You may not think you care much about the title of a film. Heck, The Godfather would be just as good if it were called Italian Killer Men from Long Island. Right?
The studios think differently. They believe you and your pals care very much about the words at the centre of the poster. Consider this topical question. What would you expect the sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One to be called? Well, duh! The clue is right there in the last two words. They might add a brief subtitle. Then again, with a dash and a colon there already, punctuation would be an absolute nightmare. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two, The Final Abseil? No, they’ll surely stick with just swapping a “Two” for the “One”.
Not quite. As the side of every bus currently informs us, the latest in the series journeys out as Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Huh? What was the point of calling the previous one “part one” if you didn’t move on to a “part two”? Further confusion greets those taking themselves to the Paramount+ service to catch up with earlier missions impossible before enjoying this eighth episode. It seems the previous one is now officially titled just Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. All evidence of the films’ bifurcation is being stealthily erased.
Something similar has been going on at the Wicked empire. Last year’s hit musical was called simply Wicked on the poster, but, when audiences attained their seats, they were greeted with a “part one” on the opening credits. To add to the (deliberate) confusion, we later learnt that the second film – coming this Christmas – will not anywhere be titled Wicked Part Two. It’s known as Wicked: For Good. Jon Chu, director of both episodes, was assertive without exactly being helpful. “Who wants a movie called ‘Wicked: Part Two’?” he said. “On the script, it always said, ‘For Good,’ and so it was just a point of like, ‘Do we really want to call this “Part Two”?’”
A few questions arise. Since when have studios been able or willing to change the titles of their films? Why the apparent paranoia about two-part franchise pictures? Does the title matter much anyway?
There has been a long history of titles changing after premieres at film festivals. John Carney’s Begin Again debuted at Toronto as Can a Song Save Your Life? Andrew Bregman, the film’s producer, told the Hollywood Reporter that, whereas test audiences loved the film, “the title was universally disliked by everyone”.
George Lucas kicked off renaming franchise pictures as part of a wider structural strategy when, in 1981, Star Wars (as every sane person still calls it) became Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. This was not nearly so absurd as the recent decision to retitle *Thunderbolts as *New Avengers a week after the film opened. Obviously, this bizarre strategy, planned all along and signalled by the asterisk, is a bit of a promotional gag. Nobody is forcing your local Screenoplex to tear down the original posters and replace them with images of Joanna Lumley (yes, I know it’s not those New Avengers). Nonetheless, all this chopping and changing speaks of desperation. Anything to grab audiences’ attention.
The jiggery-pokery with parts one and parts two – particularly as regards the last two episodes of long-running franchises – reveals even greater insecurities in Hollywood. It seems clear the Wicked people and the Dune crew were nervy about revealing they were inviting audiences to view an incomplete story. Hence both keeping “part one” off the posters.
Conversely, it looks as if Paramount wasn’t overly keen on acknowledging that the current Mission: Impossible continues its story from an earlier cliffhanger. Dead Reckoning Part One (as it then still was) came to be viewed as a box office disappointment – $568 million sounds like a lot, but it was 29 per cent down on the preceding episode – and there may, therefore, be limited numbers of people eager to tidy up earlier loose ends. As Den of Geek argued early last year, “if audiences skipped ‘part one’ partially because they may not have wanted to see an incomplete story, then why would they pay to see ‘part two’ in theatres?”
One might reasonably wonder if any of this matters a whit to audiences. The most lucrative film of all time is called Avatar – a word not much in daily parlance. For all the buzz that, because of the title alone, came the way of Snakes on a Plane 19 years ago, the film performed only modestly at the box office. More than anything else, this recent juggling with titular language suggests a state of rising panic in the industry. We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do this.
