It was not as good a movie as Fury Road, but it did make me suddenly have a desire for a Mad Max RPG. I liked that since the focus wasn't on Max, there was a bit more world building going on.
Payn's Ponderings; The problems with Prequels
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It was not as good a movie as Fury Road, but it did make me suddenly have a desire for a Mad Max RPG. I liked that since the focus wasn't on Max, there was a bit more world building going on.
payn
Glory to Marik
I added many Mad Max elements to my Iron Gods Pathfinder AP when I ran it. Was a real good time. I dont know how much of enjoyment id get from an RPG, but something like a Mad Max gaslands wargame would probably get my attention.
Clint_L
Legend
What makes a story good?
For me, it ultimately comes down to the emotional stakes: are we invested in the central characters and what happens to them? Prequels tend to face some structural but not insurmountable problems in this regard, with the result that most of them suck, but they don't have to.
I agree with Snarff that a shared setting is not the same as a prequel, though there is frequently some overlap. Generally, by prequel I think of a story that is intentionally designed to come before and fit into a well known story in some way.
I'm gonna use a couple Star Wars examples to illustrate what works with a prequel, and what doesn't. 'Cause I think we can safely assume that just about everyone who posts to this forum is familiar with the material.
Good prequel: Rogue One (and even more so, Andor). With Rogue One, we knew what the upshot would be: the rebels would get the plans and use them to blow up the Death Star. Go Luke! But how they got the plans turned out to be a great story because it focused on the emotional arc of a new band of characters, contrasting their wants and needs, so that their ultimate sacrifice had meaning.
Andor is even more impressive because we go in knowing that [SPOILER ALERT] the protagonist ultimately dies and the rebellion succeeds. But, again by focusing so heavily on character growth for protagonist and antagonist alike, it is a journey well worth taking. In fact, my favourite TV series of the 2020s. By the last episode, I was so invested, I can't even tell you. It artfully exploits our knowledge of Andor's doom to emphasize the heaviness of the stakes: his journey from being mostly in it for himself to someone who will die for a cause becomes a celebration of sacrifice (c.f. Stark, Tony). It exploits a principle that the ancient Greek dramatists understood: it's not about the ending, it's about the journey.
Contrast with [sigh] Solo: A Star Wars Story. This is the worst kind of prequel. There's a facade of character growth, but nothing meaningful; nothing about this film makes Han a more interesting character. In fact, the contrary is true: the revelations about Han's past make him less mysterious and interesting, and are often cringe-inducing.
Exhibit A: How did Han get his last name? (A)Did you care? In a world in which characters are named, variously, Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, Luke Skywalker, Biggs Darklighter, Yoda, Princess Leia Organa, etc. etc. etc., did even one person in the entire world think "Han Solo? Weird name!" (B) Could that information that we never needed or wanted have been presented in a more stilted, cringe-inducing way?
Exhibit B: How did Chewbacca get his nickname, Chewie? Are we stupid? Again, was there a single person in the world who needed that explained? Maybe there was one guy sitting in a theatre who had a sudden, marvellous epiphany: "Oh, it was short for Chewbacca this whole time! How did I not see it?" My god.
I'm reminded of that Santa origin stop motion movie, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, and the way it literally has audience voice-over of little kids gasping and saying things like, "Oh, so that's how he got his beard," and stuff. I'd like to see an edit of Solo with that added. That would be good fun.
And then there's the plot: i.e. let's make a whole movie in which the central problem is entirely based on justifying George Lucas's poor understanding of astronomical terms, and in which the main character "growth" amounts to fan service. We all know that Lucas used the term "parsec" incorrectly, and nobody cared. Did we need a whole movie devoted to retconning some throwaway dialogue so we could, what, say "AKSHUALLY Lucas was right the whole time."? Like, seriously? So dumb. And Han's big character growth is HE SHOOTS FIRST! So enlightening!
Oddly, this is an entire filmed premised around supporting Lucas's obvious writing error in the first film, and rejecting his obvious editing error in the re-releases.
The result is that there are no emotional stakes. Nothing that happens in Solo matters; we all know how it is going to come out, it offers answers to questions that nobody cared about, and could not exist without any impact on our understanding of the overall story. Contrast with Rogue One and Andor, which add resonance to the original without undermining it.
And don't get me started on the Alien franchise.
For me, it ultimately comes down to the emotional stakes: are we invested in the central characters and what happens to them? Prequels tend to face some structural but not insurmountable problems in this regard, with the result that most of them suck, but they don't have to.
I agree with Snarff that a shared setting is not the same as a prequel, though there is frequently some overlap. Generally, by prequel I think of a story that is intentionally designed to come before and fit into a well known story in some way.
I'm gonna use a couple Star Wars examples to illustrate what works with a prequel, and what doesn't. 'Cause I think we can safely assume that just about everyone who posts to this forum is familiar with the material.
Good prequel: Rogue One (and even more so, Andor). With Rogue One, we knew what the upshot would be: the rebels would get the plans and use them to blow up the Death Star. Go Luke! But how they got the plans turned out to be a great story because it focused on the emotional arc of a new band of characters, contrasting their wants and needs, so that their ultimate sacrifice had meaning.
Andor is even more impressive because we go in knowing that [SPOILER ALERT] the protagonist ultimately dies and the rebellion succeeds. But, again by focusing so heavily on character growth for protagonist and antagonist alike, it is a journey well worth taking. In fact, my favourite TV series of the 2020s. By the last episode, I was so invested, I can't even tell you. It artfully exploits our knowledge of Andor's doom to emphasize the heaviness of the stakes: his journey from being mostly in it for himself to someone who will die for a cause becomes a celebration of sacrifice (c.f. Stark, Tony). It exploits a principle that the ancient Greek dramatists understood: it's not about the ending, it's about the journey.
Contrast with [sigh] Solo: A Star Wars Story. This is the worst kind of prequel. There's a facade of character growth, but nothing meaningful; nothing about this film makes Han a more interesting character. In fact, the contrary is true: the revelations about Han's past make him less mysterious and interesting, and are often cringe-inducing.
Exhibit A: How did Han get his last name? (A)Did you care? In a world in which characters are named, variously, Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, Luke Skywalker, Biggs Darklighter, Yoda, Princess Leia Organa, etc. etc. etc., did even one person in the entire world think "Han Solo? Weird name!" (B) Could that information that we never needed or wanted have been presented in a more stilted, cringe-inducing way?
Exhibit B: How did Chewbacca get his nickname, Chewie? Are we stupid? Again, was there a single person in the world who needed that explained? Maybe there was one guy sitting in a theatre who had a sudden, marvellous epiphany: "Oh, it was short for Chewbacca this whole time! How did I not see it?" My god.
I'm reminded of that Santa origin stop motion movie, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, and the way it literally has audience voice-over of little kids gasping and saying things like, "Oh, so that's how he got his beard," and stuff. I'd like to see an edit of Solo with that added. That would be good fun.
And then there's the plot: i.e. let's make a whole movie in which the central problem is entirely based on justifying George Lucas's poor understanding of astronomical terms, and in which the main character "growth" amounts to fan service. We all know that Lucas used the term "parsec" incorrectly, and nobody cared. Did we need a whole movie devoted to retconning some throwaway dialogue so we could, what, say "AKSHUALLY Lucas was right the whole time."? Like, seriously? So dumb. And Han's big character growth is HE SHOOTS FIRST! So enlightening!
Oddly, this is an entire filmed premised around supporting Lucas's obvious writing error in the first film, and rejecting his obvious editing error in the re-releases.
The result is that there are no emotional stakes. Nothing that happens in Solo matters; we all know how it is going to come out, it offers answers to questions that nobody cared about, and could not exist without any impact on our understanding of the overall story. Contrast with Rogue One and Andor, which add resonance to the original without undermining it.
And don't get me started on the Alien franchise.
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Ryujin
Legend
"Aftermath" would work pretty well.
My issue with prequels is that they don't usually have a lot of maneuvering space. We often already know a lot of what happens to the characters or how main events will be resolved, so the stakes feel lower.
Rogue One (definitely the best Disney SW movie) is the perfect prequel: the main characters were all brand new, leaving open lots of interesting possibility. Granted, we had known the main plot points for 40+ years, but then again it's not that in RotJ I ever felt the Empire would win in the end. It's more about the small scale stuff, rather than the broad scale narrative.
I've been trying to convince myself to watch Furiosa for a while now, but I never get around to it. I would have watched a Furiosa sequel on premiere, but a prequel leaves me a bit cold. It would feel like nothing is really at stake there.
The weird thing is that I'm perfectly fine with historical movies like JFK, Frost-Nixon, Oppenheimer,... The amount of details I already knew about those events was way more than everything we knew about Furiosa from Fury Road, and yet I gladly went to watch Oppenheimer, but Furiosa ... I'm happy to wait for it to come to Netflix, and then will see.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Because on average they aren't a good idea?
There are successful prequels, good movies/books that are prequels, it's just that they're distinctly in the minority, even when skilled writers are involved.
Furiosa is particularly notable in that it's a "direct" prequel, but is actually good. That's almost unheard of - by "direct" I mean it specifically features a major character from a later movie, and covers their backstory, including how they came in to the position they were in, got the equipment they have, and so on. Almost every time, those movies are checkbox-y drivel that lessens the character rather than adding to them - for example, Solo. Absolutely dreadful movie that just clumsily checkboxes it's way through an imagined history of Han Solo, and completely changes what audiences would assume is his backstory so he was always basically a heroic guy, rather than primarily a scoundrel. Which is awful.
The only other good "direct" prequel I can think of is Better Call Saul, which as a piece of writing certainly, is I would say cleverer and more nuanced than Breaking Bad, if a little harder to watch as a TV show.
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Ruin Explorer
Legend
Rogue One has the perfect narrative space to be a prequel, but it's not a very good movie, and it screws up in multiple ways that it didn't need to, as a result of being a prequel. All the dreadful stuff with the awful CGI characters who might as well be 1960s Thunderbirds puppets for how convincing they are, all the irrelevant drivel with Vader which is just setup for one admittedly-cool but totally fan service scene later on. And despite Tony Gilroy's attempts to script-doctor it, all the characters are personality-free and there's no reason to care about any of them, so it fails hard at stuff that movies like the Dirty Dozen were succeeding at in the 1960s. I have no doubt that if Gilroy had written and directed it (rather than being asked to come in late-on to fix a movie that was completely not working), it's be head-and-shoulders above other SW movies, but as it is, I'm not sure it actually is better than TFA or TLJ, even though on paper it should be. I think most of what people like about it is fan service and nostalgia, because visually, it's a superb throwback to the OT look.
I guess technically Andor is a prequel to Rogue One and so far is absolutely superb, entirely as a result of Tony Gilroy showrunning it.
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payn
Glory to Marik
I the R1 works for so many because they put a lot of effort into making it look and feel like SW. Which many films since RotJ dont. That seems to go a long ways to covering its weaknesses.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
100% agree. Aesthetically it looks like a sharper, cleaner but still absolutely authentic-seeming OT-era Star Wars*. Right down to stuff like the lighting, which is different to what Lucas would have done, but somehow looks "right". The crew working on that stuff need tremendous plaudits, particularly as they had to re-work a whole bunch of the movie! The sound FX are also spot-on. It does the trick good videogame remakes do of being how you remember the originals to be, rather than how they actually were.
The actual story/plot, dialogue, and so on is just profoundly mediocre and ineffectual at, frankly, an easy task - I cared more about the deaths of characters in the original, deeply bad Suicide Squad movie (not the better later one), but yeah that aesthetic is clearly working extremely well for a lot of people. The performances are also, apart from Luna, pretty bad. Most actors need a good director to give a good performances, and Gareth Edwards is not a good director. His best movie, his debut, Monsters, is a real 7/10 movie, and it's been downhill since then. All of his movies are marked but somewhat stilted/bad-seeming performances, often from actors who have been great elsewhere. He's the real problem here - he shouldn't be a director - he should be a producer or maybe cinematographer or DP with some edit rights or something. As he's never been good, he is of course working on the next Jurassic World movie! Couldn't risk making a good JW movie! We're 3 for 3 on terrible movies so far! There's never been a better example of a pure brand alone keeping people coming to movies - well, maybe Transformers, but at least that had Bayhem (which some people genuinely like).
Solo is a good example of a failing at a similar task, aesthetically. It just doesn't have the right aesthetic, despite clearly trying. The bad guy's ship/lair at the end is kind of a fun aesthetic concept because it's very intentionally early '70s (whereas the OT was late '70s/early '80s), in vibe/style, but it doesn't really work, because it ends up being distracting and making you think about the production of the movie (which you usually shouldn't be doing).
* exception: the CGI puppet-people - and yeah before the ackshullies get in, I know the technique they used and it was both dumb and bad, there's a reason no-one else uses it! Even at the time it was the wrong way to go. You'd literally have done better with full-CGI and mocap!
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