Random Acts of Nerdness: Third Time’s a Charm

One thing you have to give America credit for is the creativity of its people. Sure, we pass judgment on the creative streaks of other cultures if it’s too eccentric (read: weird). And yeah, a lot of our entertainment is pandering crap, or cookie-cutter concepts that are impossible to tell apart… you know what, maybe we aren’t all that creative after all.

It may be hard for our liberal-minded citizens to accept, but when it comes to the mainstream, Americans, or any audience, no matter where they’re from, even indigent tribes in South American, generally prefer their entertainment to be broad and familiar. Solid evidence of this is this summer’s blockbuster movie lineup, which will go down in entertainment history as the Summer of the Threequels. Four recent big-name movie series premiered their second sequels at about the same time, those being Shrek the Third, Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: The World’s End, and Ocean’s 13, each one guaranteed to generate a jazzillion dollars, half of which will probably go to Johnny Depp.

This realization hit me when I went to see Shrek the Third with my fiancée, Christy, and her little sister Katy, who has Downs Syndrome and therefore is more qualified to judge the quality of the movies better than most movie critics. The theater, which was a smaller local business, was showing three movies, which were Shrek the Third, Spiderman 3, and Pirates of the Caribbean: The World’s End, all of which were the big threequels, which I thought was funny, and kept mentioning it to Christy, much to her irritation.

A few weeks later, I went to the local Sundance Drive-In, one of the few drive-ins left in the country, to experience a part of American culture that’s sadly giving way to modern conventions. Plus, it didn’t hurt that Christy took a summer job there and got us in free. Here, I got to experience Shrek the Third again and Spiderman 3, which were both worth the price of admission.

Just kidding. I really enjoyed both films. Spiderman 3 was a wonderful popcorn movie, but also had enough action, drama, and super villains to make even casual comic book nerd reaffirm their love for Spiderman, who they promise to call more often. Shrek the Third continues to push the series forward with a different variety of wit, even though I was disappointed in the lack of a full-fledged final battle like in the second movie, and I thought hyping up the ogre babies in the marketing cashed in the franchise a lot more than usual, considering they appeared the movie for a sum total of five minutes (I’m actually thankful for this, since I was afraid the movie would degenerate into a fantasy version of Cheaper by the Dozen, a horror I’m not sure the world could survive). The film was still really good, so much so that Katy only fell asleep for thirty seconds during the entire thing, an evaluation that’s equal to two thumbs up.

I haven’t checked out the other two threequels because I never got into either series, but considering my ridged social schedule, I suspect I will get the opportunity on more occasions than is healthy.

This only counts the movies that came out this summer. It isn’t hard to find other movie franchises that have hit the big third mark, or have gone beyond. Star Wars has been stringing nerds along for over twenty years just to complete six movies. Rocky just hit six films, proving that a movie doesn’t need an original premise just because it’s been done five times already. On the topic of super hero movies, Batman tends to chuck out a movie on occasion just to remind everyone that he’s still there. Horror films like Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween have been spawning sequels for years. Lord of the Rings became a trilogy, but could technically be counted as approximately fifteen movies. As we’ll soon see, Harry Potter is shaping up to be another extended journey in the world of cinema as children let their imaginations soar, which is more than can be said for their bodies, which will plummet off of roofs around the country with brooms between their legs, because they are stupid..

In an industry where creativity and imagination is supposed to be on top, why do studios resort to pumping out sequels when there are so many great ideas floating around? There are countless aspiring screenwriters vying to have their scripts turned into cinematic masterworks. If only Hollywood would answer the call of these virtuosos more often, we could have more genius concepts like the Farrelly brother’s Stuck On You. Wait a minute…

Basically, the reason studios do this is because sequels work at the box office, a secret government organization that determines which movies are good and which are bad, based on dollars generated. The general movie-going dolt like, don’t take this personally, you, is more likely to see a movie that has a proven track record. People are comfortable with the familiar, and even as each sequel starts to wear thin, they still stick it out because they care about the franchise. This is why marriage is so popular.

This is fine if movie studios thoughtfully handle sequels and provide something fresh while staying true to the roots of the series. If they fail to do this, former fans will divorce themselves from the franchise and go out seeking other movies to spend their lives with. Not that this will stop the franchise from getting along, since they have plenty of relationships on the side, and will continue to do well until no one can stand their drunken abuse.

The fact is familiar franchise appeal to the masses, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t start somewhere. I’m not trying to say just because a movie is popular and spawns an array of sequels means it was never creative. The fact that movies spawn sequels is a testament their quality. At least in most cases. I’m still not sure why someone inflicted two Cheaper by the Dozen movies and a knockoff on us.

Shrek broke new ground in that it not only boldly challenged Disney in the world of animation, an action that for years was likened to challenging a pride of lions with a broken twig while wearing nothing but steaks. It also challenged modern conventions of making animation sterilized pap that appealed only to children, who are too stupid to know the difference between crap and gold (case in point: Ed, Edd n Eddy). Shrek injected the market with humor and wit that appealed to adults as well as children, a quality that only got better as the series hit its stride in the second movie.

This goes a long way in showing that at one point, Shrek was a big risk that paid off big. The movie has since sent big scary Disney scrambling to find a way to reestablish its claim on feature-length animation. With the tradition of big-screen two dimensional in question, Disney had to turn to the third dimension, and while it has done very well for itself with Pixar’s help, Disney still seems a little funny about taking risks. They tried to subtly distance themselves from Pixar’s only recent true broadly-appealing movie, The Incredibles, and for whatever reason tried to make their own version of Madagascar (a movie most patrons agreed is okay) without Pixar called The Wild. If you haven’t heard of it, don’t worry; you probably just sneezed and missed its journey to DVD.

Although I have to admit Disney did take a bit of a risk with Pixar in the first place with Toy Story back in 1995. While I don’t care for the saccharine-sweet worlds the company creates (probably thanks to family-friendly Disney breathing down their neck), I am impressed with the technically skill this studio possesses. Some of their material from 1989 trumps garbage made today, a testament to their wizardry in the craft. I just wish Disney would stop pulling the leash so tight.

Of course, Disney had to deal with a transition not too long ago. Back in 1992 with the release of Beauty and the Beast, Disney set a standard of producing quality animated films on a yearly basis. They put out hits with Aladdin and The Lion King, two memorable films that built excitement in the public and strengthened Disney’s influence. Then they started coming out with forgettable films from Pocahontas on, films that lacked the flair seen in early Disney films, and instead focused on quirky side kicks instead of truly likable characters. Now, when Disney puts out a 2D animated film, no one really cares.

Super hero movies were tried with a high degree of camp for the longest time and weren't taken as seriously as their comic book counterparts. That changed with Spiderman. While the X-Men movies before it were acclaimed, it was Spiderman that took the character concept and revamped it for the big screen, giving it a darker, more serious tone, but not so serious as to alienate non-comic book fans. We could appreciate Peter Parker’s plight of balancing his secret identity with his normal life. Super villains had motives for being bad, not just because they were super villains. The idea of a high school kid getting bitten by a radioactive spider and not only not dying, but gaining super powers was more palatable, if not believable.

Pirates of the Caribbean represented a big and rare risk for Disney. Not only was it their first movie rated PG-13, a rating that had the potential of driving away conservative or younger crowds, it was also a movie based on a ride at their theme park. Yet the movie developed a following, single-handily making pirates cool again and giving families caged in white picket fences something else to bond about. The second film secured the following, so it was only natural it would see a follow up.

Ocean’s Eleven, itself a remake of a 1960 film of the same name, managed to garner enough popularity to spawn two sequels, one of which is this summer’s Ocean’s Thirteen. While it could be considered the odd man out of the threequel party, being more adult-oriented than the Big Three, the movie did well considering the competition it was stacked up against. Don’t be surprised if another installment materializes.

A good sequel can really generate the bucks, but are we, as a creative nation, sacrificing our adventurous spirits for a comfortable, yet cheap thrill? Should we move to put old ideas to rest and make way for fresher, more original ideas? Hell, no. I plan on cashing in on this, since I’m just going to take this article and repost it next time all of these movies have sequels that line up, then all I have to do is change the titles and bam! Totally original article!

I’m kidding, of course, and that’s not to imply that’s what’s going on in Hollywood, where hundreds of talented professionals are toiling months and years to create memorable entertainment for us all, which is more than I can say for what I’m currently doing. Let’s not forget, however, the original movies that have come out in the wake of these box office giants, and don’t disregard the other sequels of movies that aren’t as prolific as these monster movies. You might find a hidden gem in the new Fantastic Four movie, for example. Well, not so much hidden because the promotional budget could feed all of the starving orphans in Africa until they're in their thirties, but you get the idea.

Or you might find the Hulk, in which case, yeah, just watch Spiderman again and all the bad things will go away…