Reba: 0:00

What they lost was potentially sales, because if I liked that movie, I would have bought that movie, had it been converted to video, had it been shown in streaming later on, they lost money on that movie because I expected them to deliver something that they never did.

Terry: 0:20

Tell us how you really feel.

Brandon: 0:22

Right? I was gonna say we don't raise your but I think it's safe to say mom would get that zero sugar cubes. Hello and welcome to the Cup of Tea Critiques Podcast. I'm your host, Brandon Chaisson, and like always, I'll be joined today by the great team that brings you cupofteacritiques.com we are excited to get started on our podcast where we will share our perspectives on several areas in movies and television. At Cup of Tea Critiques, we review movie and television series and tag them with a tea brew that evokes a feel for the production in this way you can decide for yourself if they're your "cup of tea." Here on the Cup of Tea Critiques Podcast, we will dive even deeper into the productions and topics we broach on our website, engaging in conversation and sharing our unique perspectives on each topic. Ready for a deep look with the deep brew. This week's topic, sequels, serials and audience expectations. I'm so stoked to get started. Cup of Tea Critiques is a family business, and I'm here with my brother Chris, my mother, Reba, and my father, Terry. And fam, I remember when we were talking about this in preproduction, and we realized just in trying to define the difference between sequels and serials that that was actually a much harder thing for us to do than we originally thought.

Reba: 1:48

Yeah, it was. We had to do quite a bit of research and try to bring a number of different sources together and spend some time talking about it and just figuring out for ourselves what would be an appropriate definition for those.

Terry: 2:03

There's a lot of back and forth going on.

Brandon: 2:07

Yeah. I mean, like everybody, we've seen so many movies that fall under the idea of sequels, but we realized that defining them was actually really important. So basically, here's the big difference, a sequel is the next story for previously established characters. Well, in comparison, you're talking about a serial that is one story that's told over multiple parts. And just to give you an idea, when you're looking at a movie title, oftentimes a serial can be defined by the way it's tagged at the end. So for example, it'll say something like Volume 2 or Episode 6. It's sometimes like that, but it's not always gonna necessarily get tagged, but that can help give you an idea of the difference between the two. And Chris, you ran across something that showed that this has actually been something we've seen through the history of productions. Correct?

Chris: 2:56

Correct. From the 1910s to the 1950s serials were shown in movie theaters, usually in conjunction with a movie. So movie-going was more of an event in those days and so a lot of times, people would go and they would see maybe multiple movies, or they see a movie and some cartoons they would show, or they would show serials which were generally kind of action adventure in nature. And they were shorts that were put together and shown on a weekly basis, so kind of kept people coming back to the theater. So if you, if you look a lot of them up, you'll see these long run times, but they were broken down into shorter segments. You know, it's almost like an anthology, except it's continuous. So lot of the popular ones, they'll probably sound familiar, but some main ones were Robinson, Crusoe, the Lone Ranger, Flash Gordon, Dick, Tracy, The Three Musketeers, The Green Hornet. And there's plenty of other ones, but that's something that used to be kind of a mainstay in theaters at early 20th century. And so since then, the definition and the nature of serial has has evolved a little bit.

Reba: 4:17

Interesting

Brandon: 4:19

Yeah, and it's kind of crazy, because we've seen sequels, and we've seen so many stories now have a lot more to tell that it seemed like it was a new thing, but it turns out, this is actually something that's gone through the test of time when it comes to to any type of production. With that in mind, not to be funny, but Mom and Dad, you guys have had probably more experience when it comes to sequels. So really help us out here. I feel like when we know that it's a second in a series, whether it's a sequel or a serial, what goes into something being a good sequel?

Terry: 4:55

Well, for me, it's story and how you can. To extend the story of the characters without trying to repeat the same thing that you did in the first story. I know that lot of audiences are comfortable with a lot of the things that go up to make a first or an origin story or the original story, and I think that sometimes sequels fail in trying to repeat too much of what made the first one successful. I think if you just stick with the characters, and you give us maybe more of the characters something that we didn't know about the characters in the first story, along with, obviously, if it's an action movie, good action. How much is too much? You know, those are things that I would have to weigh in on, just having things that blow more things up. Some people are happy with that. That's what the if for an action sequel, that's what they want to see, more things blowing up. I'm now one that necessarily wants to see more things blow up. I'm more interested in the continuation of the story and the development of the characters.

Reba: 6:13

Yeah, I agree with your dad. A sequel should not mean the same or repeat. It should mean continuation. The characters have to grow, because some time has passed between the predecessor movie and now the present movie, and so since some time has passed, that means the characters will have had to grow and not just grow. They need to have matured some over that time as well. So they can't just get bigger, but they also would have had to have changed to some degree. And so nothing is more frustrating than to get excited about a sequel and to find that these characters have largely not changed, perhaps physically they have changed, but otherwise they have not. Don't pretend like time froze. So that is a huge, huge thing for me.

Brandon: 7:09

I think Chris wants to add something in here as well, right?

Chris: 7:12

Oh, just in terms of what makes a good sequel, I think sequel needs some new blood, some new characters. I think obviously a new villain, I think helps. I think if it's not the same villain, just kind of getting out of jail or something. I think if it's a new villain, it helps, because we see somebody, it's a new obstacle, and it's like, well, great, how do we defeat this guy or entity, whatever the villain happens to be? But also even on the on the good guy side, I think a a new character, and I especially think about buddy comedies, like cop buddy action comedies. I think it helps when you kind of introduce a new character in there, because you're taking two partners who the first movie was all about how they didn't mesh, and how they started to mesh as they got in these life or death situations. And so I think sometimes it benefits the story to just throw in a new character that kind of upsets this chemistry that they've now established. You know, an example just, I would say, Lethal Weapon 2. You had Danny Glover and Mel Gibson kind of just a little at odds in the first movie, as they get to know each other. And then second movie, you throw in Joe Pesci, this, you know, very talkative guy, cracking these jokes and stuff like that.

Excerpt from Lethal Weapon 2: 8:35

Clip from Lethal Weapon 2

Chris: 8:48

And it creates humor for the audience too, because we know how impatient Danny Glover's character is, and he's being paired with this, this kind of loud mouth that wasn't in the first movie. So I think, I think some new characters really can help make a sequel feel like its own movie, and then kind of reintroduce some more humor and some more

Brandon: 9:08

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah. I can conflict. agree with all that Chris I've I found that in searching for like, a good sequel, I was struggling to come up with examples, necessarily, because, and this will cover this more as we keep talking today, I realized that I probably lean more towards following serials typically, but in general, what I'm looking for is a lot of what everybody has said here. I don't want a repeat of the past. I've already seen part one. I don't want to see control C, control V and put a slap of two on that is absolutely boring, and that's just one of the things that I just can't stand. When it comes to the sequel. I often feel like if I do go to a movie, and that's what the case is, if I had the time in my life, I would write a stern letter and demand my money back, because they can't give me my time, but they can give something back. Don't give me the same thing again. I want to see these characters grow from part one to part two. I don't care in what capacity, but I want to see like the familiar characters that are going to come back, how are they different than that previous one? Sure, they should still be somewhat the same, but shouldn't they show some effects of what happened in the first movie as to who they are. Now in this movie, and that's what I really look forward. I look forward to seeing an example for me which might lean more towards serialized to them, and figure out which category this goes into. But like Rocky 2, Rocky 1 occurred. Rocky is this character that has no fame whatsoever. He's picked up off the streets to do this fight. Apollo Creed doesn't take him seriously, and all of a sudden it's an actual fight. Well, in the second film, Apollo realized I'm not taking this guy lightly. I want a rematch. I want to fight this guy again. I want to prove that I am the champ unequivocally.

Excerpt from Rocky 2: 10:58

Clip from Rocky 2

Brandon: 11:00

Well, Rocky's also affected. He's a stronger fighter as a result of this time against Apollo the first time around. He's also a known entity at this point. So I like that they progressed those characters, and while many of them were the same from the previous movie, at least it wasn't the exact same story. Sure it's boxing, sure the same two fighters were fighting, but they didn't just go, okay, yeah, I'm the champ. Uh, he ain't nothing no. Apollo, he needed to show that it wasn't just an ego, that I am that darn good and I like that. He wanted to step up to that challenge. So, so that's one of those examples for me as a sequel, time plays a role into if we can or will enjoy a sequel. And I don't know who wants to take this first. Let's kick it to Chris first. Like tell me about does time play a role in whether or not a sequel can be good?

Chris: 11:59

Yeah. I mean, I think it's not even specific to sequels. The time can really throw off how any movie is received. And I think with sequels in particular, though, you can have a window where we're primed for a second installment of a movie, and everybody's waiting for it, and maybe it gets to a certain point where we have so much entertainment being thrown at us left and right, if you don't capitalize on that window, people might not be as jazzed for the sequel by the time it actually comes out.

Terry: 12:34

You know, sometimes you can't do it, because if you wait too long, the characters of age to the point where if you're not willing to put the story in that time period, then you can't have someone who was 17, and you come back they're 30 years old, and try to pretend they're 20. You know.

Reba: 12:54

Yeah, yeah, you risk the dramatic change in their physical appearance if you take just too much time with that. Also, I think if you take too long and again, I don't know, I can arbitrarily say five years, but again, that would be arbitrary. Typically, movies that are that made into sequels are usually blockbuster movies. They're not independent films, and so they have huge audiences, and you get jazzed for these movies because there's just a lot going on in them. So how long can you stay hyped up in anticipation for that next film? And so that's why I say five years maybe to say, I can't wait for this next one. And I think about Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And I really like that movie. And I'm not talking about the original set of movies that were done in Sweden. I'm talking about the American version with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.

Excerpt from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: 14:01

Clip from The Girl with the Dragon

Reba: 14:09

It was very, very good. And by the way, that so were the Tattoo Swedish movies. I'm not saying that's not the case, but the US version was very, very good. And so we couldn't wait. We knew that there were more books for this series, and so we couldn't wait for the next installment, and it never came. It never came. It never came. Finally, it did come. Or what we thought was going to be the next installment. Instead, what we got in 2018 was the fourth book in the series, The Girl in the Spider's Web with Claire Foy and Beau Gadsdon. It was released seven years later, and it was not based on a story written by the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Daniel Craig and. Rooney Mara's, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was released in 2011 It was directed by David Fincher and based on the first book in a series started by Stieg Larsson. The Girl in the Spider's Web was released in 2018 It was directed by Fedd Alvarez and based on the book by David Lagercrantz. So we had different authors, we had a seven year lag in release dates. We had a story that was out of sequence, and we had different actors. And so when we went to see Girl in the Spider's Web, we were very, very disappointed with this film. So I think the longer you wait, the greater likelihood there is that you lose an audience, or there's likely to be a very disappointing outcome.

Chris: 16:00

Yeah, and I adding on to that, I think that the thing that can sync sequels can be poor casting actors who are miscast, and some of that can come from just the original. Actors aren't available anymore. And so sometimes when you wait too long, you know to make a sequel, or things can't come together as soon as possible, actors pursue other opportunities. Some of them, we mean, they don't want to sit on their hands, or they don't want to be typecast, you know, they want to do the movie and they want to move on. So if you're going to get a sequel with keeping as many of the original cast members as you can, sometimes time is of the essence. So I think poor casting, or your actors being miscast, or or just a beloved actor that's no longer available. So even if the the actor you get in the next one's good might not be as good. And so I think that can, that's something I can definitely sync sequels. And just going back to something else that I think can sing, a sequel is, and they, and you see this sometimes, almost when they're it seems like they've run out of ideas. Is they just put them in a different country. And sometimes those movies where you just take the you just take the crew, and you throw them into some, some other country, they just lend themselves to these kind of cheap stereotypes and mocking other places, customs and other places, populations, and this just kind of disregard for them. And I think that makes a lot of sequels poorly received and poorly in the eyes of critics. It's just like, this is exploitative on some level.

Brandon: 17:44

That's a great point, Chris. I didn't think about the exploitative nature of some sequels, where they do just try and just move them someplace else and then say, Oh look, it's the same story, but let's make fun of this aspect of that society, as opposed to ingratiating and actually showcasing it. It's the judgment of the story, and it does kill the excitement for it. We're talking about the timing aspect of it initially, and we've actually touched on a few things that make for not being an enjoyable piece. But one, one storyline, for example, that I felt really killed the timing, or where timing had a big effect. Anyways, the Major League series, Major League 1, came out at the end of the 80s. I think it was in 1989 and it was hugely popular. It was so much fun to watch, even for myself as a kid, when I watched it on regular television, I didn't get all the wonderful colorful language to go along with it. It was absolutely exciting.

Excerpt from Major League: 18:52

Clip from Major League

Brandon: 18:53

Then fast forward five years. They waited five years to release its sequel, but the sequel storyline was supposedly happening a year later, and Mom, you talked about the aging of characters and or the actors rather, and you can see that a bit as to why it wasn't as enjoyable. The other thing for me was I felt like they tried to basically remake the entire first movie, and all they did differently was add maybe a character or two, but otherwise, it felt like they were doing the exact same thing all over again. They, how do you turn into a championship squad the previous season? And then now you're trash and, oh, let's become a championship squad again. That was very boring for me. And then Chris

Reba: 19:33

That, and they were about what, seven years older. I mean, they looked a lot, they looked a lot older. I mean it wasn't even credible.

Brandon: 19:42

Right. And then the other thing that Chris brought up was also, I think, Well, Chris or you mom, one of you guys brought up were the actors not still being available in this instance. Wesley Snipes was one of the big draws for the first movie, just with the way he portrayed Willie Mays Hayes, that character was now covered by Omar Epps, both of them good actors in their own. Right? But it felt very weird seeing Omar Epps be Willie Mays Hayes, because Wesley Snipes was Willie Mays Hayes. And it just, it felt like they were trying to recreate it and say, Oh, look, this person looks semi similar. They can, so all of these things I felt were red flags going into the movie. And they certainly showcase why it was harder to enjoy it at the time for me. Anyways, I can pick out pieces to enjoy it now, because it's been long enough for me, but still, it really did pull away from it being as enjoyable a movie as as a sequel could have been in that case, and they really could have just done some other things.

Terry: 20:37

I wish in that case, they should just make another character. I really think, rather than insult the audience's intelligence, just make them a different character.

Brandon: 20:47

Yeah, he's the vet. He left in free agency. We got somebody. It's that easy. They could have done something like that. They just kind of, they to me, it was control C, control V, and that was boring. So why make that the only thing you give us in a sequel that being said is sometimes the reason a sequel isn't good, simply because of the expectations we walked into the movie with. Is the problem how we wanted something to be, as opposed to if the movie was actually made well.

Reba: 21:16

Can, can I comment on something first before we do jump into that? I just wanted to

Brandon: 21:20

Go for it.

Reba: 21:21

I just wanted to say some of the things that that make I was just thinking about some of the things that make a movie bad, like the lack of credibility of relationships between characters, for example, the lack of depth of characters and the development of a plot, I think, generally, whether it's a sequel or not, those are things that make for bad movies. And so when it comes to an audience's take on a movie, I think if those things are just not working, then they're just not working. I don't think it has anything to do with audience expectations or anything. I think they're just make for a bad movie. Your question was, do audience expectations have anything to do with how well a movie is received, Brandon?

Brandon: 22:16

Yeah, we're talking about certain things we don't like with or do like with sequels. But I'm saying can sometimes the audience expectations influence whether or not a movie was actually or we end up saying that it is or isn't good, but the movie could actually be good. We just went in with the wrong expectation?

Reba: 22:32

I don't think the audience can never go in with wrong expectations. I think the audience's expectations are what they are. I go back to 2003 to go see Bad Boys II, and I was very much in anticipation of this movie.

Excerpt from Bad Boys II: 22:52

Clip from Bad Boys II

Reba: 22:54

You all know, and your dad is sitting up here snickering already. And I buy my ticket and grab my popcorn and soda. And this is before you can reserve seats at the theater. So of course, I get there early because I want to sit where I want to sit, and I am ready because I enjoyed Bad Boys so much, only to be exposed to what turned out to just be a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible movie. Falling of dead bodies out of trucks, the digging around in cadavers for money and drugs, the upper body exposure of a female cadaver, excessive use of slow motion effects to magnify the penetration of bullets into bodies. All of that was just a big much. Pulling a gun on a kid at the door, blowing off half a person's body with a mine, showing a carved up body in a barrel. All of that was just over the top. It was just a terrible movie. And when you add to that, that the relationship between the characters were not believable. The characters were quite shallow. The plot stunk. It was just a bad, bad, bad movie. Did this have anything at all to do with my expectations? No, it had to do with the fact that the movie was terrible. They didn't sell me on the relationship between Lowry and Sydney Burnett. They didn't sell me on the relationship between Marcus Burnett and his sister Sydney Burnett. They didn't sell me on the fact that Sydney Burnett was an FBI agent. Gabrielle Union is beautiful and incredible actor. She needed to be more like Vanessa. Williams's character in Eraser. She could have been that kind of character, but instead, she shot off a gun unconvincingly and screamed every time she was just even a little bit scared, and she relied heavily on Lowry and her brother for everything. That didn't make any sense. There were so many problems with this movie. It had nothing at all to do with my expectations. It had everything to do with the fact that this movie was just a bad movie. It had to do with the fact that I expected you to deliver something that respected my money, my time and my taste, and they didn't do that. So okay, what they lost was potentially sales, because if I like that movie, I would have bought that movie had it been converted to video, had it been shown in streaming, later on, they lost money on that movie because I expected them to deliver something that they never did.

Terry: 26:06

Tell us how you really feel.

Brandon: 26:08

Right. I was gonna say we don't rate things here, but I think it's safe to say Mom would give that zero sugar cubes.

Terry: 26:14

Yeah

Chris: 26:15

I agree with everything you said, but I also think it's possible to go in. I mean, maybe it's kind of proves your point. It's probably it's possible to go in and not get what you expected, and it could still be good. Like we brought up Nosferatu before that, you said you were expecting a different version of Nosferatu. Did it impact how you saw the movie? Did you think it was bad because it wasn't what you expected? Or did you think this is a good movie, but it's not what I expected.

Terry: 26:43

The latter. I thought it was a good movie. I thought it was very well done. I thought they did a good job. The technology, obviously, in presenting the film was better than the original, which was done early 1900s or whatever it was, maybe even before that. But yeah, I think the movie was well done. I enjoyed it even though it wasn't what I expected.

Reba: 27:14

And perhaps I have to pull back. But in my view, the audience is what it is they are the boss. It's their money, so their expectations have to be considered and trust that the studios know this when they make blockbusters. They know this and event in film, the priorities a little different. But for blockbusters, studios want people in the seats, and they expect to make serious change off of these films, so it's what the audience wants.

Terry: 27:55

This is doesn't relate so much to sequels, necessarily, but you were saying about audience expectations and the onus being on on film makers, loosely speaking, whatever those are, advertising may affect audience expectations. I can think of two movies that were not sequels, but may or may not have lended themselves to being sequels or having sequels are the advertisement for class and the advertisement for Urban Cowboy. Both movies, I don't think did what they expected to do they had at that point. I guess young a list actors in it in class, there was Andrew McCarthy and Rob Lowe. But it was almost advertised as kind of slapstick, a little bit too much the detriment of what the story was about. I thought the underlying story of the movie was what they should have been presenting, but they tried to make it a little more silly comedy, not just the fact that it was humorous, but it was kind of some somewhat silly comedy. And Urban Cowboy, there were a lot of people that said that they didn't even know what that meant, which was odd in and of itself. But maybe the advertisement would have set the audience's expectations a little better had they done better in the trailers. So I think that advertising has a bit to do with audience expectation, but that still falls back into what your mother said in terms of the onus being on the filmmakers to present it in such a way that they get what they want from the audience as well.

Brandon: 29:40

I think you both have touched on the truth, which is that it's on both parties. In some cases. I mean number one. In general, anybody creating a production, the onus is on them to create something that's good. And when you've given us one part, that's been very. Good you've set the precedent, meaning that you are going to create another good product for your second act period in whether you intended to or not, in terms of making a part two or a sequel, since you've made this one and you've decided to make two, you need to make a good product at the same time, we, as the audience members, when we're going in, we we have no choice to have but to have had our expectations set. You made something really good. We are expecting to see something really good. The fact that you've made something good the first time means absolutely you should have made something good second time, because that's the reason why I'm giving you my money again. That being said that you and Chris were talking about Nosferatu, it's still our job to know what we're going into. And even if we go in with this thought that it's going to be one production, we should be open enough to accept that, hey, this wasn't what I expected to walk into. But that doesn't mean that this wasn't something good, this wasn't something that I experienced, that I enjoyed. So I feel like that means both are important. Go ahead, Chris, yeah,

Chris: 31:00

I so I think it, and maybe that's an interesting challenge for filmmakers is, I think about the challenge for, say, a comedian. I think a really a comedian, can make you laugh at things you disagree with, right? So it's a challenge for filmmakers to not meet your expectation, not meet you where you're at, and still leave you with a really good product where you walk away going, well, it wasn't what I expected, but it was. It was pretty darn good. And I think maybe a recent example of this, maybe whether it succeeded or not, was the sequel to Joker. It turned out to be a musical playing out with the backdrop being the Joker on trial. And that disappointed a lot of fans of the first movie, because that's not really what they were expecting. And so unfortunately, I haven't seen it, but I would say I could see the filmmaker going well, I put Lady Gaga in it. All. The posters are of them dancing, and you're surprised, I made a musical? So, but maybe it was a bad musical. So it's, so it could be, it could be either or, but it's an interesting challenge for filmmakers. Or maybe they go, well, I have this built in audience, I should respect their expectations, or I'm going to make something different and you're still going to like it, because I'm that good.

Brandon: 32:27

Yeah, Chris, I'm really happy you brought up. It's, I believe it's pronounced Joker folly I do, and to kind of give the idea of duet sequel, that kind of deal. But nonetheless, yeah, I want to see that movie, because I really enjoyed the first one. However, and we talked about this on a previous podcast, the subject matter was so heavy, if you were paying attention to it and went in in the proper head space. Anyways, it was one of those movies that I would struggle to see multiple times, because I think they did a really good portrayal of understanding that, like this, is a mental health situation, and letting us see that unfortunate, slow, painful decline for that character, which is why, when he came back and made a musical, I haven't seen it yet, because I need to be in the right headspace to give it a fair chance. And right now I can't. There's an there's a an implicit opportunity here that with his sidekick, when you're talking about Harley Quinn, that you can make a sequel off of her being introduced into the storyline as well, which was the whole purpose of this movie. Well, it's the direction they were taking, but the idea that they did it through a musical when you just made something as heavy, I felt that's what I wanted to see, is how bad the mental health situation is, but also how this can unfortunately bleed into other people, and how that that can anchor down and create even more unfortunate chaos and in such a sad piece of that story. And I'm concerned going into this movie, when I before I finally see it anyways, I'm concerned that the fact that they made it a musical almost made that too light of a subject matter. They almost made it too funny, as opposed to keeping the same reverence for mental health like they did the first time around. That being said, we talk about sequels. We're talking about serials, and we evaluate a serial story a bit differently than we go into the evaluation process for a sequel. You agree with that, right?

Terry: 34:26

Yeah. In terms of serials, it reminds me of Lord of the Rings as a continuing story of the trilogy. Some people had big issues with continuity in Lord of the Rings in that a lot of things that happened in the story of The Lord of the Rings happened out of order in the movies. And there was a lot of social media back and forth on, how could you do this? And then there's a, just in terms of what people expect in some of the next movies, there were some characters that were left out of the story, to the dismay of a lot of fans.

Chris: 35:13

I would say, yeah. I think serials have a little bit more leeway to be like the previous part, because, like we said, it is a continuous story, and I think you generally already know where it's going. You know what the second movie is going to look like. Before you even finish the first one, you have some idea of where it's going. And I think, since it's kind of an overarching story, I think maybe some of the same things I said about sequels don't apply. I don't. You don't necessarily need new characters or new villains. It could be the same villain because you probably haven't conquered that villain yet. It can be the same characters. There's probably going to be just if it's a big enough project anyway. So I think it's maybe not beholden the same criteria that we say of sequels. And I think what Dad's referring to is the expectation in a lot of these serials is that you're somewhat stick to the original work, because a lot of them are adapted from something. And so I think maybe that's the different expectation, as opposed to sequels, it's like, well, are you, are you following the blueprint that was laid for you? If there is one?

Brandon: 36:28

Yeah, I feel like the unfortunate thing with sequels is everybody is expecting an exact brand new story. And when a director or whatever decides to embark on that sequel, they think that, oh, this was the big draw from the first movie. That's what I have to make sure I feature more in the second movie, whereas with the serial, I think even the director goes into it knowing, hey, I'm continuing something that literally just ended, so I'm picking it up right where it left off. I don't have to recreate the first movie. It's a story. It's moving along. So they look at as one absolute flowing measure, and that's why I think I tend to enjoy serials more than sequels. Personally, I go into it knowing that for myself, I'm not looking for something that they did in the first movie to be done again in the second.

Reba: 37:16

And this is just for my, you know, edification, someone writes a story, it's turned into a movie. Their intent was not necessarily right, anything beyond that, but studio comes back to them and say, that was great, let's continue the story.

Brandon: 37:34

I don't think they come in saying, let's continue the story. I think they're saying, hey, we need another one of those. I get the sense that oftentimes, when it comes to a serial, it's because the creator of this entity has already thought of several stories, or the storyline as a whole, where they wanted to take this character from its inception to the end of

Terry: 37:55

A good case in point is Game of Thrones. Yeah.

Theme from Game of Thrones: 38:10

Intro from Game of Thrones

Terry: 38:16

In that respect. You know, they made it into a set of episodes, but that was a story that ultimately wound up they were ahead of the author in terms of his producing work in the continuing story, but he did have an idea of what the entire story entailed. A little different than from what what you were presenting. Is that somebody presents a work, it gets turned into a movie. And then they say, We want another one. I think the definition of what another one is is what needs to come into play in that and then they write it from there. Yeah, is it going to be a sequel, or is it going to be an extension of the first story?

Brandon: 38:58

I think when they say another one that's often mentally already setting them up for sequel as opposed to serial, because it's not something that they already dove into. As for the expectations going into it, though, like yes, Dad brought up Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson filmed those three movies all at once to give one story, and you can feel that they're giving you one story. You almost feel like the actors, to the same extent, gave you one story. That's the kind of stuff that I enjoy. I'll go one more and one that I feel like bleeds or overlaps between sequel and serial. Is the Marvel series. And take it for what it's worth, Marvel with the Infinity saga, literally, was 20 plus movies put together to tell one story. And when you go into it like that, you're like, okay, I can watch these from beginning to end and follow along the story of the creation of The Avengers all the way through their fight to you know beat Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet. But tied into that were a lot of sequels. Captain America is the first story that one is set during World War Two. Captain America's Winter Soldier. Fast forward, 70/80, years, it's its own story. It's a psych, it's a sequel. Captain America Civil War, again, move forward. It's it's own movie. So you can see within this series that Marvel was able to give us both. But that's how I can feel like within that series, how I can differentiate between what is the sequel versus what is the series.

Terry: 40:33

Yeah, kind of circle back we were talking about the passing of time between an original or the first story in a sequel, I think one that was well done, even though a lot of time passed, was Maverick, Top Gun, Maverick.

Excerpt from Top Gun: Maverick: 40:50

Clip from Top Gun: Maverick

Terry: 41:06

They did, yes, they let the characters age in there, and they didn't try to make something that that wasn't with it.

Reba: 41:15

Yeah, they did a good job with that. How much time passed between those two movies?

Brandon: 41:20

Like 20 years, right? 25/30, years?

Terry: 41:23

A good 20 years, yes.

Chris: 41:25

So maybe the lesson there is, if you if you miss your time window, you can wait longer. I mean, seriously, you can wait longer and just kind of make a new story and just use the fact that that much time has passed to create a story with your new characters and your older characters, and you can recast them. Just don't try to pretend that they're still 25.

Reba: 41:48

Exactly.

Brandon: 41:50

So the next thing I want to give to, in pretty much, the last thing we want to talk to as though, is that what we what we've also talked about with these is that it's not necessarily tied to and Chris, you wanted to say something to this a sequel being good or bad is not always necessarily tied to if it has the same director. Do you agree?

Chris: 42:09

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it could help. And in certain, in certain respects, maybe you get the whatever another director does well, you get that added to the story, and he still has something to refer off of with the original. I really think the prime example of a franchise where the the director changes hands, or the story changes hands, and it actually picks up a notch as I think the first Alien is pretty good by Ridley Scott. I think Aliens is the best in that franchise. I think the second movie is better, and that's done by James Cameron. And I think maybe you've got to benefit from James Cameron's style a little bit, in a way that instead of just having Ridley Scott there to kind of do what he does, James Cameron had Ridley Scott's version to go off of, and also his own, his own directing style. And I think a lot of casting can be just based on relationships with the directors. So maybe you benefit from who else a director knows and can bring in to be part of his creative team or part of the cast. And so it's this case where handing it off to someone else might not always be a bad thing.

Reba: 43:26

Yeah, I agree. There are a number of examples of franchises having different directors, and these are all successful franchises as well. I think, for example, about Harry Potter, which was highly successful franchise. The first two had the same director, and frankly, Chamber of Secrets is my favorite Harry Potter installment. But the third movie, Prisoner of Azkaban, had a different director. Mission Impossible franchise, Rogue Nation had a different director, Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, a different director. Bourne Identity had one director, and Bourne Supremacy and Borne Ultimatum had different directors, Paul Greengrass. And all three Bournes were really good. Well, I didn't include the fourth Bourne in there, but nonetheless, the Bournes with Matt Damon were all very, very good, and the last two had a different director than the original. So I don't think you necessarily have to maintain the same filmmaker in each, and plenty of examples.

Chris: 44:39

And certainly there may be somewhere, you know, I think to our point, it may depend on the project. Because imagine getting someone other than Quentin Tarantino to do Kill Bill Volume 2, you know, now you're Yeah, and for a film that's stylized and that much about sound and sound design, what if you lose a sound guy? Uh, and we so not only you lost you lost the director's touch, you lost a sound guy. You might lose the composer. Now you got a completely different film, even if you're trying to emulate that style.

Brandon: 45:12

Yeah, yeah. Um, I want to touch on a couple of things here. One is there, there are some cases where having the same director, I think absolutely plays a role in how the movie was portrayed and how why the sequel was so good. And I'll give you while I haven't had a chance to take in both of these to completion, but take the Godfather series. Godfather 1, Francis Ford Coppola. Godfather 2 is considered the best in that series that was his sequel. It's he really paid attention to detail to make sure that he gave such a second act. In that sense, Mom, you brought you, picked up the the other one I wanted to talk about when it was the Harry Potter series. And in this situation, I think it was really beneficial to that it's, it's an eight movie series in the original series, anyways, but Chris Columbus does the first two movies. So in this instance, the second part in the serial, same director, but what he had to present to us was more of a child like Harry Potter and his friends, whereas if you look at like David Yates directed Harry Potter and a Half Blood Prince. So that's the sixth movie in there, in the storyline, a much older, heavier tone. And I think it was good that it changed hands, because it also allowed the characters to grow up. I think the different directors allowed the story to actually be told perfectly for the age group and the tone that it was trying to transition into.

Reba: 46:35

Yeah. Good point. Really good point.

Brandon: 46:38

Yeah, Dad. I mean, do you have a sequel in your mind that was never made?

Terry: 46:44

Miami, Vice which was a good, good story in and of itself, bringing the TV series to the big screen, but they never made the sequel to it, although there's rumors that they were going to do another one. They never got around to doing it. And then the other thing was with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. They were actually slated to do a series of movies, and they screwed that up by just time passing and passing and passing to the point where, to Chris's point, the actors were no longer available, and everything went to hell. Matter fact, they supposedly had them on the contract for two additional movies, I thought, but it just never came to fruition.

Chris: 47:37

I'm having trouble coming up with, Little Little Big League 2. Would that be any good?

Brandon: 47:43

I mean, if you, if you tell that story, well,

Chris: 47:46

You know, I think maybe a good sequel would would be, um, Bill, Bill Billy, whatever you want to call him. He's to your point. Bill Haywood. Uh, Bill Heywood must be allowed to speak his mind. I think in this age of in this age where sports teams are so influenced by analytics departments, it would be interesting to maybe see a movie where Bill is kind of experiencing that there's some insistence that he has this analytics department, and he's just clashing with them. And he's like, I know how to run a baseball team, math nerds or whatever. And so he it becomes about whatever he ever learns to mesh with this new with this kind of new style and new and Chris story.

Brandon: 48:30

You know what? Too, Chris. Let that story. Chris. You should write the story. But in addition to that, let the let the analytics guys, the ones that are running it, be the same friends from the first movie, and so it's friend conflict in that situation, and them trying to get on the same page on how to make that franchise thrive again, like Billy doesn't want to go towards analytics, because he learned all this from his dad or grandfather and stuff like that. Comparatively speaking, his buddies, who honestly love the franchise as much, delved into mathematics, ended up being analytics, and they are. That's the clash.

Reba: 49:06

There's one of them be the guy that, uh, one of the guy, the guy, the guy that answered the question on the board, yeah, remember Bill? Remember he had a question, he had a question. One of the guys answered it on the board, the math question,

Terry: 49:20

Yeah, painting a house, yeah, why didn't get a house already painted?

Brandon: 49:29

Bowers, I think, is the one that, uh, yeah. I'll wrap this with one last question for the for the panel and everything. So if you were producing a sequel of serial, if you could only have one aspect that you could have total control over. Which aspect would you want? Would you want? Cast, script, Director, some other entity. Which one would you want? Dad, I'll start with you.

Terry: 49:53

Generally speaking, I would want to have the script, because I think the story is of the utmost importance. Not to say that none of the other aspects of filmmaking are important. But I think it starts with a strong script and something that you know, it's your story. So I would probably start with the script.

Reba: 50:18

Yeah, for me, it would be the cast. And that is because I care so much about representations. Representations tell us a lot about who we are. So, yeah, it would be cast.

Chris: 50:36

I'd I would go director. I would go director, because I think there's, I think the director's influence can have such a broad reach in terms of who he brings in to be part of his crew, what actors he can bring in to be part of the cast. You know, a lot of directors, they they, they have their guys, they can call him up, and it's like, I'm there. I will make this a priority. And so you get that benefit. I would imagine powerful directors have the influence to go off script. So if I have a lackluster script, maybe my director can maybe not make it perfect, but he could make it better. Um, so I think you benefit from just how much influence the director can have over a project if you get that guy. And so that's probably what I would go with. And speaking in the most general sense, now there's specific projects where, if we're doing another John Wick, I want Keanu. I don't really care who the director, you know, it's but in the general sense, yeah, I would definitely go a director, and especially because there's certain directors where I feel like I know the kind of atmosphere they're going to create on set too. Some of these directors are even the good ones, but some of them are loons, and they make life hell for everyone on set, and so no one really enjoys the the the process. And so if you got a director who's not only doing a good job but knows how to make everybody they're comfortable and make it as enjoyable of an experience as possible, that's a powerful thing. And and so I would go with the director.

Brandon: 52:20

And I'm going to continue being the audience member, because then I am, preferably, specifically, I want to be the audience member that gets to see the pre screening so that I can tell you exactly if you hit the mark or why you are way off the mark. And hopefully I have enough influence on you to go back and fix it up. So it is the sequel it's meant to be.

Reba: 52:41

The official reviewer.

Brandon: 52:42

Yes

Chris: 52:44

You're gonna sit there, and these are crap, crap, crap, more crap.

Reba: 52:52

Interesting.

Brandon: 52:55

Oh, well, that's gonna wrap up another edition of the Cup of Tea Critiques Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and figuring out your cup of tea along with us. Honestly, we could continue going on and on like we do at our dinner table, but we're just thankful you guys came and enjoyed us, and we look forward to you joining us again next week for another great discussion. You can stay in the loop on all things COTC by subscribing on our website, at cupofteacritiques.com you can also find us on Facebook. Check out our Instagram@cupofteacritiques, and on Letterboxd at COTCritiques. For Reba Terry and Chris. I'm Brandon. We'll see you next week for another deep look with the deep brew.