A new column from the A Look Inside series reflecting on imperfect sequels from an unsurprisingly angry Richard. However, two solutions are offered. Perhaps you might agree with them!

As I write this, I’m sitting in a bus from an airport to my home. Admittedly, I am a little peeved because the bus advertises free wifi yet given how seemingly unavailable this service is, I would probably have better luck sending my emails via carrier pigeon or Ouija board. As a result, I am writing this piece (while refreshing the wireless connection every 30 seconds) as a means to vent my frustration; granted, writing in a negative blog while I’m more angry than normal is certainly not going to invoke any positivity in this post, but screw it… Let’s engage.

While I was home, I went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean film. Now let me just say, I went into the cinema with low expectations regarding this movie and I wasn’t particularly surprised when this suspicion became revelation. This film wasn’t particularly special in any significant way and I can’t shake the feeling that Disney have forever tarnished what was once an impeccable franchise with a subpar movie the same way George Lucas did to the Indiana Jones trilogy with that abomination he put out a few years ago of which was so bad, we won’t even utter its name. Actually, come to think of it, Lucas did it twice because he ruined Star Wars too with those prequel monstrosities. The same thing happened with The Terminator movies, the Alien series, Rocky, Saw, and so on. Pretty much every sequel; they rarely improve over the original.

There are various reasons for this of course: the film will never feel fresh and new in the viewers minds, so the writers are hindered from the start; the original cast (or crew) may not want to return; the original cast DO return and give a “phoned-in” uninspired performance; the Hollywood studios give the film makers a smaller budget; etc, etc. However, I think the biggest problem that sequels suffer from is bad writing. Let’s take the new pirates film as an example. The cast all gave a credible performance, but the plot was never really that convincing. It was more a mesh of various scenes with Captain Jack just being Captain Jack, rather than a flowing story that kept me engaged. Now, I’m not being overly critical here; as I said earlier, I never had particularly high expectations for this film and this is certainly not the first sequel to be lacklustre. And as sequels go, it certainly wasn’t the worst one I’ve ever seen. Of course, that is like saying Chlamydia is the best of the sexually transmitted diseases.

Nonetheless, I have a solution. Actually, I have two. If the problem with sequels really is about the writing, then let’s divert our attention to television series. Somehow, these programmes manage to attract us and retain our interest years after they were first piloted. What’s more, a typical episode may be half the length of a movie. Take, for example, my favourite TV series: The West Wing. It was created and written by Aaron Sorkin (who also wrote the screenplay to The Social Network among other things), and has some of the finest moments of screen-time that I’ve ever witnessed. In fact, one episode in particular – Two Cathedrals – is quite possibly the greatest 42 minutes of television that has EVER been shown… Anywhere.

As a result, my first solution is for all studios and filmmakers who are making a sequel, or thinking about making a sequel, or even just musing at the idea of thinking about making a sequel, to employ Aaron Sorkin as the script writer. Now, I admit that Sorkin may not be too pleased with this suggestion; one would assume that becoming responsible for the future of cinematic sequels is a fairly large burden to bear and he probably has a family or something. And although I’m perfectly willing to sacrifice that so when I sit down to watch Scream 10 (or whatever number we will be up to by that point), that I won’t be overcome with the desire to self-harm, I admit that he is going to be a bit less warm to the idea.

So here’s my second suggestion: As I was watching On Stranger Tides, I realised that there was one thing about the film that I really did take a shine to: the theme tune! You know the one (aptly called He’s a Pirate): Do do do do-do, do do do d-do, do do do do-do, dum dum dum dummm… It’s probably more melodic in my mind, but just YouTube it if you can’t remember (I would find the link on your behalf, if I had some damn WIRELESS). If we return to that Indiana Jones “sequel”, that too had the awesome theme music. As did Terminator, and Alien, and Jurassic Park, and Batman, and many more. Therefore, my solution for all sequels that Aaron Sorkin does not write is to cut the length of the film down to say 3 minutes and get rid of all the actors, all the sets, the scripts, everything and have nothing but a blank screen with the theme tune being played. This has numerous benefits, including studios will no longer have to shell out millions of dollars to pay for substandard releases and we – the viewing public – will no longer have to sit through 2 hours of nonsense out of the films 2 hours and 5 minutes running time (because 5 of those minutes were spent tapping our feet along to the catchy theme tune).