Sequels are seldom worthy successors to the originals.
Sometimes a second chapter is necessary only so it is possible to move on to a third. I have always thought that was the case with the "Back to the Future" movies, and I definitely feel that way about the "Spider–Man" movies, the third installment of which made its debut on this day in 2007.
As I observed yesterday, I liked the "Spider–Man" movie from 2002 — and I liked its second sequel, the one that premiered 10 years ago today. The second movie, which premiered in 2004, didn't have much going for it, as far as I was concerned.
(The third part of a trilogy isn't always so great. The third chapters of "The Godfather" and original "Star Wars" trilogies easily make that case.)
Not everyone felt that way. Film critic Roger Ebert and I frequently had similar reactions to movies — but not the "Spider–Man" trilogy.
And it all seems to have hinged on the character of Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire). I had no problems with him, but Ebert apparently did.
"The great failing of 'Spider–Man 3' is that it failed to distract me from what a sap Peter Parker is," Ebert wrote. "It lingers so long over the dopey romance between Peter and the long–suffering Mary Jane [Kirsten Dunst] that I found myself asking the question: Could a whole movie about the relationship between these two twentysomethings be made? And my answer was: No, because today's audiences would never accept a hero so clueless and a heroine so docile."
I thought that was a bit harsh, considering that the movie's sole purpose was to entertain — not to make some profound statement.
Well, perhaps that wasn't its sole purpose. I wouldn't rule out the money motive. The original "Spider–Man" became the first movie to exceed $100 million at the box office in its first weekend on American movie screens. Its sequel, which was released in 2004, beat the original's opening–day record by $1 million.
It was logical to expect a similar response to the third movie, and it didn't disappoint — well, not entirely. It was the highest–grossing film of the three movies in the trilogy — but, although the DVD sales grossed more than $120 million, they still came up short of expectations.
Anyway, Ebert and I were never on the same page on the "Spider–Man" movies. He didn't like the first and third movies; I did.
On the other hand, he did like the second movie. "Now this is what a superhero movie should be,"he wrote of that first sequel. I thought the only purpose for the second movie (other than to make a lot of money) was to be a bridge between the first and second movies. I still think that, for that matter.
Go figure.
Anyway, I can kind of understand where some folks were coming from in their criticism — the ones who complained that there were too many stories going on at once.
Yes. There were quite a few stories being told.
There were the continuing stories dating back to the original movie — of Peter Parker and M.J., of Parker's newspaper career and his editor (J.K. Simmons) and of the son of the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), whose spirit urged his son to seek vengeance (and tried to do so through M.J.).
And there was some new stuff. There was Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard's talented and beautiful daughter) who played Parker's lab partner and temporary love interest.
There was also the introduction of a new villain, played by Thomas Haden Church, who, as it turned out, had been responsible for the death of Parker's uncle (Cliff Robertson). His aunt (Rosemary Harris) was back.
Yep, there was a lot going on. Nothing neat and orderly about it. But isn't that the burden of a superhero?
Marty (Michael J. Fox):I'm sorry, Doc. It's all my fault you're stuck back there. I never should have let Biff get to me.
Doc (Christopher Lloyd):Well, there are plenty worse places to be than the Old West. I could've ended up in the Dark Ages. They probably would have burned me at the stake as a heretic or something.
The final installment of the "Back to the Future" trilogy premiered on this day in 1990.
Some people never thought there should be a sequel to the original, let alone a third movie. I didn't particularly mind, as I wrote last year on the 25th anniversary of the premiere of the sequel, mainly because I enjoyed the premise. But, in hindsight, I must admit that the concept had about run its course after three movies. I'm glad they didn't go all "Rocky" — or, God forbid, all "Star Wars" — on us. That could have been messy.
(Still, time travel does have certain things in common with space travel, does it not?)
Beyond that, there were a few things for which I was grateful when I saw the trilogy's final installment.
For one, I was glad the producers of the movie didn't try to return to the future. I think they explored that concept about as much as they could — without actually knowing what the future held, which, of course, was the point of "Back to the Future Part II." Other than that, I can't think of too much in the way of other themes about the future that could be plausibly explored.
It is that very knowledge that we do have about the past that makes the concept of traveling back in history, not forward, so appealing. And the temptation always seems to be to go back to a time when a major event occurred, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, and use the knowledge one brings from the future to change that past.
(It is a theme that was explored in what is probably my favorite episode from the second generation of the Twilight Zone TV series. It was about a visitor from the future who returned to Dallas in November 1963 and altered history by preventing the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Turned out, though, that history requires something of equal value when its predetermined course is altered. Because the assassination had not happened as it was intended, serious storms erupted around the globe and the Soviet premier was assassinated.)
No, I don't think there was any more fertile ground to be plowed in the future. But the past is a different matter. The past is as vast as space, offering countless opportunities. The stuff about the '50s was pretty much exhausted, though, so it was essential to pick a different time, and the old West was as good as any. Marty could interact with his ancestors, Irish immigrants, and the always present inventor of the Time Machine, Doc Brown.
I thought it was good, for example, that Lea Thompson could continue her fine work in the third movie, playing Michael J. Fox's great–great–grandmother after playing his mother in the first two movies. And that lent itself nicely to some clashing–centuries humor. For example:
At one point, at a fund–raising party in the town square, Marty held up a plate that had the word Frisbee written on it. Frisbee, apparently, was the name of the maker of the plate or the business that served whatever had been on the plate, but Marty, of course, associated it with the plastic disc that was such a popular toy in the '70s and '80s. Marty said to his great–great–grandparents, "Hey, Frisbee! Far out!"
"What was the meanin' of that?" Fox, playing his great–great–grandfather, asked after the latter–day Marty had sauntered off.
"It was right in front of him," Thompson's character remarked.
Another thing I liked about the casting was that it featured Mary Steenburgen, an actress with whom I was familiar long before she started appearing on America's movie screens. For a time, she was a student at the central Arkansas college where my father was a religion professor, and she appeared in some campus productions. I think I even saw one once. Hard to remember now. But I knew her name. It was distinctive.
Ten years before she appeared in the final "Back to the Future" movie, Steenburgen won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "Melvin and Howard." As far as I know, she is the only former student of that college to win an Oscar — probably the only one ever to be nominated for an Oscar.
Personally, I have always thought she was a good actress — even though she hasn't been nominated for an Oscar for any of her performances since.
Film critic Roger Ebert complained that the "looking-glass quality" from the first two movies was absent in the third, and there is something to that. There is also something to his characterization of the pace of the first two movies as "dizzying," a pace that, it seems to me, is inappropriate for a tale set mostly in the Old West — even if it did involve time travel as well.
Ebert didn't care for the sitcom quality of the Old West as presented in "Back to the Future Part III," but he did find one part of it endearing — the romance between Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and Clara (Steenburgen).
He found one constant in all three movies: "a sort of bittersweet, elegiac quality involving romance and time."
"In the first movie," Ebert wrote, "McFly went back in time to be certain his parents had their first date. The second involved his own romance. The third involves Doc Brown and Clara. In all of these stories, there is the realization that love depends entirely on time. Lovers like to think their love is eternal.
"But do they ever realize it depends entirely on temporal coincidence, since, if they were not alive at the same time, romance hardly would be feasible?"
Hmmm. The relationship between romance and time travel. Something to ponder on the 25th anniversary of Part III's debut.
It is really difficult to make a truly strong movie trilogy.
Sustaining the momentum is the problem, and that third installment really seems to be a stumbling block. I can understand that. Most of the time, it seems to me it is best to let a great movie stand unencumbered by a mediocre followup ... or two. I can think of only a few really good sequels, let alone a third edition.
But that doesn't keep people from trying to recapture lightning in a bottle anyway.
To an extent, that is what I thought when "Return of the Jedi," the third Star Wars movie, was released 30 years ago today.
As I have written here before, the original "Star Wars," which was in theaters in 1977, caught most people by surprise. It was based on a sci–fi novel that few outside the sci–fi followers demographic group knew anything about with a cast of largely unknown actors.
If memory serves me correctly, "Star Wars" started off slowly, then gathered momentum in the summer months of 1977. By the time I saw it, talk of a sequel had gained momentum, too. I don't remember exactly when it was announced that a sequel — 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back" — was being made or when it was announced that a trilogy of films eventually would be completed.
My guess would be that the trilogy plans were announced first — mainly because my memory is there was a lot of talk of a trilogy well before "Empire" made its theatrical debut. Certainly, there was talk of a third movie when I was making plans to see the second.
And, to be fair, I thought the sequel to "Star Wars" (which was subsequently renamed "A New Hope" with all of the movies in the series considered episodes of George Lucas' Star Wars franchise) was pretty good.
I suppose my attitude at the time could best be summed up in a comment I heard one moviegoer make as we left the theater — "What a wonderful movie! I can't wait to see how it ends!" Everyone who saw "The Empire Strikes Back" was prepared to be left hanging for another three years.
I didn't grow up in the age of movie serials — my parents did so I suppose they could tell you if the Star Wars trilogy of the late 1970s and early 1980s did a good job of re–creating the experience.
I can only speak of how I felt about "Return of the Jedi" in the context of the movies that preceded it.
I am no sci–fi fan. I do like some books and movies in the genre, but that is usually because the book and/or movie offers more than splashy space battles or strange intergalactic creatures.
And, at its core, the Star Wars story was always about the struggle between good and evil — within cultures, within galaxies, within individuals — more than it was about space. Space was merely the backdrop.
"Return of the Jedi" did a pretty good job of tying the loose ends from the first two movies together. In those first two flicks, for example, Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) always faced a hard choice between two suitors (Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill). When Luke (Hamill) and the audience learned that Luke and Leia were siblings, that opened a face–saving way for Luke to bow out and Leia and Han Solo (Ford) to be a couple.
I guess movie audiences always had the feeling that Leia and Han would wind up together. Han was the roguish swashbuckler type, the bad boy who always seems to get the girl — in real life as well as the movies. Luke, meanwhile, was the honorable, dependable country boy who fought his father and then redeemed him.
(Incidentally, Fisher has confirmed that a personal trainer is helping her prepare for the seventh Star Wars film, and Ford apparently has all but acknowledged that he will participate in the movie, too, which should be interesting. I'll bet no one imagined a geriatric Leia and Han 30 years ago.)
"Return of the Jedi" was a reminder that a Lucas project, like a Steven Spielberg project, could be counted upon to give moviegoers more than a taste of the latest bells and whistles in moviemaking. It certainly delivered in that regard.
I have always thought the special effects in "Return of the Jedi" — while modest by 2013 standards — represented the state of the art at the time. In fact, I felt the special effects were the real stars of "Return of the Jedi." The scene I always think of is the heart–stopping, high–tech (and high–speed) bike chase through the trees. The actors were merely along for the ride.
But I could live with that. Lucas and Spielberg have always been like wide–eyed kids whenever technology gave them a new toy to play with. They can hardly wait to have a film project in which to try it.
The part about "Return of the Jedi" that I found objectionable was the way new creatures were introduced into the story — flimsy, transparent excuses for commercial mass–marketing of Star Wars toys. The introduction of the gremlinesque Yoda in "The Empire Strikes Back" was only the first step in an evolving strategy that included the creation of the teddy bear–like Ewoks who fought alongside the rebels in "Return of the Jedi."
As I say, the first "Star Wars" caught everyone by surprise, and marketers had to scramble to catch up. By the end of 1977, there were Star Wars action figures and lunchboxes and that sort of thing, but I've known enough sales people in my life to know that most of them must have viewed the summer months of 1977 as a lost opportunity — one they were determined not to let slip through their fingers again.
When "The Empire Strikes Back" was still in the planning stages, I'm sure those sessions included marketers who could tell the people who would be writing the script and designing the costumes what the surveys of the day indicated would be most popular with various demographic groups.
And high on that list, I believed then (and still believe today), was what surveys indicated would appeal to children. That was an approach that was refined in "Return of the Jedi" — and greatly expanded upon 16 years later when the first episode in the prequel trilogy hit the theaters.
And yet ...
In many ways, I felt that "Return of the Jedi" may have been the most adult–oriented of all the Star Wars movies, not just the ones from 1977 to 1983. For example, it took a long, hard look at Luke Skywalker and the hatred that burned within him. Given Luke's passion for fighting the Empire and being the ultimate Jedi warrior, I guess audiences had long suspected there was a seething rage within him, and "Return of the Jedi" confirmed it.
There were some fearsome visions in that movie when Luke confronted the truth.
I'm sure they inspired some nightmares for younger viewers. "Return of the Jedi" may have inspired a successful line of toys, but it wasn't quite a kiddie movie.
There is a lingering perception that "Return of the Jedi" was the weakest of the series' original three movies, but I think that is truly a relative matter.
There was a segment of the population that could be counted on to come to the theaters no matter what anyone else said about it. By 1983, Star Wars devotees knew what to expect from a new movie in the series, and they simply would not allow themselves to miss an opportunity to watch Hamill and Ford wave light sabers or spaceships wage laser battles.
To bring non–Star Wars viewers to the theaters — which it did, earning more than $400 million at the box office — it had to have more. It needed a plausible story.
It was weak in parts, but it was entertaining enough to be a worthy finale for a successful movie trilogy.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
