Boiling Point: Time Delayed

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 21, 2008

You may recall awhile back I raged on some movies being made way too early, like the George Bush movie W and the Edward Norton documentary about Barack Obama, as well as contemporary Iraq movies. On the other side of the coin are movies that take too damned long to get here! There are plenty of examples, some which have valid reasons, others that don’t.

What inspired this one, you may have guessed, is the upcoming X-Files movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Now I want to believe this movie is going to be good, but I’m not sold. The X-Files finished up way back in 2002, that’s six years ago. And I think all of us fans can agree, they really dropped off in quality sometime around 1998. So why now? Where is this coming from? Was there a secret demand? I doubt it. Sure, we all sort of want more X-Files, but considering how the series ended, was it really wise?

Harken back all those many weeks ago to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a movie whose title I will hopefully never have to type out again. Not only was this movie some two decades late, but there wasn’t a demand there either. And we all got excited and we all got burned by a vastly inferior sequel.

Now something like The Lord of The Rings I will allow. That was a popular book series for decades before a live action film was attempted, though with fairly good reason - those are epic books that required epic special effects. Same with a live-action Transformers. Technology finally caught up to the those movies. So they get a pass. But what’s next? Can we expect another Jaws movie in 12 years? How long do I have to wait to get that sequel to Weird Science? I probably shouldn’t have said that one. I feel like when some producer reads that a light bulb will go, and we’ve got Weirder Science headed for a fall 2011 release.

Is it really a good idea to make sequels this far apart? Remakes or re-imaginings, I guess, whatever, time doesn’t really matter there. But a straight up sequel? Is the demand there? Since I’m feeling generous I’ll even give a pass to serialized movies, like the Bond franchise or Godzilla, something like that. These things make me mad on several fronts. First off, they’re clearly just another form of brand recognition, stamping a recognizable title on some unrecognizable shit, in many cases. Road House 2 anyone? No fucking thanks, pal. Secondly, they seemingly come out of left field. Yeah, I like the X-Files. Did I ever expect to see another movie? No. Was I excited? Yes. Will I be disappointed? We’ll see. I wouldn’t be so mad about this if these movies ever turned out awesome. But generally they don’t. I think the cut off date for a direct sequel should be like 6 years. Any longer than that and it feels like its been a really long time. I’m not sure why I haven’t bitched about the new Star Wars prequels yet, but they get bullied enough.

So maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ll love X-Files: I Want to Believe and will change my tune. Maybe as fans we should be grateful for any more material (Firefly, Serenity, please!) we can get our hands on, but then again maybe producers should stop trying to bend us over our checkbooks and pillage our savings on these blatant cash grabs. Rarely is the story yearning so hard to be told that we must revisit the characters 10 years later. Or maybe I’m just past my boiling point again.

Robert Fure is just mad they never made a sequel to Monster Squad (planned remakes aside).

What sequel has come more than 6 years after the original that you really liked?

| | Read more articles by Robert Fure