online<\/a>), Devin Gordon comments on the recent trend in franchise series to throw in a prequel covering an earlier period in the main character\u2019s life.\u00a0 \u201cSo-called origin stories\u2014how fill-in-the-blank became fill-in-the-blank.\u201d<\/p>\nAt first David and I wondered whether Gordon, like so many film journalists, would go for the easy answer.\u00a0 There are at least two easy answers in the context of popular films, and especially blockbuster franchise films.\u00a0 One, their stories reflect something about the current psyche of the nation.\u00a0 Alternatively, they are symptoms of Hollywood running out of creativity and backbone and going for the tried and true.<\/p>\n
The public psyche theory may sound profound at first, but it\u2019s basically a quick way to write a story without knowing much of anything about film history or how the film industry works.\u00a0 There may be all sorts of reasons why a given kind of movie is made at a certain time.\u00a0 We all know about genre cycles.\u00a0 But society is vast and multi-faceted, and it isn\u2019t hard to make any given film seem to \u201creflect\u201d some aspect of it.\u00a0 Might the vogue for origins stories mirror a widespread desire to return to a more innocent era before 9\/11?\u00a0 Bingo, you\u2019re got your hook and can make your deadline.\u00a0 (Don\u2019t get me started on the fact that most big films these days are negotiated, greenlit, planned, and in production for years before they appear, thus presumably reflecting not our own Zeitgeist but one that has come and gone.)<\/p>\n
As to Hollywood running out of creativity, there are plenty of people in Tinseltown with great scripts and the desire to make them.\u00a0 We\u2019re living in an age, though, when the big studios are owned by conglomerates.\u00a0 More than ever, the studio decision makers and the investors who buy their stocks keep an eye on the bottom line.\u00a0 Variety<\/em>\u2019s October 23 front-page story, \u201cLess Dream, More Factory,\u201d is on the layoffs and other cost-cutting measures that the big studios face.\u00a0 (By the way, we aren\u2019t putting links to stories in Variety.com<\/em>, since it\u2019s a subscription-only site.)\u00a0 So the tactics of producers now must be to focus on exploiting the most popular characters and story premises for their tentpole projects.<\/p>\nGordon recognizes this and puts his finger on a major reason for the vogue for \u201corigin stories.\u201d\u00a0 The studios have to prolong their most lucrative franchises, which are essentially their owners’ big brands. Yet those franchises can grow formulaic.\u00a0 One way to renew their energy can be to leap back in time.<\/p>\n
Gordon opines, too, that \u201cIronically, playing it safe financially also provides studios with the cover to take creative chances.\u201d\u00a0 He points to the fact that Peter Webber, who is directing Young Hannibal<\/em>, has only the indie hit Girl with a Pearl Earring<\/em> to his credit.\u00a0 Similarly, art-house darling Christopher Nolan gave one big franchise a new respectability and audience with Batman Begins<\/em> and will try to continue to do so with The Dark Knight<\/em>.<\/p>\nLinking origin stories to the hiring of such filmmakers is perhaps a bit of a stretch.\u00a0 The new Bond film, Casino Royale<\/em>, the earliest in the order of Ian Fleming\u2019s original novels, shows a younger agent.\u00a0 Much of the flashier high-tech props of recent entries in the series are apparently gone, with a grittier feel to the film.\u00a0 Yet it was directed by Martin Campbell, who also had made an earlier entry, GoldenEye<\/em>, as well as both the Zorro films.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s true that recently Hollywood studios have shown a strange propensity to hire independent or foreign directors to helm entries in franchises.\u00a0 In the wake of his hit Once Were Warriors, <\/em>New Zealand\u2019s Lee Tamahori was imported and made Die Another Day<\/em> and xXx:\u00a0 State of the Union.<\/em> Warner Bros. brought in Mexican director Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n (Y tu mam\u00e1 tambi\u00e9n<\/em>) to make the third Harry Potter film, presumably because many critics had dubbed the first two, by Chris Colombus, too bland.\u00a0 Perhaps the studios simply see franchises as needing shaking up at intervals.\u00a0 Yet this is part of a larger trend of indie directors suddenly boosted to blockbuster assignments, as when Doug Liman went from Go<\/em> to The Bourne Identity<\/em> and Mr. and Mrs. Smith<\/em>.<\/p>\nAn \u201corigin story\u201d in the sense that Gordon is using the phrase is a type of prequel that jumps back far enough to show the protagonist distinctly younger and different from the way he is in the original film or series.\u00a0 It then explains how he changed into that protagonist.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong filmmakers are adept at prequels of this sort.\u00a0 God of Gamblers: The Early Years<\/em>, shows us the source of the protagonist’s lucky ring and his taste for gold-wrapped chocolate, both of which are major motifs in the original God of Gamblers<\/em>. \u00a0The case of A Better Tomorrow<\/em> is more complicated.\u00a0 John Woo and Tsui Hark had intended it to be a stand-alone film, and they made the mistake of killing off the most charismatic character.\u00a0 The film was such a hit, largely on the basis of Chow Yun Fat\u2019s performance as Mark, that A Better Tomorrow II<\/em> gave Mark a twin brother, Ken, and put Chow back in action. \u00a0That film\u2019s success led to a prequel to the first film. \u00a0A Better Tomorrow III<\/em> traces how the Mark character acquired his fighting skills and his signature costume and habits.<\/p>\nOrigin stories are not entirely new to Hollywood, either.\u00a0 As far back as 1974, The Godfather Part II<\/em> wove in flashbacks to a time well before the first film\u2019s action, tracing Don Corleone\u2019s rise.\u00a0 In 1979, there was Butch and Sundance: The Early Days.<\/em><\/p>\nOrigin stories can be thought of as expansions of a basic convention of mainstream storytelling: the flashback to crucial formative moments in a character’s life. In that sense, perhaps the quintessential origin story is Citizen Kane<\/em>. Today, when everything is potentially franchisable, such an early-days sequence can create a series. The prologue of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/em> shows young Jones launching upon an adventure that prefigures the man he will become. (In what surely is an inside joke, River Phoenix even acquires Harrison Ford’s chin scar.) \u00a0That sequence in turn spawned The Chronicles of Young Indiana Jones<\/em> TV series (\u201cBefore the world discovered Indiana, Indiana discovered the world\u201d) and four cable movies.<\/p>\nAs a term, \u201corigin stories\u201d was coined by students of mythology, who use it to refer to various ethnic groups\u2019 accounts of the origin of the world.\u00a0 In that case, it didn\u2019t have anything to do with what we now call prequels.<\/p>\n
Then the term got taken up in discussions of comic books to identify the sort of thing that Gordon is talking about.\u00a0 Before television, comic books were the ultimate franchise form of the twentieth century.\u00a0 In comic franchises, particularly those centering on superheroes, a book or short series of books might be devoted to an origin story.\u00a0 (Dave Carter\u2019s blog<\/a> has a lengthy entry on comic-book origin stories, giving examples.)\u00a0 It\u2019s not surprising that one of the main origin films, Batman Begins<\/em>, came from the comics.<\/p>\nGordon does not mention another reason why studios might want to continue a franchise by jumping back to the hero\u2019s origins: \u00a0actors can age too much to continue a role.\u00a0 It\u2019s been over 14 years since The Silence of the Lambs<\/em>, and Anthony Hopkins could probably not be convincing in another turn as Lecter.\u00a0 Possibly we\u2019ll get a chance to see whether a 60-something (or 70-something at the rate things are going) Harrison Ford can bring audiences in for the on-again-off-again Indiana Jones continuation.\u00a0 Or actors may exit the franchise, as Jody Foster did before Hannibal<\/em>.\u00a0 Or grow up too quickly, as the Harry Potter kids are doing before our eyes.\u00a0 Or die, as Richard Harris did in the same series, forcing Warners to substitute Michael Gambon as Dumbledore.<\/p>\nBut origin stories don\u2019t have these problems. \u00a0Just get new actors.\u00a0 One thing tentpole franchise films have taught us is that, as strongly identified with a character as a star may become, if the character and premises are even stronger, a new actor will be accepted.\u00a0 It\u2019s happened with Batman, Superman, Bond, and almost did\u2014and could yet–with Spider-Man.<\/p>\n
Such stories, however, have their dangers as well.\u00a0 If the audience is devoted to the character as he (and it\u2019s mostly he so far) is, will they care about seeing him as a very different person?\u00a0 If Hannibal Lecter is the middle-aged psychopath we love to hate, do we want to learn that he was once a vulnerable, suffering youth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kristin here– In the November 6 issue of Newsweek (also online), Devin Gordon comments on the recent trend in franchise series to throw in a prequel covering an earlier period in the main character\u2019s life.\u00a0 \u201cSo-called origin stories\u2014how fill-in-the-blank became fill-in-the-blank.\u201d At first David and I wondered whether Gordon, like so many film journalists, would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,40,54,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-art","category-film-industry","category-hollywood-the-business","category-narrative-strategies","category-screenwriting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8549,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/8549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}