posted
I've been thinking about this recently(before the most recent Matrix thread, but the thread has touched along similar issues). When a filmmaker makes a movie and then makes a sequel to it, what, if anything, do they owe the viewing public do you think? Do they have a responsibility now put on them because they are following up another work?
How much of that story belongs to them? Do they now have a responsibility to be true to the characters they created, the story they created? Sure, everybody has a right to say that they weren't happy with a sequel. or it wasn't as good as they thought it would be. but can you ever really say, "man...they really messed that one up." i mean, it's their movie right? it's not your movie. if they created the movie they wanted to, what does it matter whether you don't agree with their decisions. they weren't yours to make.
But is there more to that? like i said above, once that first movie is made, does the filmmaker now have a responsibility to be true to their story that they've put out there, true to the characters they've created. And if they do something the majority of the viewing public disagrees with, have they messed up their movie?
Many people had problems with the Matrix sequels. And while most arguments i toss aside as too high expectations or the person not understanding the movie, others make sense to me. I think many people weren't necessarily upset with the movies themselves, but with the Wachowski's lack of vision as i like to call it. Given the circumstances they set up in the first movie, they could've gone to more places, or atleast different places. But is it a matter of could've or should've? Have they not performed up to expectations? if not was it ours or theirs they didn't live up to? And if it's just ours, how can you really say they "messed" up the movie?
Should Lucas have admitted his weakness and given up directing the prequels(in this case i fully think so. )? Did he owe it to his movies and the fans to admit that while he can create the story and world, he can't write dialogue, and that Empire is the best movie for a reason...
So what does a filmmaker owe us? Do they owe us anything? And not even us. what do they owe their movie. What do they owe the world they created. the lives they created.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Cool idea for a discussion. Personally, I don't think filmmakers owe us anything. However, I think they owe it to themselves to make the best, most entertaining movie possible. I mean, directors will often spend a year or more working on a movie. We only spend about two hours with it.
posted
Yeah. First and foremost, they have a responsibility to themselves and their creation. If you're going to create something and show it to all the world, it should be the best you can make it. But I don't believe that filmmakers really have any obligation to the audience. However, if you're going to make a sequel to something, I think you should be prepared to accept the consequences of that. People will develop their own feelings and expectations about it, and if you aren't prepared to face disappointed or angry audiences, you probably shouldn't make the sequel.
I also think that audiences have a responsibility to respect the creator, though. We can say the Star Wars prequels suck, but ultimately, they're George Lucas's movies, and he made them the way he wanted to make them. Maybe there are things he could've done better, but I think it's hard for us to really judge. He's been living with the story for a long time, and if he does things with it that we don't like, it's our fault for expecting him to make the story that we want.
Anyway, I'm sort of rambling now, so I'll just stop there.
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posted
Yes, Star Wars is Lucas' baby. Yes, the decision was his. But the prequels still suck. The decisions were his to make, and he made the wrong ones.
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So what are the right choices, then? Everyone had different ideas about what the Matrix sequels should be, and those people were disappointed.
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But is it the author's primary goal to please the audience? Or to make the movie that he wants to make?
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The filmmaker should make sure that all the key actors return for the sequel. Or find a close match. Or explain why the character isn't returning. I missed the cookie lady in the 3rd Matrix movie, and I thought the explanation was lame.
On the other hand I don't care whether it's Keaton or Clooney behind the Batman mask, because the Batman movies aren't intended to be sequels, but to stand on their own (like the Bond films).
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posted
I think the new Batman movies are going to be more like sequels.
Also, that might not be a good example, because, let's face it, the Bond movies are practically jokes.
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posted
Not to change the topic too much but we have had OSC make prequels and sequels to his works that only made the original material that much more interesting. Has anyone read Timothy Zahn's sequels to the Star Wars movies? They too introduced new characters and still kept the original works in perspective. I enjoyed them immensely. I also am in the process of reading the paper backs surrounding the XBox game Halo and have enjoyed them very much as well.
The point being is that I believe the process in Hollywood to be much different than the process in writing a sequel or prequel.
As OSC and links on this website have eluded to, there are initial scripts then revised scripts etc... I remember how the original finalized script for Alien 3 was tossed in the garbage and a new director took over the project.
So when Spielberg sells the rights to Jaws, or the Batman movies have different casts/writers/directors, there is the potential for the series to drift from the original material. Even the Hulk film altered the history and origin of the Hulk drastically.
But the more important point that I believe is in consideration here is what does a writer/director owe to a sequel that they are working on, and this is so difficult to answer.
Spielberg did a fantastic job with the Indiana Jones series, but Lucas failed with the Star Wars prequels. I would say that the Wachowski brothers end up somewhere in the middle between those two examples.
A shame too, because the Matrix series had so much more to offer to an adult audience than the comparitively tame Star Wars movies...
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posted
I think he meant the explanation in the movie (the whole "they're after me, so I changed how I look . . . sort of" explanation).
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What else were they supposed to do? There's no good in-story explination, because it wasn't planned for.
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Someone in the other Matrix thread was insisting that two and three were filmed together. So I don't know why the cookie lady's death in real life would have resulted in her absence from the third film.
Peter Jackson was smart to film the LOR movies together. Although I don't think we have to worry about Elijah Wood ever becoming a man, some of the older actors such as Christopher Lee may not be with us in a few years.
The Harry Potter movies are going to be tricky because by the time they are ready to make number seven those kids are going to be old farts, and nobody wants to see a sequel full of stand-ins. While Dumbledore had enough makeup that we won't notice the absence of Richard Harris, if we lose Maggie Smith (McGonagall) or Alan Rickman (Snape), the series is toast.
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posted
Take my word for it. The actress died before they began filming the Oracle's scenes in the third movie. They didn't simply switch actresses for no good reason.
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Personally, I have no problem with them switching the actors for sequels. It's not real -- they are just actors playing parts. Let a different actor play the part.
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quote:Has anyone read Timothy Zahn's sequels to the Star Wars movies? They too introduced new characters and still kept the original works in perspective.
The Timothy Zahn books were the only books in the Star Wars universe that i actually liked and felt did the movie justice(well, the novelizations of the movies as well). i tried reading the KJA books and they just ruined everything for me and i haven't read anything since. But i always secretly hoped that Episodes 7-9 would be the Zahn trilogy.
anyway, i'm off track now. the thread was about sequels to movies, done by the original filmmakers. And we've touched on the subject of adaptations of books, but that's not really what i was going for either. Cause i figure that's a whole different conversation. When you're working with something that's already in existence, like Harry Potter or LOTR, i believe you do owe something to the source material. Sure it's your own interpretation of that material, but i believe you're still expected to be true to it to a certain degree. The I Robot movie scares me...
quote: However, if you're going to make a sequel to something, I think you should be prepared to accept the consequences of that. People will develop their own feelings and expectations about it, and if you aren't prepared to face disappointed or angry audiences, you probably shouldn't make the sequel.
True, but lets say you have a movie and in that movie your main character is a hero. in the sequel you go and make that character betray everyone, kill his friends, and become the villain. Now, is that alright? Did the filmmaker have every right to have his character do that? Now what if you are told the characters history in the first movie, in complete detail. And nothing in his history whatsoever would explain why that character would do something like that, is the filmmaker still right in doing it?
these are all just thoughts and they're not very fleshed out as you can tell. But these were the issues i was thinking about when i brought up the topic.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Someone in the other Matrix thread was insisting that two and three were filmed together.
I was insisting that because it's true. Aaliyah died before they started filming (or maybe almost immediately after they started filming), and she was replaced with Jada Pinkett Smith. The actress who played the Oracle died partway through, so it was too late to refilm all the stuff for Reloaded.Revolutions came out six months after Reloaded. There's no way they could've made a movie that quick unless the filming was already completed.
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quote:True, but lets say you have a movie and in that movie your main character is a hero. in the sequel you go and make that character betray everyone, kill his friends, and become the villain. Now, is that alright? Did the filmmaker have every right to have his character do that? Now what if you are told the characters history in the first movie, in complete detail. And nothing in his history whatsoever would explain why that character would do something like that, is the filmmaker still right in doing it?
I'm not sure how to answer that. What do you mean by "right"? Is it the best thing for the story? Probably not. Will it ring true to the audience? Probably not. Does the creator have every right to do it? Certainly. It's the author's creation, and he can do with it whatever he wants. However, it will almost certainly ring false to just about everyone, and they'll all hate the sequel. If he wants to do it, it's his right, but that doesn't make it any less stupid.
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posted
I think Lucas did a pretty decent job. I think the Matrix sequels were lacking only because they spent so much time perfecting the first and chasing after those lines in a very time(creativity)-constrained sequel environment.
I think the Star Wars prequels were pretty much dead-on according to the overall story.
posted
I don't think that the moviemakers owe the audience in the way tou are implying. They have to be true to their vision of the story, but we as audiences are free to bitch about the films, and to refuse to view them, if we are unhappy with it.
Also, the Harry Potter books might not be as tricky as you think. In each of the books the kids grow older as well. That was part of the committment that Daniel Radcliff (I think that is the actor's name that plays Harry) had to make when they hired him.....he had to be available for the forseeable future. The original plan was for a movie every 12-16 months....
I think both sets of films are quite good as they are. My point was that folks seem to get upset when the material stemming from their fav artist isn't quite up to snuff with the expectations they have set for that artist. Conversely, if it weren't for the expectations set up by those throngs of fans, the artist would likely get nowhere. So, I think the artist has a measure of loyalty both to the subject matter and his/her vision as well as an obligation related to audience fulfillment.
posted
If the author intended the work only for him or her self, there would be no point in publishing. If the director intended the movie for him or her self, there would be no point in releasing it.
I think all writers want their work to resonate with the people that see it, in print or on the screen. Otherwise, what's the point? Once it's out there, it's not just yours any more. You've let other people connect with your creation. In their mind, that character partly belongs to them, too, because they've invested emotionally in that (imaginary) person.
Can the writer do whatever he wants? Sure. But should he? That's the harder question. I'd say if you're going to radically alter the characters or any story lines alluded to earlier, you'd better do a really great job with it. Jean Rabe manages it with the Dhamon Grimwulf saga, but Robert Jordan's never ending story lines bored me until I stopped reading his stuff. If you're good enough, you can get away with a lot. Otherwise, it ain't pretty.
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posted
I agree, actually. I think that they are allowed to do what they want, but so are we. That doesn't mean that they should, only that in the end they have the right.
I guess I was thinking more of writing in general than just in films. I am a huge Tolkien fan, and I like the movies an awful lot, but they are very different form the books. Tolkien himself said that The Scouring of the Shire was the most important chapter in the whole book (meaning all 3 of LOTR, which were meant to be published as one volume), but Peter Jackson said that it rang false to him, and ruined a perfectly good story. So who was right? Tolkien, who single-handedly created a whole new genre of books and whose LOTR was voted the best book of the 20th century, or Peter Jackson, whose movies broke all records and clean swept the Oscars (without The Scouring even being refered to!)?
Readers tend to think of themselves as part-owners of the story, but the person who writes the story is the one who has the right to do with it as he wills. If he is smart then he will try to be true to his characters, but it is his choice.
We do have the right to stop buying if we don't like his choices.
posted
I don't see why everyone's so upset about the Harry Potter kids growing up, it's really not that hard to make a 21 or 22 year old look 17. Look at Joan of Arcadia, that actress is what? 23 and plays a 16 year old. It's really not going to be that big a deal unless the fans make it into a big deal and force the producers to recast the parts.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote: Oh I see. *laughs* I thought maybe she ran off to Bermuda with Dumbledore
I remember never wanting a story to end, and I think this is the desire that standard sequel-itis tries to satisfy. But The Matrix was conceived as a trilogy. I don't know if that trilogy was any good.
I really liked Aliens. But Alien 3 was stupid. Both were not by the original director/writer. So I don't see what that has to do with it.
Back to the Future II and III were not great, IMO, and I don't think Indiana Jones II was that great either.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Well, I think it depends, if its a cult or indie thing, then it's all the directors choice, except for Highlander the Quickening of course, but for films that have a large and diverse audience, then the filmaker has a duty to stay true to the message and point of the film.
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