What Are The Great Prequels?
06-10-12 | 09:57 AM
#26
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Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
I don't see how that can count at all because it was made and released first. I might as well mention The Empire Strikes Back as a "prequel" to Return of the Jedi.
06-10-12 | 10:04 AM
#28
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From: wandering the earth like Caine in the Kung-Fu
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
There is currently no great prequel. There are good prequels but no great one. Rise of the Planet of the Apes comes close but it seems like the beginning to a new series. I love Temple of Doom but it might as well be a sequel and it's not like it reveals the intricate backstory of Indiana Jones. It's just an adventure in his life.
06-10-12 | 10:09 AM
#30
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Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
There is currently no great prequel. There are good prequels but no great one. Rise of the Planet of the Apes comes close but it seems like the beginning to a new series. I love Temple of Doom but it might as well be a sequel and it's not like it reveals the intricate backstory of Indiana Jones. It's just an adventure in his life.
And w/ ToD it really doesn't have anything connecting storywise to Raiders. It's just...another adventure Indy had before Raiders.
06-10-12 | 10:24 AM
#31
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DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
And within Temple of Doom, it seems to be more of a sequel than a prequel in the scene when Indy runs into the guy with the sword and reaches for his gun expecting to just shoot the guy, like he did to a different sword guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but then being surprised to find his gun is missing from his holster. The gag in this scene actually makes little sense with ToD happening before RotLA.
06-10-12 | 10:31 AM
#32
DVD Talk Legend
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
While Sergio Leone's "Dollars" films can be called a trilogy due to stylistic connections, it's a loose trilogy at best and I don't think it's an actual trilogy following the exact same lead character in connected films.
Some arguments against it being an actual trilogy that stars the same lead character:
- The whole "Man With No Name" trilogy angle was invented by the American distributing studio after-the-fact in order to market the films. While they were being made, there was no sense that they were all following the exact same nameless character around. Clint Eastwood's character actually has different names in each one: Joe, Manco, and Blondie. Regardless of whether those are names or nicknames, it shows that he is a "Man With A Name" in each film.
- Lee Van Cleef's main character dies in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly but he also plays a main character in For A Few Dollars More. So did he just come back from the dead and, in this new life, change his ways and switch from being the adversary of Eastwood's character to being his buddy? (And admitting that he is playing two different characters is an argument AGAINST it being an actual trilogy, not one for.)
- Storywise, nothing ties the films together, with the lead character played by Clint Eastwood needing to make money in both A Fistful of Dollars and A Few Dollars More but ending up extremely wealthy with a lot of gold at the end of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. If TGTBATU truly lead directly into AFOD, then what happened to all his gold? And why did his horse get replaced by a mule?
- Sergio Leone never intended for the films to be considered an actual trilogy. If the films are an auteur's vision, shouldn't the director's view of his films count more than the that of the marketing department of a studio distributor?
The only argument for it being an actual trilogy that's following the exact same lead character:
- Clint Eastwood wears the same clothes in all of them. And that's it: his clothes. (Yes, in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, he does only get his distinctive poncho near the end of the film, but that - and that alone - is the extent of claiming that he is actually playing the exact same character. And I personally think his character is more of slight variations on a iconic theme than anything else.)
So, IMO, clothes alone are not enough to make something an actual trilogy.
Some arguments against it being an actual trilogy that stars the same lead character:
- The whole "Man With No Name" trilogy angle was invented by the American distributing studio after-the-fact in order to market the films. While they were being made, there was no sense that they were all following the exact same nameless character around. Clint Eastwood's character actually has different names in each one: Joe, Manco, and Blondie. Regardless of whether those are names or nicknames, it shows that he is a "Man With A Name" in each film.
- Lee Van Cleef's main character dies in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly but he also plays a main character in For A Few Dollars More. So did he just come back from the dead and, in this new life, change his ways and switch from being the adversary of Eastwood's character to being his buddy? (And admitting that he is playing two different characters is an argument AGAINST it being an actual trilogy, not one for.)
- Storywise, nothing ties the films together, with the lead character played by Clint Eastwood needing to make money in both A Fistful of Dollars and A Few Dollars More but ending up extremely wealthy with a lot of gold at the end of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. If TGTBATU truly lead directly into AFOD, then what happened to all his gold? And why did his horse get replaced by a mule?
- Sergio Leone never intended for the films to be considered an actual trilogy. If the films are an auteur's vision, shouldn't the director's view of his films count more than the that of the marketing department of a studio distributor?
The only argument for it being an actual trilogy that's following the exact same lead character:
- Clint Eastwood wears the same clothes in all of them. And that's it: his clothes. (Yes, in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, he does only get his distinctive poncho near the end of the film, but that - and that alone - is the extent of claiming that he is actually playing the exact same character. And I personally think his character is more of slight variations on a iconic theme than anything else.)
So, IMO, clothes alone are not enough to make something an actual trilogy.
I think it works both ways. As a triology (no one besides Blondie/Joe/Manco knows his real name, so they just make up names in each story), and as stand alone movies.
Either way, they're great movies.
06-10-12 | 10:50 AM
#33
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DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
That's what I mean when I said Clint Eastwood's character in the films is really just slight variations on an iconic theme. The look and basic persona is something that Clint Eastwood himself came up with on the first film - which was just a Western remake of Yojimbo - and that they then just stuck with for its iconic nature in the following movies after that first movie was successful. But it was never intended to be the exact same character just having different adventures, which is why there is really nothing else tying the films together (which would've been easy for them to do if they wanted them all to be sequels and prequels).
06-10-12 | 10:53 AM
#34
DVD Talk Legend
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
RotA is good, but it's a re-boot in a different timeline, same goes for Abrams' Star Trek.
06-10-12 | 11:40 AM
#35
DVD Talk Hero
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
X-Men: First Class was close to being a great prequel until the
ending they threw on.
I know Batman Begins is a clear cut Reboot but I'll throw it out as about as close to a great prequel as there is (assuming Godfather II doesn't count).
Spoiler:
I know Batman Begins is a clear cut Reboot but I'll throw it out as about as close to a great prequel as there is (assuming Godfather II doesn't count).
06-10-12 | 11:56 AM
#37
DVD Talk Hero
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
As soon as I figure out what "RoTA" is I might consider it. 
06-10-12 | 12:07 PM
#39
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Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
Yeah, I love Batman Begins but it's really just a reboot. As for the topic I really liked X-Men: First Class a lot. Personally I felt it was better than any of the other X-Men films. I'd also mention the 2009 Star Trek but not sure if that counts as a prequel or more of a reboot.
06-10-12 | 12:09 PM
#40
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From: wandering the earth like Caine in the Kung-Fu
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
It was probably because they thought it would be a one shot deal. Just one past movie and then they'll set the rest of the movies in the present. I bet the makers wish they could go back and change it so that things could happen more organically now that a sequel is in the works.
06-10-12 | 01:54 PM
#42
DVD Talk Hero
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
It was probably because they thought it would be a one shot deal. Just one past movie and then they'll set the rest of the movies in the present. I bet the makers wish they could go back and change it so that things could happen more organically now that a sequel is in the works.
06-10-12 | 02:02 PM
#43
DVD Talk Legend
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
The fact that we're all just naming reboots shows that there is no such thing as a great prequel. They're usually just bad ideas.
06-10-12 | 02:27 PM
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Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
- Lee Van Cleef's main character dies in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly but he also plays a main character in For A Few Dollars More. So did he just come back from the dead and, in this new life, change his ways and switch from being the adversary of Eastwood's character to being his buddy? (And admitting that he is playing two different characters is an argument AGAINST it being an actual trilogy, not one for.)
06-10-12 | 02:50 PM
#46
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DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
There are? (And I wasn't even counting the minor roles in the 3 movies played by the same actor because there are some others, just the major starring roles.)
06-10-12 | 04:54 PM
#47
DVD Talk Legend
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
X-Men: First Class is only a prequel to Bryan Singer's X-Men movies. The events in it negate almost everything in Last Stand.
06-10-12 | 05:16 PM
#48
Re: What Are The Great Prequels?
If you want to be technical...
Fast Five is a prequel to Tokyo Drift and easily 1000x better.
Also, The Scorpion King is a prequel to the awful Mummy Returns and much better as well.
Fast Five is a prequel to Tokyo Drift and easily 1000x better.
Also, The Scorpion King is a prequel to the awful Mummy Returns and much better as well.
06-10-12 | 05:38 PM
#50
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