like DVD, PPV, and cable bring the movie that much closer to profit. And that pleases the shareholders, more than would a movie that is actually innovative or intelligent, words that might as well be “herpes simplex 10” and “Ken Burns documentary” to a Hollywood exec.
But surely, not all threequels suck. Sucking is the rule, and while there are exceptions, there are few. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome found a groove, and…wait a minute. Aside from Ocean’s Thirteen, that’s all I’ve got right now (and yes, I’ve seen Return of the Jedi and Return of the King).
“How might sequels suck less?” the Hollywood exec asked, in a rare moment of clarity. Well, I’m just a guy with an opinion, but I’ve been around, and as Clint Eastwood said to Rene Russo in In The Line Of Fire, “I know things about pigeons, Lily.”
Don’t leave a story line from Part 2 unfinished. It is presumptuous and rude to think that your audience did their homework the night before by renting the DVD to refresh. They were likely at their jobs earning money so they could afford the movie.
Introduce an interesting new character for the sake of story (not novelty). Looking at the same old faces over and over again can get boring fast, even if one of them belongs to Kiera Knightley (hubba hubba).
Don’t treat your last script like gospel. If there was something wrong with it, fix it. Otherwise, you get stuck with a movie you’ll eventually want to hide away, like Sloth from The Goonies.
Don’t use a Roman numeral. They scare people, and tempt critics into pronouncing them phonetically when the movie blows, like Godfather – aye! aye! aye!
Most importantly, remember back to a time when the joy of discovery was fresh for you, when every movie you saw, no matter how bad, was a gem to you. Assume that this threequel ~ and every movie you greenlight, for that matter ~ will be the first movie that every ticket buyer has ever seen. Try to make it a gem for them, and if you can’t do that, at least make it a really flawless-looking piece of cubic zirconia.
