Just about everyone has declared 2011 to be the year of the sequel. With this weekend’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, prequels are also joining in on the franchise fun. The James Franco-starring movie has been doing fairly well at the box office so far, a bit surprising considering that target audience members for summer blockbusters have not likely seen the original films. Memorable prequels do not come along very often, but below we each wrote about our top five favorites.
Kayleigh
When it comes to the spirit of this list, Temple of Doom shouldn’t really be considered. Sure, it’s technically a prequel, but it’s a prequel of plot convenience. The Last Crusade provides far more back story and insight into Indy’s past. But I have a soft spot for the Indiana Jones franchise (and Harrison Ford’s smile), so as inappropriate as it might be for the list, Temple of Doom comes in first for me. Temple of Doom was the weakest Indiana Jones movie until The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came along and stole that honor, but weakest, in this case, doesn’t mean bad. Temple of Doom may be the almost-universally least-liked installment of the original trilogy, but it has a lot of value. Tonally, it does something really interesting within the franchise without doing a disservice to the character. The fact that it’s a prequel may be almost entirely irrelevant, but that might also be part of why it works so well.
As reboots go, Casino Royale is about as good as it gets. The James Bond franchise had become nearly as laughable as its parodies and Casino Royale unearthed the hidden potential of the franchise and allowed James Bond to be the kind of guy worthy of a 22-movie legacy. Daniel Craig brought a rawness to the character that simultaneously elevated Bond to a new level and made him more of an everyman. Craig’s Bond is far from perfect, but in the best way. The action sequences are engaging and surprising, but not so surprising as to cross the line to purely comical. On top of being a good action movie, the film succeeds in providing insight into why Bond is Bond without slapping us in the face with forced flashbacks or awkward speeches. The exposition isn’t seamless, but it’s not obnoxious either, which is more than can be said for most prequels.
Sometimes it feels like I’m the only person who liked Attack of the Clones. It’s admittedly been a while since I saw the movie and, while I’m a Star Wars fan, my passion for the series pales in comparison to the diehard devotees, but I saw Episode II as an interesting installment. Of course the film has its flaws (the acting stands out), but it delivers on meaningful exposition (and really, if you’re watching the Star Wars prequel trilogy, that’s at least part of what you’re after) and the last 45 minutes are almost pure action. Did I mention I kind of like action?
In keeping with the tradition of things I liked that most people hated, X-Men Origins: Wolverine wasn’t really that bad, was it? I could have done with fewer attempts to pull in characters from the X-Men universe, but I enjoyed the Wolverine experience. The film succeeds largely thanks to the dedicated Hugh Jackman, who rarely fails to bring his A game and never as Wolverine. Throw in a strong supporting cast that includes Live Schreiber as a believably conflicted villain, and the characters are nearly enough to pull the movie along. The action sequences aren’t show stopping, but they certainly aren’t dull. Most importantly, the subject of the film warrants a prequel. Wolverine is a compelling character with a rich history that informs, but is not retroactively dependent on the events of the X-Men movies. A prequel demands a subject with a past worth delving into and Wolverine at least brings that.
It’s no Care Bears in Wonderland, but the Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation is…well, it’s a Care Bears movie. There’s not much defending it. It’s a muddled attempt to explain the genesis of the Care Bears and company and it fails on many levels, but I’m still getting over my anti-Batman Begins sentiments and I wasn’t allowed to skip it and put The Dark Knight on my list so here we are. I love a lot of questionable movies and the Care Bears franchise is pretty high up there on the questionability scale, even for me. What A New Generation does well is not explain the origins of the Care Bears. No one really cares (not even me) and the story isn’t all that compelling. The Care Bears Movie II is much more interesting in its depiction of evil than in the origins of the good that’s come to thwart it. The movie’s villain, Dark Heart, is fairly scary and, unlike most of the Care Bears foes, actually raises questions about the nature of evil. While most of the villains in the Care Bears’ universe bumble around trying to force their nastiness on the world (or just Care-a-Lot – they’re not necessarily that ambitious), Dark Heart exploits the potential for evil in a fundamentally good character, inadvertently explaining the importance of the Care Bears and their crusade against meanness.
Todd
The Godfather Part II is mostly a sequel, but its best material features Robert De Niro in an Academy Award-winning performance as a young Vito Corleone, Marlon Brando’s character in the 1972 original. By effortlessly moving between young Vito’s rise to power as a young immigrant and his son Michael’s (Al Pacino) corroding empire decades later, director Francis Ford Coppola’s masterwork comments on capitalistic ambition and the essence of the American experience. De Niro’s performance is one of his best, capturing the spirit of Brando’s character without resorting to cheap imitation. The score by Nino Rota only intensifies the warm, poetic cinematography by Gordon Willis. For quite some time, this was my all-time favorite movie, and it remains one of the most remarkable achievements in American cinema.
Although Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is widely recognized as the third entry in the Man with No Name series, it is rarely thought of as a prequel. Its predecessors, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, took place in the aftermath of the Civil War while the third and best in the trilogy takes place in the midst of that very conflict. The score by Ennio Morricone is immortal, frequently lampooned and reappropriated in pop culture. The theme is so ubiquitous that people often forget what a truly stunning piece of music it is. Clint Eastwood is legendary as “the Good,” and for the incredibly epic final standoff among the three titular characters alone, Leone deserves to be mentioned alongside the greatest filmmakers.
The James Bond franchise did not deserve Casino Royale. In the decade or two before its release, the series embodied everything wrong about nostalgia. Certainly not demanding quality, fans continued to care about mediocre action fare simply because of the brand name recognition. But with Casino Royale, director Martin Campbell demonstrated not a return to form but a serious film that uncharacteristically explored Bond’s psychology and delivered hard hits instead of tongue-in-cheek gags. It made us aware of potential we never expected. Campbell stages the action sequences with such mastery that was completely absent from the visually-incoherent follow-up Quantum of Solace. The script gets a bit cute at times as Bond stumbles through a drink order and learns his lesson about never trusting others, but Daniel Craig does everything with such conviction and poise that just about all of it works.
The first time I saw Batman Begins, I was bored by the first act. Bruce Wayne training with the League of Shadows did not particularly interest me, but I managed to enjoy the rest of the origin story. But upon revisiting the prequel before the release of The Dark Knight, I realized what a fantastic job Christopher Nolan did with this film. Writer and director Nolan is mostly a showman, a man who prioritizes scale over substance, but his reboot of the comic adaptation series is a character-driven drama that is more interested in Bruce Wayne than in the superhero Batman. This movie is seemingly always on TV, and I always stop to watch it. It is relentlessly entertaining and an emotionally engaging blockbuster. When Batman reveals his true identity, he tells childhood sweetheart Rachel Dawes, “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.” It would be a cornball moment in most movies, but it comes across as sincere and heartfelt here.
George Lucas did not want Nazis again, so he and Steven Spielberg made Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom a prequel. Unlike many of entries on my list, the film did not provide a back story for the character we loved in the still-thrilling Raiders of the Lost Ark. It simply gave us another great adventure that happened to take place before the events of its predecessor. With a first act of gross-out gags, the film is far from perfect and typically considered the worst of the original trilogy. But I long for the day when a popcorn flick this compelling could be considered the weakest of a blockbuster franchise. The mine car and bridge sequences are among Spielberg’s best work, and it pulses with the sense of humor that makes the Indiana Jones series so enduring. I have yet to bring myself to watch The Kingdom of Crystal Skull, so this admittedly remains my least favorite Indiana Jones film. However, considering the quality of its predecessor and its follow-up, The Last Crusade, this underrated prequel still needs to be seen by any true movie fan.
