Asher Gibbons
The Southern Editor
Between Happy Gilmore 2 and Joker: Folie à Deux, there have been some pretty massive sequel flops as of late.
Film studios are now pushing for cash grab opportunities more than ever. Historically, franchises dominate the grossing charts with movies like Avengers: Endgame, Avatar: The Way of Water and Star Wars: The Force Awakens breaking the top ten, but not many direct sequels are conquering the box office.
The follow-ups that actually do well are mostly animated movies like Inside Out 2 and the more recently popular Ne Zhe 2, but does the majority even know Jaws had a sequel? Does anyone know that the cult classic American Psycho had a sequel? The answer is probably no, and for good reason. Most sequels suck.
With the recent announcement of the Minecraft movie sequel, it’s pivotal to lower the expectations of the audience as it’s going to be impossible to raise the quality of an already poor film.
Before social media, it was easy to make a bad sequel and release it straight to DVD, like The Lion King 2 or Little Mermaid 2. But now, it’s even easier to create a cheap sequel and pump it out to streaming services where it gets boosted by the platform.
According to current FSC communications professor and former Texas Tech film professor Timothy Day, bad sequel releases are going to become more frequent as time goes on because the chances of profit is much higher because of streaming. For example, the Netflix film Enola Holmes has average reviews but because of its Netflix exclusivity, the follow up performed way better then it probably should have.
“The first film, pretty good. The sequel, terrible. But it doesn’t matter because all they gotta do is put it on the front page and [the movie] will become the number one, then everyone goes ‘Oh, it’s number one at the Virtual box office,’” Day said.
The studios will likely continue to see the audience as dumb consumers and deliver poor quality simply because it makes them money and they can do it.
The audience was dumb when “Another 48 HRS.” was released in 1990. They were dumb when Jaws 2, 3 and Jaws The Revenge were released. Dumb again when the follow up movies to the Matrix were released. When Grease 2 was released. The list goes on and on and on.
The sequels that do perform well, in terms of box office revenue, often are aforementioned popular superhero or nostalgia invoking properties.
Sequel “reboots” as Day calls them are the most popular form of this money grabbing done by studios. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the best example of the nostalgia appealing reboot, where studios realize the film was a hit before so they can capitalize on it again. This proved true as the movie was a huge financial success, raking in old and new demographics alike.
The next generation will find K-Pop Demon Hunters as one of their greats growing up, but Professor Day believes that the announced sequel will not be nearly as good.
“It’s fine. The story is overly basic. The reason that thing was a hit was the music it had,” Day said. “It was not the animation. It was not the story. It was the music. The challenge then is going to be: Can they bring the hits again? And spoiler alert: They can’t.”
It’s a scolding hot take, but it’s not far-fetched because of the amount of times a flopped sequel has happened. Sequels are not good and they will continue to be poor for one true reason.
“Sequels are by and large cash grabs,” Day said.
