randy_byers: (machine man)
[personal profile] randy_byers
So I walked into the office and heard someone say, "Wrath of Khan ... Superman II ... Empire Strikes Back ... "

And with the third title I was confident I knew what the question had been.

Date: 2010-12-28 07:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] grytpype-thynne.livejournal.com
I had the very same experience when someone said: "Town and Police Clauses Act 1841". Need I say more?

Date: 2010-12-28 07:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
I'm sorry, did you mean "Town Police Clauses Act 1847", or are you just flying a kite?

Date: 2010-12-28 08:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] grytpype-thynne.livejournal.com
Of course... I probably owe you (or Google) or drink for that in February

Date: 2010-12-28 09:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Google doesn't drink, but I'll be happy to drink for Google.

Date: 2010-12-28 10:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kate-schaefer.livejournal.com
"Drink for Google!" sounds like it should be followed with "Shoes for the dead!"

Date: 2010-12-28 10:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Drink for Gogol! Shoes for dead souls!

Date: 2010-12-28 08:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kip-w.livejournal.com
Aliens.

Date: 2010-12-28 11:06 pm (UTC)
ext_28681: (Default)
From: [identity profile] akirlu.livejournal.com
This.

As the young folk say.

Date: 2010-12-28 08:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kip-w.livejournal.com
(another answer to the same question)

Date: 2010-12-28 09:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
I would agree.

Date: 2010-12-28 08:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] holyoutlaw.livejournal.com
I fail at nerddom! What was the question?

Now, if the titles had been Stagecoach, The Long Goodbye, and Empire Strikes Back, I could have told you that question.

ETA: WAIT WAIT -- sequels better than the original?
Edited Date: 2010-12-28 08:32 pm (UTC)

Date: 2010-12-28 10:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
Superman II is better than the original?

If it's not limited to movies, the all-time standout in the category of sequels better than the original is Huck Finn.

Date: 2010-12-28 10:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Good call on the Twain.

Regarding Superman II, as I was walking away from the conversation I quoted, the second person (who had apparently asked the question) said, "Well, with Superman II ... " I think it's safe to say that not everybody agrees it's better than the first movie, although I'm one who thinks so. Less pomp and iconography, more cheesy fun.

Date: 2010-12-28 10:34 pm (UTC)
wrdnrd: (Default)
From: [personal profile] wrdnrd
As i mentioned over lunch, upon reading the "Superman II" synopsis at Wikipedia i realized that all of the "memories" i have of "Superman" are, it turns out, scenes from "Superman II," which is one measure of the success of "Superman II." Clark Kent saving Lois at Niagara Falls by shooting laser beams out of his eyes and cutting down a tree branch, for example.

Well, that's not entirely true, i do have an enduring memory from "Superman," which is my complete and utter outrage, even tho' i saw these when they came out so i must have only been about 7 or so, that Superman "turned back time" by making the Earth spin backwards. I was SO ANGRY, because if you make time go backward for 1 event by turning the earth backward, then you make time go backward for everything. So while he brought Lois back to life, he also undid all the villain-defeated he just did, too.

Ahhh, i should have known then what a huge colossal nerd i was.

Date: 2010-12-28 10:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
I'm trying to imagine the movie where Supes brings Lois back to life only to be defeated by Lex Luthor in the process. Now *that* might have raised a few eyebrows.

Date: 2010-12-28 11:07 pm (UTC)
wrdnrd: (Default)
From: [personal profile] wrdnrd
There's probably a fic out there somewhere.

Date: 2010-12-29 08:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
I've always assumed he changed a few things before reversing the process, ensuring events didn't simply replay (which is why Lois' car wasn't caught in the earthquake, since it didn't actually reoccur).

Date: 2010-12-28 11:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
Maybe the problem is that I don't prefer Superman cheesy. The Big Red Cheese was Captain Marvel, not Superman. Superman I worked because Superman was just totally square (in the hipster sense of square), which he should be. But not cheesy.

Another sequel novel generally considered to surpass its predecessor, in scope if not necessarily in quality, is The Lord of the Rings.

Among movies, how about The Road Warrior over Mad Max?

Date: 2010-12-29 12:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Yeah, I think those are both good examples of sequels that surpass the original. Since you made your first comment, I've been trying to think of other literary examples, and I'm not having any luck. You've come up with two very good ones.

Date: 2010-12-29 08:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
Mad Max II (the original title) is a bit of an odd case, because the original is basically a cop drama, whereas the second movie lifts the character out and drops him into an sf drama. Thematically, they are very different projects.

Date: 2010-12-29 04:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Though both movies share the, um, flamboyant villains.

Date: 2010-12-29 06:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
Increasingly flamboyant, but - unlike the lead actor - they stop short of being drunken anti-semite cultists.

Date: 2010-12-29 06:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Ah yes, Mad Mel.

Date: 2010-12-29 08:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
Superman II is better than the original?

Perhaps they were confusing the finished product with the footage Donner shot before Lester took over.

Date: 2010-12-29 11:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] the-maenad.livejournal.com
"Sequels that people say are better than the original but really aren't so very much different and still have most of the things wrong with them that were wrong with the original?"

Date: 2010-12-29 03:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
That's a pretty good formulation, but I would say that in most of these cases (save Star Trek) the original movie is actually good too, it's just that the sequel is better. An older example would be Bride of Frankenstein. Your joke still has a point, nonetheless.

Date: 2010-12-29 06:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
Which I screened for my brother this very evening. He appeared to have fun.

Date: 2010-12-29 06:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
An amazingly cheeky movie. Monster-on-the-cross is astounding enough, but the scene where he's running through the graveyard and knocks over the bishop's statue (IIRC) is a pretty bit of commentary too. I'm sure Whale couldn't have gotten away with that kind of thing in a non-horror film. Either the censors didn't know what they were looking at, or they weren't really paying attention.

Date: 2010-12-29 07:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
There's a lot of Christ imagery in that movie, such as the slow fade in the blind hermit's cabin, which leaves a crucifix illuminated over the sleeping creature. In his recent BBC documentary series, Mark Gatiss suggested possibly its most subversive concept was two gay guys creating life together.

Date: 2010-12-29 07:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Gary Morris made the argument in Bright Lights Film Journal back in 1997: 'When Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) arrives, he becomes part of a trio that echoes the opening scene of Mary, Percy, and Byron. Again, Whale shows us two "queens" — the mincing Pretorius and the emotionally overwrought Henry, whose attempts to marry and enter into conjugal hetero bliss with his wife are endlessly thwarted by the film. Thesiger plays the part as the grand dame he was in real life; in the film he is the diabolical ticket for Henry's re-entry into the demi-monde of fantastic homosexual creativity that finds its ultimate visualization in the stunning "creation of the Bride" sequence that ends the film.'

Date: 2010-12-29 07:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
He put it well.

That opening sequence is a giggle. I filled Mikey in on the historical background before we watched the movie (including the absent Polidori and Claremont). I take it you've seen Ken Russell's stridently bonkers Gothic?

Date: 2010-12-29 07:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Yeah, I did see Gothic many years ago on videotape, but I don't remember liking it much. 'Stridently bonkers' is a good description. Russell has never done much for me, although I theoretically admire his lack of inhibition.

There was another movie about Shelley, Keats, and Byron that I saw around the same time that also underwhelmed. So much so that I can't even remember what it was called.

Date: 2010-12-29 07:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
1988's Rowing With the Wind, with Hugh Grant as Byron? Or the same year's Haunted Summer, with Eric Stoltz as Shelley?

ps. Just realised I mis-spelt Clairmont. I blame Marvel Comics.
pps. Neither movie featured Keats, although he was alive at the time.
Edited Date: 2010-12-29 07:58 pm (UTC)

Date: 2010-12-29 08:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
It was Haunted Summer. And of course you're right about Keats. It was Mary, Percy, and Lord Byron. Duh.

Date: 2011-01-01 02:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crowleycrow.livejournal.com
"Stridently bonkers" is good but actually insufficient. It's in a category by itself, or maybe lives there with a couple of other Ken Russell's -- Lair of the White Worm? Lisztomania?

Date: 2011-01-02 07:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
Even a project which in other hands might turn out to be fairly mainstream - such as Crimes of Passion - is tipped over into the freakzone once Russell gets his upon it.

Date: 2010-12-29 07:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
I also suggested to Mikey that Bride was Hollywood's first modern-style sequel, in the horror genre if not period. It reuses the same characters, includes flashbacks and continues the storyline, but is not itself largely based upon a published sequel (as was 1936's Dracula's Daughter or the Thin Man / Saint series).

Date: 2011-01-01 02:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crowleycrow.livejournal.com
One of my most memorable film experiences was watching -- it was included in a night of "underground" movies at a Greenwich Village theater around 1966 -- the Castle Films redaction of Bride of Frankenstein. It was about 15 minutes long, silent, yet perfectly preserved everything important about the film, only increasing its intensity by concentration. (Castle Films made 8mm versions of classic or at least popular movies for the home-movie buffs.)

Date: 2011-01-01 07:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
I had never heard of Castle Films, but Wikipedia and many others have. According to Wikipedia, Universal bought a majority interest at some point, which probably explains how they got the rights to do that to Bride. Sounds fascinating! I'd love to see it. Initial googling doesn't indicate whether they're available in any form other than film.

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