#legacy sequels

The fact that The Force Awakens made so much money in 2015 has been a lead weight around Hollywood's neck for the better part of a decade now. 

We're *STILL* seeing decades-late sequels that imitate the Star Wars sequels' WORST elements. 

Specifically:

Make sure your classic character(s) has/have been totally miserable and/or failures since they were last seen. Yes, even though it’s been at LEAST a decade, they should’ve been suffering the whole fucking time.

Erase at least one character's growth (or sometimes even their base character traits) entirely, resetting them back where they started in their first film (or, alternatively, rendering them unrecognizable). 

Kill off some of those legacy characters ASAP to ensure they have no hope of ever achieving the happy ending you once promised/implied.

Work in obvious repeats of prior movies’ events and scenes so the audience can be like “Oooh, I remember when they said/did that in the other movies,” resulting in them feeling like they’re in on something and are therefore validated.

In fact... maybe just copy/paste the entire plot from an earlier entry? No surprises means MAXIMUM NOSTALGIA.

These things were all present in The Force Awakens and even repeated for The Last Jedi. But they wound up just being pioneers of a shitty trend.

Some examples:

Terminator: Dark Fate

Ghostbusters Afterlife

The Matrix Resurrections

Scream (2022)

Clerks III

The degree of the severity of these things varies, at least. Maybe not every single legacy character has been completely miserable since we last saw them; it might be only some or even just one of them. I’ll also grant Ghostbusters Afterlife that killing off Egon was the only reasonable choice available to them. Situations like these can help soften the blow... and for those reasons, I don’t hate ALL of the movies I just listed. There’s even one or two I kinda like!

Fucking hell I hate that shit. Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, the Ghostbusters, Bill and Ted, etc.

Ghostbusters Afterlife —

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire —

I've previously written on this blog about the unfortunate legacy of The Force Awakens and how its massive success paved the way for a veritable buttload of legacy sequels that made similar mistakes.

One example I cited was Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Among the things I hated there was the declaration that no ghosts had shown up anywhere for approximately 30 years, effectively negating any EU lore or personal imaginings of interim adventures. Instead, we're made to believe that ghosts ONLY appear when an apocalyptic threat is making them emerge.

This year's direct sequel, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, just completely ignores all that. Ghosts can appear anywhere and any time regardless of whether a major threat is coming to somehow spawn them. In fact, we even see the library ghost from the opening of the original 1984 Ghostbusters has apparently just been floating around freely EVER SINCE THEN. She's just stayed in the New York Public Library the whole friggin' time! (Which is kind of ridiculous all by itself, but whatever.)

So that's certainly ONE way to deal with dumb/bad ideas introduced in legacy sequels; just kind of pretend the idea was wrong or that you never said it, and don't bother explaining yourself when you show the opposite to be true. :P I... kind of love that??? But I feel like I probably shouldn't, because they should probably have to justify why they claimed that stuff in the first place.

But can you imagine if the Star Wars sequels pulled this kind of thing?

The Rise of Skywalker certainly does take pains to undo some of The Last Jedi, but it also feels the need to acknowledge what that movie said and did. Like "Oh Rey — it IS true that your parents were nobodies, but your grandpa is still somebody." Imagine instead if The Rise of Skywalker had just treated it like "OF COURSE Luke never thought the Jedi were a mistake, and of course he didn't run away to die! He was on that planet to build a new Jedi Academy, silly! Didn't you notice?" And then they just never explained the discrepancy.

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In The Force Awakens, Han and Leia’s son has gone to the dark side and the two aren’t together anymore while Luke is a depressed hermit somewhere

In the latest Indiana Jones film (which I didn’t bother seeing since everyone knows The Last Crusade is the final Indy film), Indy and Marion’s son Shia LaBeouf died in the Vietnamese War and the two are separated

In Blade Runner 2049, Rachael died in childbirth and Rick was forced to leave their child somewhere they’d be safe and goes into hiding alone

Then I realized something those three examples have in common: they all have Harrison Ford in them. Can they please let my dude be happy.

Is it just me or is anyone worried about how Shrek 5 is going to turn out when it gets released?

Sure, everyone loves Puss in Boots: The Last Wish but if Star Wars & Halloween showed us anything, it's that a comeback can have it's reception changed from positive to negative real fast if the later films after that one aren't good.