Tag Archives: sequel

March 27, 2018 · 2:59 pm

There is no Wayne’s World 1

One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone inserts 1 into the title of the first film of a franchise. You often hear people say that Wayne’s World 1 is way better than Wayne’s World 2. Or that Rush Hour 1 was the best movie in the trilogy. I hate that. There is no Wayne’s World 1. It’s Wayne’s World and Wayne’s World 2. Rush Hour has two sequels. Yes, it’s the first movie but it’s not called Rush Hour 1. It’s simply Rush Hour. You can check IMDB.com if you don’t believe me. Don’t even get me started on people who say Die Hard 1 or Star Wars 1.

There are a few exceptions like History of the World, Part I and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. But there is no History of the World, Part II and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was the seventh film of the franchise, not the first. The moral of the story is there is no Wayne’s World 1. So don’t say it.

Critically Rated at 5/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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June 21, 2016 · 7:52 pm

Finding Dory

 Finding Dory is the long awaited sequel to Finding Nemo, which is one of Pixar’s best movies. I’m glad to report that it doesn’t disappoint. It doesn’t feel like a sequel, it feels like a continuation and that’s hard to do with such a classic movie. The story picks up a year after the events of the first film. Marlin and Nemo are living comfortably in their sea anemone with Dory living right next to them. Dory starts getting flashbacks of her childhood and remembers that she has parents that love and miss her. She feels compelled to cross the ocean to be reunited with them. High jinx ensue. I’m not going to talk about the plot. I’m just going to say that if you like Finding Nemo, you will like Finding Dory. You might even like it more than Nemo. I think Dory is a more complex film. The storytelling is nonlinear. It’s sad and happy, funny and serious, nostalgic and fresh. We revisit old characters and meet new ones. It’s everything that you want from a sequel. I left the theater feeling very satisfied. I felt like I got my money’s worth and I would gladly see it again. 

 The voice cast is solid. Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks reprise their roles as Dory and Marlin. Ed O’Neil plays a surly octopus. Sigourney Weaver has an unforgettable voice cameo. Eugene Levy plays Dory’s awkward father. Newcomer Hayden Rolence takes over the voice of Nemo because puberty is not kind to child actors, but Alexander Gould (the original Nemo) lends his voice to a minor character. Diane Keaton, Idris Elba, Dominic West, Kate McKinnon, Bill Hader, John Ratzenberger, Willem Dafoe, Stephen Root, and many others have bit parts. Andrew Stanton returned to write, direct, and play Crush, everyone’s favorite sea turtle. 

 Finding Dory is a good family flick. It’s also great for date night. I saw it a few days after opening night and my auditorium applauded it after it was over. Not every movie deserves an ovation. This one did. Go watch it. It’s worth it.

 Critically Rated at 15/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young


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August 28, 2013 · 9:01 am

Small Steps (book)

Small Steps is the sequel novel to Louis Sachar’s Holes. But instead of focusing on Stanley Yelnats, the hero of Holes, Sachar decided to turn a minor character into the main character. Holes is by far his best work, so I can’t understand why he would make the sequel be about a forgettable background character that you never cared about. And I don’t know why the publisher would let him do it. Small Steps is not a bad book, it’s just utterly disappointing a huge step in the wrong direction.

Theodore “Armpit” Johnson is trying to get his life back on track following his stay at a juvenile detention center. His progress his threatened by the reappearance of X-Ray, an old friend with a shady streak. X-Ray manages to convince Armpit to buy a bunch of tickets to the upcoming Kaira DeLeon concert, with the plan to scalp them and make a quick and easy profit. Of course shit doesn’t go to plan, and Armpit finds himself in over his head, dealing with cops, thugs, counterfeit tickets, racism, and a potential relationship with a famous pop star.

Holes is a book about destiny and fate. Small Steps is a book about finding out who you are and who you want to be. And even though they are part of the same series, they aren’t similar enough. They don’t fit together. And it’s kind of obvious that Holes was a passion project and Small Steps is a paycheck project. It’s not terrible, but I expect better things from a genius like Louis Sachar.

Critically Rated at 11/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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January 24, 2013 · 11:22 am

Hot Shots! Part Deux

Charlie Sheen is back as Topper Harley in Hot Shots! Part Deux. The sequel reunites Charlie Sheen, Lloyd Bridges, and Valeria Golino with writer/director Jim Abrahams. The first film was a parody of Top Gun while this film is mostly a parody of Rambo and other action heroes. Most sequels can’t live up to expectations. This sequel is no exception, but at least they embrace that fact.

Topper Harley is recruited by the CIA to rescue some hostages being held by Saddam Hussein. He’s reluctant to go because his heart is still broken after Ramada (Valeria Golino) dumped him a few months earlier. But he goes because that’s what the script requires him to do. It turns out that Ramada is on the rescue squad too, and her husband is one of the hostages. So there’s like a love triangle and funny action scenes. That’s pretty much what this movie is.

It’s funny. It’s not as funny and not as clever as the first movie, but it’s still a good follow-up. There seems to be a lot more pop culture references in this one, which really dates the film. A lot of jokes will go over your head if you never experienced the early ‘90s. Not a great sequel, but better than mediocre.

Critically Rated at 10/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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June 25, 2012 · 11:19 am

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Indiana Jones returns to the big screen in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. This sequel is actually a prequel, Raiders of the Lost Ark takes place in 1936, and this is set in 1935. Indy is on the hunt for a mystical stone, not nearly as exciting as the Ark of the Covenant, but whatever advances the plot does the job. George Lucas wrote and produced the movie and Spielberg directed it. It’s not as good as Raiders, but it’s a satisfying sequel.

The movie starts with a musical number at Club Obi Wan in Shanghai. That’s quite a turnaround from the opening sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones shows up and is wrapping up an exciting adventure that involves a diamond and an antidote to some poison that Indy drinks. We are introduced to an obnoxious American showgirl named Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and Indy’s exploited Asian sidekick Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan). Jonathan Ke Quan is a Vietnamese actor who is playing a Chinese kid because Hollywood is racist and all Asians look alike. Indiana, Willie, and Short Round escape on a plane, but their plane is owned by the criminal they barely escaped from. They end up using a raft as a glorified parachute and find themselves in the main plotline.

After falling thousands and thousands of feet and sliding down a mountain in an inflatable raft, Indy and his pals find themselves in an Indian village. The villagers are in trouble and need Indy’s help. It seems that some assholes from Pankot Palace stole their sacred stone and kidnapped all the kids. The kids seem to be an afterthought, they really want their magic rock back.

Indiana agrees to help them because he’s Indiana Jones and the movie would suck if he didn’t do anything. So he heads to Pankot Palace with Willie and Short Round. They meet the young Maharajah, the king of Pankot Palace and they enjoy a lavish feast, complete with eyeball soup and chilled monkey brains for dessert.

Indy gets attacked by an assassin and decides that something is not quite right in the palace. He goes snooping around and finds a bunch of hidden passageways and tunnels that lead to the Temple of Doom.

Inside the Temple of Doom is a freaky cult of freaky fuckers that believe in child labor, human sacrifice, and ripping beating hearts out of people’s chests. Indy, Willie, and Short Round are all captured by the evil cult. Short Round gets to join all the child slaves, Willie gets to be a human sacrifice, and Indy gets to be converted into a brainwashed cult zombie.

Short Round manages to escape and snaps Indy out of his trance, and he frees Willie, and they celebrate by taking a roller coaster ride in a mine cart. After that fun ride, there’s some drama involving a rickety bridge with hungry crocodiles. Indy, Willie, and Short Round emerge triumphant and return to the village with their magic rock and all the kids. I’m glad the kids are ok, but I’m just so relieved that they got their stupid stone back. Priorities, you know?

This movie is a decent sequel, but it differs from the Indian Jones formula in a few ways. In Raiders of the Lost ark and in The Last Crusade, the story takes you all around the world, it’s a global trek. Temple of Doom constricts you and keeps you focused on one place, the titular Temple of Doom. The ending is very conclusive and is really happy. The other movies end but leave the story open, and they don’t end with a romantic kiss and a bunch of happy kids.

There are some truly memorable moments like the raft-parachute and the mine cart chase… both sequences were cut out of Raiders for timing reasons. The rope bridge sequence, the eyeball soup, beating hearts ripped from living victims, and Short Round… this movie had some great moments of its own.

This isn’t a great sequel. It lost some of the momentum from the first movie, but they get it back in the third. You can tell that they aren’t quite sure what Indiana Jones represents, but they get back on track for The Last Crusade (and ruin everything in Crystal Skulls). This movie has its moments and it’s still required viewing if you want to call yourself a movie buff.

Critically Rated at 12/17

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April 23, 2012 · 9:56 am

Shrek Forever After

Shrek is a great movie. Shrek 2 is almost as great, but is even funnier. Shrek the Third sucked. Sucked, sucked, sucked. Terrible, horrible, awful…. But Shrek Forever After is pretty good, a much improved film over the third flick. And it has a pun in the title. Mike Mitchell directs and Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas all return.

In Shrek Forever After, Shrek makes a bad wish and the evil Rumpelstiltskin erases the day he was born. So basically Shrek has 24 hours to get Fiona to kiss him with Donkey’s help or he will fade from existence. The problem is that because he was never born, Donkey and Fiona don’t recognize him. Shrek and Donkey aren’t friends, and Fiona doesn’t love him.

Everybody has seen Shrek. Ok, maybe not everybody, but most cool people have. And if you are cool and have seen Shrek, you probably liked it and watched it a few times. Maybe you even bought it, I don’t know. But if you’ve seen it a few times, you know it pretty well, and so it’s pretty cool to go back and explore all the differences from the first movie. This movie goes back to the original movie, and tries it’s best to recreate it while still being it’s own movie. I hope that makes sense.

There’s an actual plot. It’s an interesting story, and it doesn’t need to rely on outdated pop culture references to help lengthen the running time (like in Shrek 3). It’s not a classic movie like the first in the franchise. It’s not even as good as Shrek 2. But it’s a solid sequel, a worthy addition to the franchise. Shrek 3 should not have been made, but Shrek 4 is a good story. If they had a box set without the third movie I would buy it.

There are a few new characters like Rumpelstiltskin and the Pied Piper and a whole bunch of ogres. Even returning characters have different personalities because this is an alternate reality, a “what if” story. It’s kind of a refreshing look at familiar characters.

Watch it if you liked the first two Shrek movies. Ignore the third one. You’re not missing much. They called this one The Final Chapter, but I can see them making another one. It made $752,600,867 worldwide and that’s enough incentive to put Shrek back on the big screen. I know they made a Puss in Boots spin-off but that’s not the same thing. I can’t think of a good movie title pun for it though.

Critically Rated at 12/17

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