Katie Tandler | Life Section Manager

3/22/02

I took a trip to Wal-Mart the other night with a group of friends, and as we perused the electronics section, I noticed a rather disturbing trend. "Balto II." "Beethoven's 4th." The latest in a horribly long series of "Land Before Time" movies--it's gotten to the point where even the creators themselves have lost count. "Cinderella 2."

Have we run out of stories to tell? There must be creative minds left somewhere that can rescue us from the rut of re-hashing tales that should have left off with "Happily Ever After."

Disney has now become notorious for its direct-to-video defilement of time-honored classics. There have been sequels to the Lion King, the Little Mermaid, Aladdin (though, admittedly, those weren't so bad), Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas (don't even get me started about that movie)...and those are only the ones in recent memory. The two current releases, "Cinderella 2" and "Return to Neverland," are just plain awful, if not in content then in concept.

The "happily ever after...but then" concept worked for Sondheim's "Into the Woods," but that's because it had a purpose beyond senselessly extending the story. Cinderella 2 apparently uses it as an excuse to rip off "My Fair Lady." And while there'll always be a place in my heart for Disney's original Peter Pan, if I want to see what happens after that, I'll go rent "Hook." In fact, the only Disney sequel that comes to mind as actually working was "Toy Story 2," which was arguably even better than the first movie.

Why did that one work? Well, to begin with, the first movie was really very enjoyable and introduced a good cast that people could get interested in. The second movie took these same characters (plus new ones) and put them into a story that was original, entertaining, and fairly independent of the jokes and gimmicks used in the first film.

That is how you make a good sequel. It shouldn't have a feeling of "here we go again," it shouldn't have a sub-par plot that relies on the "selling power" of the first, and it shouldn't be a sequel created solely to milk more money out of a popular title. All of these things lead to the glut of cinematic crap in theaters and on video that generally gives sequels a bad name.

I was once told that art isn't so much what you do as it is where you stop. There's a point where a creator just has to put down his tools and let his work be. Too early, and the message may not be fully conveyed. Too late, and the work is drained of its integrity. Filmmakers could certainly benefit from heeding that advice. Sometimes, you just have to let it go.