Screenwriter »

• The Sequel Map

  January 27, 2011 @ 10:13 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Here’s something to while away the hours. The busy people at Box Office Quant have found time to draw up a map — more accurately a Cartesian graph — that examines the merits of a sequel relative to the original picture. The x coordinate is the rating of the first film on Rotten Tomatoes. The y coordinate is the rating of the follow-up. Thus any sequel lying above the line defined by x=y is better than its predecessor. It hardly needs to be said that the vast majority of films cluster in the lower reaches. Quite a few pictures do, however, land in the heavens.

  I can’t much argue with the fact that Star Trek: Wrath of Khan is judged the sequel that most successfully upstages the opening salvo in its franchise. Star Trek: The Motion Picture really was a great big bore: a feeble attempt to meld 2001 with Star Wars without passing through Star Trek on the way. It’s a little more surprising to meet Mr Bean’s Holiday and Pokemon 2000 above the line, but those films were, I suppose, building on very shaky foundations. I am delighted to encounter Final Destination 2 in the upper reaches. Now, that’s a film and a half. An uproarious combination of Heath Robinson and Mousetrap (the board game, I mean), FD2 is one of the very great horror comedies.

  What’s missing? Well, Bride of Frankenstein, of course. After all, the James Whale sequel (another horror comedy, interestingly) is the greatest film  of all time. I guess Rotten Tomatoes ratings aren’t available for those ancient classics.

• What’s the difference between a spin-off and a sequel?

  June 30, 2010 @ 3:28 pm | by Donald Clarke

  The question is, of course, triggered by an interesting news story involving former sex-addict (bless!) Michael Douglas. A little over a decade ago, the creased star was involved in a more than usually rancorous divorce with some woman named Diandra (sounds like a soft drink, but it’s actually a lady). As well as a cool $45 million cash sum, the female party secured the rights to a share in any “spin-offs” from Douglas projects initiated during their marriage.

  Ms Tizer (do I have that right?) has, thus, made it clear that she will be expecting a cheque when the receipts from Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps start rolling in. “Hang on a moment,” Douglas’s people say. “The Oliver Stone movie is not a ‘spin-off’; it is a ‘sequel’.”

  

  Spin-off?

  It’s not for us to decide the moral ifs and buts of this story, but I do think that, purely in semantic terms, the Douglas camp has a point. It is, mind you, a tricky argument. I think it is fair, say, to call Get Him to the Greek a spin-off from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Russell Brand’s Aldous Snow was, surely, only a peripheral character in the first film. A true sequel must centre on the main characters. But, I hear m’ learned friends for Ms Fanta say, the protagonist of Wall Street was Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox rather than Douglas’s Gordon Gekko and Fox only takes a cameo in Money Never Sleeps. Hmm? I think that Fox is the hero of Wall Street in the same sense that Jonathan Harker is the hero of Dracula. That’s to say you’d be disappointed if Hammer offered a sequel called Jonathan Harker has Risen From the Grave. That would be a spin-off. Wouldn’t it? A sequel to Dracula requires, well, Dracula.

  Doesn’t it?

  Oh, I don’t know.

  

  Sequel?

• I’ll tell you what the best horror film ever made is.

  October 11, 2009 @ 7:32 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  God, lists are irritating, aren’t they? Every time you open the stupid paper there’s a “Best This” or a “Worst That” chart taking up space that should be devoted to analysing the decline of the public library or bemoaning the unstable situation in Kyrgyzstan. Once you’ve pondered every entry, drawn up your own list, phoned all your friends to complain, posted the results on your blog, written an angry letter to the paper and boned up on the entries you’ve never heard of, you’ve used up half the bleeding day. Stupid lists.

  Where was this going? Oh, yeah. The RTÉ Guide is currently running a competition to find “the nation’s favourite films“. Last week, Redframewhitelight posted a comment here in which he suggested some glaring omissions from the magazine’s proposed top 100. Fair enough. Where, indeed, are Don’t Look Now, Barry Lyndon, The Appartment and All the President’s Men? (Mind you, Amelie, Redframe. Really? Eugh!) I whined about the, to my mind, unnecessary inclusion of an Irish section and the fact that Adam and Paul — arguably, after Hunger, the second-best domestic film of the decade — was not within that corral. I now also note that Taxi Driver is, apparently, an “action film” All those moans noted, I think that the magazine’s Michael Doherty — a genuinely committed and very well-informed film fanatic — has done a pretty good job here. Okay, we can all bemoan the outrageous lack of foreign-language films, but, remember, this is the RTÉ Guide. A list dominated by Bela Tarr and Carl Theodor Dreyer was never going to play between the recipes and knitting patterns.

  At any rate, here’s is my rapid jog through the categories. Of course, this is a meaningless exercise. It is to film criticism what speed dating is to marriage. But it helped kill a few empty minutes. It hardly needs to be said that, if not confined to the RTÉ list and its eccentric genre rules, I would choose entirely differently. Feel free to contribute your own preferences. We must unite to ensure that Titanic does not triumph.

  COMEDY: Duck Soup (1933)

  DRAMA: All About Eve (1950)

  WAR: The Great Escape (1963)

  ROMANCE: Now Voyager (1942)

  CULT: Freaks (1932)

  HORROR: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

  SCIENCE FICTION: Brazil (1985)

  ACTION: Taxi Driver (1976)

  ANIMATION: Spirited Away (2001)

  MUSICAL: A Star is Born (1954)

  IRELAND: Hunger (2008)

  WESTERN: The Searchers (1956)