Make a Prequel
If I’m being honest (and I’m always honest), this is my least favorite kind of direction change that a franchise can make. I understand it’s purpose, but I don’t want to go back and see things that happened before. I want to move forward in time, not backwards, but I digress. I’ll go back to being objective.
Surprisingly, the prequel approach is something that is becoming more and more popular in recent years. The most recent effort, Insidious Chapter 3 is the perfect example. It is puzzling that the franchise went this route, since the ending of Insidious Chapter 2 deliberately set up a sequel with Specs and Tucker helping people with Elise’s ghost. Insidious Chapter 3 sort of followed through on that promise, except it shows how Elise met Specs and Tucker before the events on the original Insidious. Insidious Chapter 3 is a solid film, and it’s always nice to see more of Lin Shaye, but it severely underperformed after the high mark set by the second installment. Audiences also welcomed it with a rather lukewarm reception.
The issue that Insidious Chapter 3 runs into is that there was really no reason to go back in time and see how Elise came to team up with Specs and Tucker. Ironically, the film is so focused on that backstory that it completely ignores giving any backstory to the villain of the movie: a creepy-looking elderly man with an oxygen mask. It’s a peculiar move, but it is what it is.
A prequel can come across as hollow and pointless if it doesn’t justify its existence. The 2006 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning failed to justify its existence in any shape, way or form. While it may be incredibly gory (much more so than the 2003 remake), all of its prequel elements don’t add up to much of anything. The biggest revelation is how Sheriff Hoyt lost his two front teeth.
No one really wanted to know how Leatherface came to be Leatherface. It’s always scarier not knowing the “why” in a scary movie, as Scream famously pointed out. If The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning actually delved into Leatherface’s younger years in a meaningful way, the film might have been received a little bit better, but it doesn’t.
It (perhaps unjustly) has some of the worst reviews out of all of the films in the series, and only took in $46.6 million to the remake’s $104.1 million, despite featuring the likes of Jordana Brewster and a pre-Magic Mike Matt Bomer.
A more polarizing prequel takes comes in the form of Prometheus. This was a film that was never going to please everyone, and would have been received better had it not been touted as a prequel to the Alien franchise for years before its release. Taken as a standalone film, Prometheus is a gorgeous, poetic film that poses a lot of questions but fails to provide many answers, sort of like life itself.
Fan reaction was mixed upon its initial release, but it has grown a small following recently, especially with news of a sequel coming out in a few years. The film disappointed in terms of domestic box office, taking in a decent $130.9 million on a $134,7 million budget. Luckily, the film performed splendidly overseas, more than making up for its somewhat disappointing domestic box office take.
The verdict is still out on whether or not an Alien prequel was a good idea. We are going to have to wait until Alien: Paradise Lost Alien: Covenant comes out to see if the gamble Prometheus made paid off. The fact remains that it doesn’t really feel like an Alien movie. If director Ridley Scott wanted to distance himself from the Alien franchise so much, he probably should have not touted it as a prequel and just let it be its own film. I realize this is more on 20th Century Fox than Scott himself, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true.
One way to make a prequel work is to hide the fact that the film is a prequel. That is what Final Destination 5 did, and it paid off excellently. Unfortunately, it performed the worst domestically, pulling in $44.9 million (it more than doubled that gross internationally, though. While the original pulled in $73 million, the highest earner in the franchise was also its worst: The Final Destination with $73.6 million. It was given a boost thanks to 3-D ticket sales, but the fact that it was so terrible
What is interesting here is that, like Insidious Chapter 2, the worst film in the franchise performed the best. This means that the most people saw those installments in theaters when compared to the others. Since the worst film was seen by the most people, it had the misfortune of turning many of those people off of the franchise because those installments were so bad. Then, when a quality sequel is made, a significantly lower number of people opt to go see it in theaters.
Surprisingly, Final Destination 5 garnered the best reviews out of every film in the franchise, and is the only one to have a fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. While it wasn’t enough to win back viewers who had given up after the fourth installment, it still stands as one of the best examples of a horror prequel. Using the film’s identity as a prequel works in the films favor, and the only way you could have caught it is if you noticed the cell phones the characters were using in the film. It was a nice “gotcha” moment in an already solid film.
The prequel approach may not be my favorite approach to changing a franchise’s direction, but it can work sometimes. It just has to be handled delicately.