The Prequels Phenomenon

From Screen​.Ology​.Com

The past sev­eral months, we’ve seen the pro­lif­er­a­tion of Hol­ly­wood movies that are pre­quels of movies already shown in the past. We have the really well-made and well-casted Startrek which tells us the back sto­ries of the now leg­endary James Kirk, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy and Spock. We also have the X Men Ori­gins series that begins with Wolverine’s story. They will have a series of X Men Ori­gins movies that will tell us the back sto­ries of Jean Gray, Cyclops, and prob­a­bly even Pro­fes­sor Xavier. A few years back, we had the Bat­man Fran­chise reboot­ing with Bat­man Begins.

There’s also the movie Ter­mi­na­tor Sal­va­tion which is the pre­quel of the Ter­mi­na­tor Series of Arnold Schwarzen­neger. A few years back, we had the Star Wars fran­chise come up with Episodes 1–3, show­ing us the ori­gins of Anakin Sky­walker, who was to become Darth Vader in Episodes 4–6, which were shot two decades before that. And now, there’s sup­posed to be a movie about GI Joe star­ring the really beau­ti­ful Sienna Miller, show­ing us how it all began.

Wel­come to the “Pre­quels Phenomenon”–the pen­chant and pro­lif­er­a­tion of pre­quels.

It appears to have first come into gen­eral use in the early 1970s, in which its first known, trace­able use is in the orig­i­nal press pack for The God­fa­ther Part II, where it is used to describe the sec­tions of the film which take place before the events of The God­fa­ther, which inter­cuts the fur­ther story of the Cor­leone mafia fam­ily under the lead­er­ship of Michael Cor­leone with the story of his father Vito Cor­leone in his youth.

Fran­cis Ford Cop­pola cred­ited George Lucas with devis­ing the term, which Lucas and Steven Spiel­berg later used to describe their joint project Indi­ana Jones and the Tem­ple of Doom (which also occurred before the events of the first Indi­ana Jones film) dur­ing pub­lic­ity for its release. Lucas’s own Star Wars pre­quel tril­ogy greatly pop­u­lar­ized the term in Amer­i­can culture.

Like sequels, pre­quels may or may not con­cern the same plot as the work from which they are derived. Often, they explain the back­ground which led to the events in the orig­i­nal, but some­times the con­nec­tions are not as explicit. Some­times, pre­quels play on the fact that the audi­ence knows what will hap­pen next, using delib­er­ate ref­er­ences to cre­ate dra­matic irony.

Pre­quels and sequels allow audi­ences to have a bet­ter, deeper sense of char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions that would never have been pos­si­ble with­out that sequel or pre­quel. It also gives film writ­ers a chance to expand and deepen char­ac­ter development.

We have Han­ni­bal Ris­ing in 2007 for exam­ple, pre­quel­ing The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Exor­cist: The Begin­ning in 2004, which pre­quels the 1973 clas­sic, or even more recently The Under­world: Rise of the Lycans which is a pre­quel to the two Under­world movies (Under­world and Under­world: Evo­lu­tion) star­ring Kate Beck­in­sale. I heard that they are now mak­ing a movie of The Hob­bit, which pre­dates The Lord of The Rings series.

Why do we have this now, prob­a­bly more than ever before?

Aside from the usual “Hol­ly­wood is in dire need of orig­i­nal sto­ries that is why they’re just try­ing to reboot and recy­cle every­thing now” the­ory, here are sev­eral of my other theories:

1) We have come full cir­cle. In the past, we couldn’t wait for the end­ing. We waited in line for the next Star Wars Movie that started in medias res (in the mid­dle of things) with Episode 4 because we wanted to know how Darth Vader, and the Emperor would finally be defeated. And when Episode 6 ended, it whet­ted our appetite enough to for­get that we didn’t see Episodes 1–3. Right now, ori­gins are as impor­tant as the end­ing. It is impor­tant for us to know how it all began, why our favorite char­ac­ters and their ene­mies became what they have become, and act the way they did.

The pop­u­lar HEROES series mine this nar­ra­tive method to per­fec­tion. We see the char­ac­ters zoom from the past to the present to the future to help us, the view­ers, under­stand the story. And it can get con­fus­ing at times, spe­cially if we didn’t see the series from the begin­ning, but if we had seen it from the start, every move from present to past to future makes the story even more tight and under­stand­able. We can make sense of it on our own.

This pen­chant for under­stand­ing the ori­gins of things and sto­ries is noth­ing new. Eons ago, our great grand­fa­thers sat in front of vil­lage fires at night, and told the great sto­ries of their peo­ple. Myths and Leg­ends, sto­ries of Gods and Godesses and the ori­gin of their world were chanted over and over again in order for future gen­er­a­tions to know and live the story. They were chant­ing the Great Pre­quels of the world so they will under­stand and so that things will make sense.

Pre­quels, I think, is mod­ern man’s way to go back to that world of myths and leg­ends. Our mod­ern world has brought us new sto­ries and new myths told in our books and in our movies. And while the sto­ries have become more “mod­ern”, our sense of amaze­ment and won­der have remained.

2) This is also the Age of Psy­chol­ogy. We have psy­chol­o­gists like Dr. Phil get­ting into main­stream tele­vi­sion and hav­ing their own tv shows. We have a tv show like Start­ing Over, for exam­ple, becom­ing quite pop­u­lar. Psy­chol­ogy asks us that the begin­nings of behav­ior is the key to under­stand­ing it. We behave in a cer­tain way now, because some­thing hap­pened to us in the past that led us to behave that way.

I think pre­quels com­ing out now is our soci­etal way of under­stand­ing begin­nings of behav­ior. And so we sleep more soundly per­haps because we saw how Jim Kirk solved that puz­zle of Spock which accord­ing to Startrek Lore has never been solved before or hence. Or we nod with under­stand­ing when we see Wolver­ine become who he is. Or we cheered in spon­ta­neous applause when Anakin Sky­walker finally stood up and breathed in that black cos­tume of Darth Vader.

3) In a sense, this pro­lif­er­a­tion of Real­ity Star Mak­ing shows like Amer­i­can Idol, or the Philip­pine Sur­vivor is a close cousin of this whole Pre­quels Phe­nom­e­non. When Cris Allen won, we won (unless you’re an Adam Lam­bert fan) because you saw him since Day One. You saw him audi­tion with tens of thou­sands of peo­ple. You also saw how Adam Lam­bert bowl the judges with that Cher song in Hol­ly­wood Week. You saw how they per­formed week after week after week. You saw how every­one else were voted out week after week until only the two of them remained.

They were YOUR stars, you had a hand in mak­ing them one, because (1) you saw them in the begin­ning (2) you saw their jour­ney, and (3) you voted for them. They were not some studio-produced, –trans­formed, and –dis­cov­ered tal­ent that are shoved down our throats by the media-making machines of the past. I say this with a lot of sar­casm of course.

As with the Real­ity Show–but to a lesser extent–the pre­quel (and the film it is a pre­quel to) draws out a sim­i­lar reac­tion from its audi­ence. The film becomes a jour­ney. And you grow with it.

In the end, if film and movies are a mir­ror of soci­ety, then the Pre­quels Phe­nom­e­non is mir­ror of what soci­ety looks for in itself. It is a soci­ety try­ing to make sense of its ori­gins; try­ing to under­stand why the world is what it is, and why peo­ple behave in a cer­tain way; and finally begin­ning to see that the jour­ney is as impor­tant as the destination.

What about you? What is the Pre­quels Phe­nom­e­non telling you?