Movie sequels have become increasingly common over the past ten years or so. In fact, there are currently over 100 movie sequels in the works, ranging from the likes of Avatar and The Incredibles to The Goonies and Mrs. Doubtfire. However, cashing in on sequels is not simply a dubious trend or even a relatively new phenomenon. They first started to appear in larger numbers during the 1970s, with Hollywood's revival and the birth of the modern block buster. When done correctly, sequels help enrich the film series's previous installment and provide greater insight into the movie's fictional world. Of course, for every good sequel, unfortunately, there are always a good number of bad ones.
Below, I have composed a list of my ten personal favorite (and unfavorite) film sequels. Please note that remakes/spinoffs will not be counted (and trust me, there are plenty of other people that can inform you about the horrors of The Star Wars Christmas Special), and neither will movies based on book series. So without further ado, here are they are:
10.) The Best: Adams Family Values
While Adams Family Values is certainly not a perfect movie, it still manages to be quite entertaining at times. As opposed to the first film featuring the Addams Family, this installment focuses more on the macabre humor associated with the comics than the madcap comedy of the 1960s television series. This largely works in the film's favor and is refreshing to see in era when family movies started to become increasingly over sanitized for younger audiences. (The movie takes several jabs at over protective parenting, such as the way we retell the story of Thanksgiving to children.) The best segments of the movie focus on Wednesday and Pugsley who are sent away to summer camp after the family's newly hired nanny, Debbie, tricks Gomez and Morticia into doing so. They quickly become social outcasts at the overly cheery camp and develop a friendship with another boy their age. The film should have kept most of its focus here, but unfortunately it doesn't. The main plot concerns Debbie (who is actually a serial killer) trying to woe Uncle Fester and steal his money. It is somewhat funny at first, but becomes tiresome after a while. Still, Adams Family Values is all in all a fun film that sports a lot unconventional humor and memorable visuals to boot.
10.) The Worst: A Christmas Story 2
Simply put, this movie, like so many other sequels, was unnecessary. Very unnecessary. It was released just last year directly to DVD and has thankfully attracted little attention. A Christmas Story 2 has just about every cliche in the book and is devoid of most of the charms of the original. The movie is set six years after the original, with Ralphie now being a teenager who only wants a used 1939 Mercury convertible for Christmas. However, when he tries to get the car off the lot he accidentally damages it, and must repair it before the police find out. The movie simply goes through the motions repeating the same jokes and gags from the first movie, but only as less funny. The film also informs as that Ralphie must learn 'the true meaning of Christmas,' but didn't he already discover it during the first film? A Christmas Story 2 was among the last of Warner Bros. direct-to-video releases due to the studio citing the decline of the market in favor of online streaming. Good riddance, it was even more disappointing to me than the Home Alone sequels. This sequel is so obviously phoned in it's just sad really.
The short lived craze that helped reignite interest in video games and animation.
For those who didn't grow up during the 1980s or early '90s the word 'LaserDisc' may not exactly be familiar. Think of LaserDiscs as the record size prototype of the DVD. LaserDiscs were first manufactured in 1978, arriving shortly after the VHS beat out Betamax. Unlike the DVD or the Betamax, LaserDiscs utilized disc based technology, resulting in higher quality image and audio quality. LaserDiscs were also the first format to include extra discs filled with extra features. Despite these advantages of the LaserDisc, it wan't until the DVD arrived that optical discs became the preferred video format. LaserDiscs were considerably more expensive than VHS tapes in most regions, very large/awkward to hold, could not record shows on TV, and could not store as much length as the VHS. Thus LaserDiscs were not popular with most of the American public, save for movie buffs or the dedicated otaku.
Laserdiscs: the record sized forerunner of the DVD.
However, LaserDiscs did manage to make a significant (if short-lived) impact on the animation and video game industries. While the idea of the interactive movie was not new at the time (The short film Kinoautomat[1967] is largely considered to be the first.), LaserDiscs made the use of interactive movies more widespread due to their ability to skip back and forth between segments of film and nonlinear play devices. For those unfamiliar with them, interactive movies can be best be described as the video game equivalent of 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, where the player's actions dictate the result of the film depending on which choices they make. Many LaserDisc games required 'quick time events' where the player has to press the correct sequence of buttons within a short given amount of time, or else they will die. This happens very frequently in LD games, because in order to progress, you must memorize the button sequence. (Thus many quarters are quickly lost if you play them in arcades.)
Enter the Dragon's Lair
Although the first LaserDisc game, Astron Belt (Sega, 1983), was actually a rail shooter that used some footage from Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan, the first widely successful game was Dragon's Lair. Released later the same year by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth, Dragon's Lair proved to be so popular that several machines were reportedly broken by children playing on them too frequently. Dragon's Lair is widely credited for saving the sagging arcade industry and renewing public interest in video games after the fall of Atari. It also gave Bluth the much needed money to fund his additional feature films and thus encouraged him and others animators to make material beyond cheap Saturday morning cartoons.
The reason for the game's appeal was simple. Unlike other popular games of the time which utilized simple, pixelated sprites, Dragon's Lair featured high quality hand-drawn animation, which gave the game a greater sense of 'realism'. (Well, realistic enough for a fantasy story about a dim-witted and cowardly knight ['Dirk the Daring'] determined to save a scantly clad princess from a fearsome dragon.) Dragon's Lair was even successful enough to have a sequel released in 1991, which is fondly (or not so fondly remembered) for its rather bizarre time-traveling plot. Dragon's Lair also received several ports to other systems (including the infamous NES version) and had a short-lived cartoon series with noticeably bad animation provided by Ruby-Spears.
Gameplay of Dragon's Lair making it look extremely easy.
In reality, you die a lot. Say goodbye to your quarters!
In 1984, Don Bluth released Space Ace, which is essentially Dragon's Lair in Space. The game had a higher budget with smoother animation, more sound effects better voice acting, and of course, a good dose of strangeness. Thayer's Quest also hit arcades the same year. Although the game was developed by RDI Video Systems (the studio that released Dragon's Lair and Space Ace), Thayer's Quest was made without any involvement from Bluth and has rather shoddy production values in comparison to Bluth's work. Thayer's Quest was initially created for the doomed Halcyon console (which had many advanced capabilities including voice recognition). It ultimately failed due to its extremely steep price of $2,500. In fact, the Halcyon is often cited as the most expensive video game system ever created!
Poster for Space Ace.
Cliff Hanger or Lupin III?
Not all companies could afford to hire American animators like Don Bluth, several of them opted to use footage from anime unreleased in the US at the time and cut it to fit into the storyline they desired. The most famous of these games is Cliff Hanger (1983) which made a cameo appearance in the movie The Goonies. Cliff Hanger was created using footage from two Lupin III games, primarily from The Castle of Cagliostro. As with many anime games released overseas, Cliffhanger had hilarious bad dubbing done directly over the original Japanese and many of the characters in the films either had their names changed or were cut out completely. Bega's Battle (Sega, 1983) was a rail shooter with footage taken from the anime Harmagedon. Like many popular games of the time, it was featured on Starcade. It had a notoriously violent opening sequence, where a man's face is shown mutating and melting off. (And, yes, this game was marketed towards children.) The anime itself is pretty awful and forgettable despite being directed by Rintaro and produced by Madhouse. Curiously enough, two other of Rintaro's movies, Galaxy Express 999 and Adieu Galaxy Express 999, were adapted into a 1987 LaserDisc game called Freedom Fighter. Freedom Fighter was the only game before developer Millennium Games shut down. It is thus very rare and highly sought out by collectors.
Cliff Hanger! The game that keeps you on your toes!
Genki Girls & Ninjas: Japanese LaserDisc Games
Several game developers in Japan also made LD games. Super Don Quix-ote (Universal, 1984) which is only notable for being very loosely inspired by Don Quixote and for having low budget animation on par of Thayer.Badlands(Konami, 1984) was a far more interesting game. It plays out as a Western style shooter starring Buck, a cowboy on a quest to avenge the deaths of his wife and children who were murdered by a band of outlaws. Despite, its solemn sounding setup, Badlands is actually quite humorous and silly at times due to its particularly bizarre and nonsensical death animations and random mix of American and Japanese cultural references. On a similar note, Sega also released a vengeance game in 1985. Road Blaster is a racing/shooter game where you play a man tracking down a gang of bikers who killed his wife. Unlike Badlands, the game maintains a fairly serious tone throughout.
Outside of Don Bluth and Cliff Hanger, perhaps the best remembered LaserDisc games were made by Taito. In 1984, the company released Ninja Hayate, a game suspiciously similar to Dragon's Lair. It is about a Dirk-like ninja who attempts to rescue a princess from a feudal Japanese castle. (Ninja Hayate also bears more than a passing resemblance to another Taito game, The Legend of Kage.) Time Gal (1985) is commonly bundled with the above and is the more famous of the two. The game is set in the year 3001. You play as a skimpily dressed girl named Reika who must travel between different time periods in search of the criminal Luda in order to prevent him from altering the past. Time Gal was one of Japan's more popular LaserDisc titles, receiving numerous ports to different systems over the years. This is no doubt due to the main character being a typical excitable, ditzy 'cute' anime girl (who looks a lot like Lum from Urusei Yatsura). She laughs, spews random English and makes various pop cultural references while being chased. Half of her 'death' animations just involve her being shamed in some way or nearly losing an article of clothing. (This is actually quite creepy once you realize that several of these death sequences cut to a clip of Luda laughing.)
I'm not sure if these death sequences are annoying or hilarious.
The Decline & Legacy of LaserDisc Games
By the late 1980s, the number of notable LaserDisc games being made began to decline rapidly as the popularity of the format waned. This is because once someone figures out the pattern of buttons needed to be pressed and sequences to choose in these games, the games have practically no replay value beyond showing off your skills to your friends. LD games thus get very repetitive over time and are often quite similar to one another in gameplay and in structure. The only major producer of LD games in the late 1980s and the early '90s was American Laser Games, which made a total of ten games up until 1994. Unlike most developers, American Laser Games used cheaply shot live-action footage which has little enjoyment beyond its camp value. All of their titles were light rail shooters which had lousy green screen effects. Most of their games were either Westerns, space dramas, or crime narratives. In 1991, Dragon's Lair's co-creator, Rick Dyer, released Time Travelerthrough Sega. The LD game was the first video game to utilize holographic imagery, however its standard plot about traveling through time in order to rescue to the protagonist's girlfriend may have weakened its appeal. Ultimately, Time Traveler's gimmick could not save LaserDisc games. Within four years, the DVD was introduced and the LaserDisc quickly faded into obscurity.
Although LD games were short-lived, they managed to greatly influence the future of gaming. Dragon's Lair helped re-spark public interest in the medium after the Video Game Crash of 1983. LD games pioneered the notion that games could use branching paths based upon the player's choice, introduced the notion of cutscenes to gaming, and introduced full animation to gaming. While interactive movies remain a niche market, several notable ones have been made in recent years, including Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. Although these games are far more sophisticated, they owe a lot to their LaserDisc heritage.
What's the point of a low budget game if it's not animated?
This rather unique tribute / crossover piece by Don Bluth honoring Winsor McCay is brilliant. It also happens to have a bit of history behind it. There is no denying that Don Bluth, although some of his later films proved to rather lackluster, contributed a lot to animation. He brought Disney its much needed competition in the 1980s and proved that other companies outside of large studios could create successful films. Like many other animators and artists, Bluth found much inspiration in the works of Winsor McCay.
McCay was a true pioneer. He started as out as a successful comic strip artist, and become one of the first figures to popularize animation. His art nouveau inspired style and interact attention to detail was simply astounding, and his imagination was boundless. Today he is best remembered for his comic-strip Little Nemo (1905-1927) and the animated short Gertie the Dinosaur (1911).
Notice how the panels grow to emphasize the size of the bed's legs.
Gertie the Dinosaur was drawn single-handedly on rice paper. Each background was traced, as animation cels had not been invented yet (which may explain why McCay only made about ten shorts in his career).
Despite the tribute image was drawn in 1990, it almost seemed to predict something. In fact, Don Bluth was given the prestigious Winsor McCay Award in 2004 for his lifetime dedication to animation.
Making an animated film is a long and complicated process. Many films spend years, sometimes even decades in development. ( In an extreme case, Ricard William's The Thief and the Cobbler spent about 30 years in limbo before it was released in 1993.) Here are some films by renowned animator, Don Bluth, that sadly never got to see the light of day. Bluth often struggled with finical troubles, particularly after his studio tanked in the mid 1990s. Here's a small glimpse at what could have been.
The Little Blue Whale:
Satyrday: The Velveteen Rabbit:
East of the Sun, West of the Moon:
was meant to be released after the Secret of NIMH (1982), but but the union went on strike for 73 days.
