#sequelitis

King Magnifico was a way better villain than Nalo.

I've said before that Magnifico as a villain is "a basketball wobbling along the rim before falling through the basket rather than a straight slam dunk." In comparison, Nalo kept the basketball at home and never even showed up to play. So his character and motivations for villainy are even more nebulous than Magnifico in Wish's first half.

For right now, at least. I know Nalo was concieved to be the Zhan Tiri of Moana's show before that content got forced into a theatrical film, so should we get an actual Disney+ series or a Moana 3 some day to follow the hanging threads, maybe he'll evolve into something better.

Arin, 2011:

First Blood is a tense examination of trauma, PTSD, police brutality, isolation, and the dehumanizing effects of warfare.  The characters explicitly discuss the lingering results of training and combat on the lives of the people who fought the war, but had no say in it.

Though it has action in it, it is not an “action movie”.  There’s only one death in the entire film, which is itself an accident and the point at which John Rambo actually tries to give himself up.  The emotional core of the climax is John Rambo’s complete breakdown as he reflects on what he experienced during the Vietnam War and the way it continues to haunt him even in peacetime.

But the sequels went so hard into bloody, violent action that everybody thinks that’s what the series was all along.  So over-the-top that the name “Rambo” has become a synonym for hyper-masculine violence.  Big men with big muscles and big machine guns blowing things up.

All of the Reactions I’ve seen from people who are new to First Blood are filled with “Oh yeah, he’s going to mess up these guys so good!  I can’t wait!” and “He’s got the gun now, he’s gonna go on a rampage!” because that’s what pop culture has told them to expect.  It’s not until more than halfway through the movie, sometimes not even until the very final scene, that they realize we’re not going to see a Terminator run through the town.

Universal Monster movies are a particularly egregious case. Movies like Dracula and Frankenstein performed well, so they made sequels, a number of spin-offs, and spoofed them with Abbot and Costello. They even made crossover films with other monsters owned by the studio.

Disney's Alice in Wonderland was the third adaptation of the book. Their classic, animated Cinderella was the second time they'd adapted that story, and the fourth screen adaptation at the time of its release. This is true for most popular folk tales, children's stories, and popular novels. Almost all have a silent or black and white adaptation and multiple adaptations in the decades since. And I don't think we'll ever stop remaking Dickens and Shakespeare into the dirt.

But my favorite example is Cecil B. DeMille. He directed the classic biblical epic, The Ten Commandments. Twice. The classic with Charlton Heston is a remake of DeMille's own 1923 silent film of the same title.