More on Creativity, Especially as It Pertains to Sequels
by John Aquino on 03/01/12
Sequels are in abundance and tell us some interesting things about creativity. A story is presented, it’s well received, and suddenly there’s a built-in audience for more of the story. A problem usually occurs when there isn’t any more of the story.
This happened to the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe in the late 1580s. His play Tamburlaine was about the 15th century Timur, who was derisively called “Timur the Lame” by those who opposed him because he limped. Marlowe’s play was successful, he was asked to write a “Part II” since Tamburlaine was still alive at the end of the first play, and he basically wrote the same play again, only this one ended with Tamburlaine’s death. But telling the same story a second time is a pattern that still exists in sequels today, all the way down to Hangover II.
Perhaps the two best movie sequels are those that have or create more story to tell. Look at The Bride of Frankenstein. The 1931 film Frankenstein had ended with the monster being burned to death in a fire. Director James Whale and his collaborators had used a play adaptation of the novel that had addressed some dramaturgical concerns and then freely turned Shelley’s talkative monster into Boris Karloff’s mute, gaunt creature. For the sequel, Whale and the seven screenwriters who worked on the film actually began with a prologue in which Elsa Lancaster, playing the author of the novel Frankenstein Mary Shelley, mischievously telling those who felt that it was sad that the monster had died that the story had not really ended, that the monster had fallen through the floor of the burning mill and survived. This was all their own invention, Shelley never wrote a sequel. For The Bride of Frankenstein Whale and the screenwriters used a plot element from the novel that had not been used in the 1931 film—the monster’s search for a bride. They utilized this new avenue to expand on the monster’s story rather than just repeat it.
Similarly, for the Godfather II (1974), Mario Puzo, who had written the novel the Godfather, and director/co-screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola, used material from Puzo’s book that was not included in the first film as well as ideas and material that didn’t make it into the book.
So the secret would seem to be to make sure there is more story to tell. If you consider the four Indiana Jones films, you’ll see what I mean.
The first, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), concerned a professor/archeologist/adventurer in search of the long-lost Ark of the Covenant, which the Bible says housed the Ten Commandments. He fights the Nazis for this prize. In its sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), the search is for some mystical stone, something that doesn’t really have the history, the cache, if you will, of the Ark of the Covenant. In the second sequel, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jones is reunited with his father to find the Holy Grail, the cup that Jesus Christ drank from at the Last Supper, and that King Arthur’s knights and crusaders searched for. Now, the Holy Grail has a history comparable to the Ark of the Covenant, and the film begins with a scene showing how Jones acquired his love of archaeology, his use of a bullwhip, the scar on his face, and his hat. The film’s delving into Jones’ relationship with his father also provides new material. The third sequel was filmed 20 years after the second and has Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) searching for crystal skulls, fighting Soviets and not Nazis, being reunited with his love interest from the first film, and finding a son he never knew he had. The crystal skulls don’t have the cache of the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail and expanding on Jones’ family history had already been done.
The most successful sequel would appear to be the Lost Crusade, which found new stories to tell and if it replayed elements from the earlier film—the Holy Grail rather than the Ark of the Covenant, at least examined a legend from a different period and found new material in Jones’ history.
The most ingenious “sequels” came from something the writers did out of necessity—each show being in a sense a sequel to the pilot episode. The British tv series Dr. Who premiered in 1963. He was a time traveler whose time machine was in the form of a police phone box or booth. After three years, the actor who played the Doctor, William Hartnell, wanted to leave the series. When this has happened in U.S. television, the producers either cancel the show—which they did when Patrick Swayze died from cancer when filming his tv series The Beast?-or re-cast, which has seldom worked well. Because the Doctor was from another planet and a time traveler, the writers created the idea that he had to regenerate his body, allowing them to recast the role as part of the story and to expand on the mythology of his Doctor and his world. Since then, there have been 11 Doctors all told, and the show is still developing new episodes after almost 50 years.
The trick of trying to find new stories is that the writers must be careful not to stray from what made the original film or show work. There was a 1946 movie titled The Ghost and Mrs. Muir about a widow in New England who finds that her house is haunted by a New England sea captain. There was an attraction between them but there could be no romance between the widow and the captain, and the movie ended with her dying as an old woman and being reunited, ever young, with the captain. They made a tv series of the movie in 1968, began it where the movie began, and then expanded on the story in 30 minute episodes. It was a sweet and gentle romantic story. The show was renewed for a second season on a different network, but the network and producers seemed to tinker with it to make it more successful. In the first episode of the second season, the captain lost his power because a ghostly pirate ship had entered the waters near the house. In subsequent episodes, the captain and Mrs. Muir were visited by the ghosts of Captain Kidd and Captain Blackbeard. The series became a kiddies’ show, and was quickly cancelled. Neither the movie nor the first season had sketched out any version of the afterlife, and the one ghost was confined to the one house. The network and producers lost track of why the original(s) had worked.
The Planet of the Apes is a 1968 movie based on the book by Pierre Boulle with a screenplay by Rod Serling and Michael Wilson. It concerns astronauts who land on a planet in which the apes speak, humans do not, and the apes are superior to the human. The novel was more of a Swiftian satire with an H.G. Wells’ overlay in that the humans had become weak and the apes had evolved to take over. The film was made during the arms race and the fears about nuclear attack. It ends SPOILER ALERT with the astronaut finding he is not on another planet but on earth in the future after an atomic blast, after which the physically superior apes took over.
The film was such a success that it spawned a sequel called Beneath the Planet of the Apes, It was a rehash of the first movie only with a different (rescuing) astronaut, and ends with the earth finally being blown up by an atomic bomb. In a second sequel, the filmmakers have two ape friends of the first astronaut escape in his ship and go back to the present time. In subsequent films their child—the son of talking apes—leads a revolution against the humans.
I swear, when you watch all the movies together, they don’t make sense because there are different reasons, depending on the film, why the apes can talk and humans can’t.
The series problem was that it was made up as the series went along.
George Lucas’ Star Wars series of films is the best example of a series of sequels in that he evidently sketched out all of the stories from the beginning. The first film shows this control in that it is labeled Episode 4. The subsequent films go from 5 to 6, and 1 to 3.
Which brings us back to the beginning, there has to be enough story to tell for a sequel or sequels to work, either you find it or you make it, but it has to be true to the original’s spirit, which neither The Ghost and Mrs. Muir nor the Planet of the Ape movies were.
Copyright 2012 by John T. Aquino.
