Ditching stars, keeping props the secret to sequel success
Since film immemorial, the secret to a successful sequel has been the same. Get the old cast back together. Slap a “2” on the original poster. Shoot some footage and release it to the appreciative hordes who couldn’t get enough of those wacky characters the first time.
This formula kept Steve Guttenberg and Bobcat Goldthwait gainfully employed through most of the ’80s, and led to near lifelong careers for their Police Academy co-stars Bubba Smith and Michael (Man of 10,000 Sound Effects) Winslow.
But 2014 showed a new and potentially much less expensive paradigm at play. Sequels released this past year would often feature radically different casts than in the original film. In extreme cases, there would be no overlaps at all.
The Transformers series is a perfect example. Relatively few of the Transformers have appeared in each of the four movies — Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), of course, as well as Ratchet (Robert Foxworth), Megatron (Hugo Weaving, though only the robot’s head appeared in the last movie) and a few others.
The humans are a different story. We all remember that Megan Fox was MIA after Transformers 2. But Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro and others who appeared in the first three films disappeared in the fourth. In their places, brand new characters played by Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, etc. Will they return in Transformers 5? Who can say?
From a filmmaking perspective, this can only be a good thing. If one of your stars starts making unreasonable salary demands, wearing a paper bag on his head or comparing the director to Hitler, just write him or her out of the sequel. But audiences might find it harder to relate to a sequel in which their favourite characters are no more, and without any reasonable explanation.
They’d better get used to it, however. Last summer’s The Purge: Anarchy, sequel to the previous year’s The Purge, featured no familiar faces save for a few extras. (Ethan Hawke had the good sense to get killed off at the end of the first feature, thus forcing the filmmakers’ hands.)
The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, which opens Friday, moves the action forward some 40 years from the original Woman in Black, which starred Daniel Radcliffe. Result: More supernatural shenanigans with an all-new cast of mortals.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes continued the story of an intelligent chimpanzee named Caesar, played in another awards-worthy (but so far unrecognized) performance by Andy Serkis. But where was his human best friend, played by James Franco? Presumably, that character was among the billions killed off by the plague that occurred between the first movie and the second. It’s a radical method of clearing the casting slate, but it seems to have worked.
Perhaps the most extreme example of the casting switcheroo is the 2014 horror film Annabelle, a sequel to The Conjuring from the previous year. The common character, if you can call it that, is the possessed doll of the title. We have now entered an era in which props can command their own franchises.
This new year will bring, among its many sequels, Hot Tub Time Machine 2, minus the John Cusack and Crispin Glover characters that gave the first film most of its ’ 80s frisson. It won’t be the same without them. Though if 2014 has taught us anything, it’s that all you really need is the tub.