Nobody Eats Ketchup ALL the Time!

by Wayne Spencer

Sequels, man. Is there anything else, at once, so disgusting and appealing as the idea of a movie sequel? Don't answer that. I'm sure that there is.

The answer I was looking for is "No, friend. No, there is not."

What is a sequel anyway, but a little bit more of something you already like? Think about it like this: You just had a pretty sweet adventure with an unlikely kung-fu master, who has to figure out the secret of true power, face the hideous, seething legions of an evil arcade owner, rescue the people he loves and stand fast in the face of the unstoppable and charismatic shogun from Harlem. A shogun who only wants to dismantle him FOR NO GOOD REASON.

No good reason at all!

 Also imagine that after all of that harrow, you and the good-guys all make it out in one piece, by the skin of your proverbial teethses. Once you catch your breath and make sure that everyone in your party remains unharmed, your first couple of thoughts are probably going to be something like "Man, I hope they make another one of those." You get excited and optimistic when you hear that 'they' in fact will produce a second film in the series. Why, you might even blurgle a little. Indeed, you love this film.

This, friend,  is when it happens. Now is when the thing happens, and this is the thing: Upon further reflection, you feel a little downer in the city hall of your heart and you sigh your only hope. A hope which is "... they don't screw it up."

They never made that sequel, by the way.

So, sequels go wrong sometimes, is what I'm getting at. In the age of franchises, the road is littered with the corpses of those that went a little too big, got a little too cocky, dug a little too deep... and set something terrible loose.

Of course, there are good sequels, too. Among them are juggernaut-epics like the Harry Potters or Lord of the Rings-es, stalwart follow-ups that were solid and cool, like Back to the Future 2, or even House 2 and sequels that, while they didn't add a whole lot to the cosmology of the franchise, were serviceable and still enjoyable in their own way. Of this number, I would name Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze and its clumsy older brother, Ghostbusters 2.

"Come on, guys. It wasn't THAT bad!"

That's not what we're here to talk about though, is it? You came here for blood. You came here for blood, and I'm going to give it to you.

So where do sequels go wrong? Well in lots of places, but in the interest of time, we're going to focus on one key area. Do you remember the movie about the guy that found out that his boring, meaningless, workaday life was just a lie? It was just a lie and, indeed, he was actually the totally radical chosen one that everybody and their grandmas needed to save them from boring, everyday lives!

Also, trenchcoats. To be fair, that's a lot of movies, but I am specifically referring to the Keanu Reeves x Wachowski kung-fu/helicopter movie: The Matrix.

Now if only stopping The Matrix: Reloaded had been this easy.

 And what is this series' crime, you might ask? Well, there are a few, but the most egregious:

Forgetting what made the original great.

The Matrix is a fine film and a film that, in my estimation, has aged pretty well. It's about a regular guy falling into a situation that is nearly beyond his comprehension and finding out that he's not so normal after all. It's about questioning the status quo and figuring out what the universe is to you, you know, like personally. It's also about how accepting responsibility can be good for the people around you. There's also a love story in there somewhere, I guess.

The next two movies are about... hmm. They're about... well there's a lot of kung-fu fighting. Um, a guy jumps on a car like REALLY hard. Oh yeah, there are lots of Gundams shooting jelly fish.

"Never bring a mech to a spaghetti fight!"

I exaggerate, sure, but it's true that the cool action set pieces in the first movie were like a spice, or a condiment. They were an added bonus to already engaging things that were going on. The understated nature of the rest of the movie is a tremendous contrast to those moments, so when a crazy kung-fu fight breaks out and we just spent the last 15 minutes eating gruel and speaking softly, it's like "Whoa."

My point is, NOBODY EATS KETCHUP ALL THE TIME! But the over-the-top action, the cyber-mystic mumbo jumbo, those things became a main focus of the latter two films.

They are ketchup all the time, and they are ketchup to their detriment.

Look, there are good sequels and bad sequels and I'm not really sure if either one outweighs the other. But for the most part, ones that don't live up to whatever it is they are trying to recapture seem to have missed the point, or else-wise forgotten the point of why they were even bothering in the first place.

Sequels, man. 

NEXT: Nicole Angeleen tells us why many good books seem determined to become bad movies.