Sequels and Series

When I was a kid, I rarely saw a movie on its first run, and there were no videos or DVDs to rent out, either. I would just have to wait until the movie I wanted to see was shown on TV, and if it wasn’t shown on TV, then I was out of luck. Even if it was, I could still be out of luck if it was opposite something that my parents wanted to see. There was a very popular science-fiction movie that came out in the late 1960s: so popular that four sequels were made, as well as a later spin-off TV series and a more recent remake of the first movie. But the strange thing about it is that the entire world on which everything in the movies was based gets utterly destroyed at the end of the second movie! With three more movies to go! That’s some trick! What else could they do but go back in time? That reminds me of one of the funniest skits I ever saw on Saturday Night Live. John Belushi played the captain of a wayward ship who was completely bonkers. The skit was narrated as if it were taken directly from a book told in the first person, with the skit itself being “Chapter One” of the story. At skit’s end, the narrator stated (more or less), “Stay tuned for Chapter Two: ‘I Was Eaten By Sharks’”!

Sequels are of two types, as I see it. One is the deliberate continuation of a series that the creator has envisioned from the start. The other is the tacking on of later stories, resulting from the unexpected big success of the original story. One can usually tell by the ending of the first movie or book whether or not it was intended to stand on its own as a complete work or as just the opening “round”. I believe 2001: A Space Odyssey was an example of a movie/book that author Arthur C. Clarke had designed as a work unto itself. It was only later, I believe, that he created an extended story line that completely changed the direction of the narrative. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is another example of a work standing on its own, followed up on its success later by the outstanding trilogy Lord of the Rings. But it’s obvious that J.K. Rowling had a series in mind after the first Harry Potter book came out; what isn’t so clear is how far ahead she envisioned its scope or outcome at that early time. The movie The Matrix, with its open-ended ending, gave promises of one or more future sequels to come. After some years of waiting, the two culminating movies came out in rapid succession and seemed to completely change the tone and direction of the story from the first movie. And, finally, there is the ultimately strange sort of sequel, which is one that takes place in a different, alternate reality from the original. To an extent, this is what happens in each of the four Space Odyssey stories that Clarke cranked out. The prime example of this strange phenomenon is with Stephen King’s two novels The Regulators (written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) and Desperation. It’s not exactly that these stories happen in any order: no, they happen simultaneously, in different universes! But with the same cast of characters in both stories (but with different attributes)!

I think that, a lot of times, an author, trying to break into the big time, will write a novel that deliberately leaves some things hanging at the end, just in case the fans and the publisher decide that more needs to be written! If that happens, then the author is faced with the daunting (but pleasant) task of creating a world much greater in scope and detail to accommodate a larger series.

But sometimes, the promise of a successor to a work goes unanswered. Alas, when the Beatle’s album Let It Be was released in 1970, its jacket contained the proclamation (and promise) that “This is a new phase Beatles album.” And then, they broke up and….no more Beatles (although I did have a dream one time that I heard an entire “Lost Beatles Album” in minute detail. Of course, I rapidly forgot the songs soon after I had woken up)!

And, finally, the screwiest sequel is the sequel that nobody knew was one when it came out (with a different name at that) in 1977: Star Wars IV: A New Hope!!! Who knows the limits to the creative and sometimes mangled ways people can devise sequels? I’m sure that there are more exotic, if not outright silly, forms in the offing!