Why the Sequel Is Where Genres Mutate

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 13:00:00 +0000

The sequel has a terrible reputation and mostly deserves it. For every follow-up that earns its existence there are five that xerox the first film with the contrast turned up, and the word “sequel” has come to mean diminishing returns, a franchise squeezing a corpse for one more drop. That is the commercial reality. But it obscures a stranger truth that any patient watcher of genre cinema eventually notices: the sequel, precisely because it is a compromised commercial object, is where genres do their most interesting evolving. The original invents a set of rules. The sequel is contractually obliged to give you the same thing again, cannot, and in failing to repeat itself is forced to mutate. That failure is the engine of a great deal of genre history.

Blade Runner 2049: The Sequel That Earned Its Silence

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

A sequel to Blade Runner was, for thirty-five years, the sort of idea that made cinephiles wince before it made them curious. The original had already fractured into seven arguable versions; its whole authority came from restraint, mood and a question it refused to answer. The obvious way to make more money from it was to explain it, expand it, and stuff it with action. That Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 Blade Runner 2049 did almost the opposite is the first small miracle. That it did so while running nearly three hours, opening slow and staying slow, is the second.

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Why the Sequel Is Where Genres Mutate

Blade Runner 2049: The Sequel That Earned Its Silence