Stories where sequels are artistically impossible

[Ahriman238]

Back to the Future, they tried, but the story was effectively over.

[Batman]

Excuse me? The very freaking end of the movie said there would be a sequel.
'Highlander' was a sequels impossible movie. 'There can be only one'. Well guess what, at the end of the movie there was. End of story. Parking the TV series before the original movie was probably the only smart thing the Highlander EU ever did.

[VF5SS]

Technically I think the TV series was more of an alternate take on the premise. Just one where they got Christopher Lambert to have a cameo as a nod to the original movie. They originally wanted Lambert to do it but he wasn't up for a weekly series. Some of this was probably due to his poor eyesight since the guy can't even seen clearly without glasses. Note how basic all the fight scenes in the first movie are whenever they have to feature Lambert's face on camera :3

[Batman]

The TV series being an alternate universe would work a lot better than it being an actual prequel I agree, but at least it doesn't essentially blithely ignore original movie continuity the way the sequel movies did. Either Connor MacLeod is the last or he is not. The end of Highlander pretty unambiguously states that yes, he is, and the series avoids that particular problem by being parked in a timeframe where he isn't yet. Of course Endgame pretty much torpedoed that by having both Connor and Duncan around (as well as a ton of other immortals). I guess I'm lucky I never saw The Source (something I never heard of before this thread).

[Lost Soal]

The TV series being an alternate universe would work a lot better than it being an actual prequel I agree, but at least it doesn't essentially blithely ignore original movie continuity the way the sequel movies did. Either Connor MacLeod is the last or he is not. The end of Highlander pretty unambiguously states that yes, he is, and the series avoids that particular problem by being parked in a timeframe where he isn't yet. Of course Endgame pretty much torpedoed that by having both Connor and Duncan around (as well as a ton of other immortals). I guess I'm lucky I never saw The Source (something I never heard of before this thread).

Uhhm. No its not. I believe its when Duncan first finds out about the watchers but Joe Dawson specifically says to Duncan that Connor did them all a big favour by killing the Kurgan. So the series rewrote the movie to say the final fight wasn't the final fight and thus allowed Endgame to occur.

[Ahriman238]

Excuse me? The very freaking end of the movie said there would be a sequel.
'Highlander' was a sequels impossible movie. 'There can be only one'. Well guess what, at the end of the movie there was. End of story. Parking the TV series before the original movie was probably the only smart thing the Highlander EU ever did.

Poor phrasing on my part, sorry. The first was an excellent self-contained time travel story, and I do love an ending that promises future, unrecorded adventure. But it felt cheapened by the sequels, the first of which built up to Doc and Marty running around "backstage" on the first movie, making everything go smoothly from behind the scenes.

[The Yosemite Bear]

remember Thelma and Louise didn't die, the car landed on water.

[Faqa]

The Matrix sequels were badly executed, but the idea of the Resistance war being a cycle could have actually been done well.

What really bugged me is that they never addressed the characters' sudden upgrading or downgrading vs Agents. In the first movie, no Agent was a match for Neo by the end - he could just make them disappear. Similarly, no one else could actually defeat an Agent in face-to-face combat - just by randomly blazing away or catching them off-guard.

Then we got Morpheus swinging around a samurai sword against random Agents and Neo resorting to fisticuffs for no particular reason. It's annoying, and takes away from the characters and the perception of the world. Which, in turn, makes the stakes feel less real along with the characters.

Next step would be to, um, actually explain better why anybody cares about the Merovingian. Oh, if you think about it a lot, it makes a form of sense, but that doesn't make it work in the movie any better.

Next to that, Neo working in the real world is small potatoes.

[jollyreaper]

If you wanted to be really trippy, you could suggest that Zion and all the stuff going on in "the real world" isn't; it's just another level of the Matrix used by the machines to trap and study any who manage to escape level one.

That was the only twist I could think of that would work and seemed to be the truth when neo zapped a squiddie in the real world. Sadly wasn't the case.

[jollyreaper]

Probably the biggest flaw in the Highlander premise is the lack of guns in fights. You need to take a head, fine. Empty an Uzi in the guy's chest. If he dies, wait for him to revive and then cut his head off. If he doesn't die, take the head while he's down.

You could maybe try to write around this with all the immortals subscribing to some bushido nonsense but it's really stretching it.

The only other way to keep sword fights in the setting is if you changed the nature of the challenge and had some enforcement arm making traditional fights necessary like the way pressure and shame and honor could see gentlemen duelling with pistols or swords. Again, big reach.

[OmegaChief]

Did you miss the flashback in the first movie where Connor gets filled full of lead and this has about zero impact on his fighting capability?

[Dread Not]

If you're talking about the Nazi scene, all we see of his fighting ability is him kicking the Nazi in the knee to get him to drop his gun and then gunning him down. Though it's clear from that scene that such injuries won't incapacitate an immortal. We also see the Kurgan take a clip from an SMG to the chest and then immediately get up and is able to impale his attacker, lift him over his head with his sword and then casually toss him aside. In the scene VF mentions, Connor is stabbed several times and immediately gets up again. And in Highlander II, Ramirez and Connor each take over 100 bullets and presumably never dig them out and are still able to move and fight effectively. So yeah, we have plenty of evidence that guns have very limited effectiveness on immortals.

There's also the issue that the immortals want to keep their existence secret, and gunfights are much more likely to attract attention than sword fights.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Jeepers Creepers was originally designed so that it couldn't have a sequel, with the tagline 'Every 23 years, for 23 days it feeds'. Of course, they got around this by having a sequel fall IMMEDIATELY after the first movie, like the next day.

[Connor MacLeod]

A lot of that is just the luxury of a TV series as far as screen time goes. Like you said, even the original movie only had so much exploration of Connor's life through the centuries and most of what we got that wasn't in Scotland was him killing a nazi because he's immune to bullets and (best scene) him being drunk and getting stabbed three times. Also some brooding in his loft.

Yeah. It kinda worked for me at least because they managed to balance the 'history' angle of Connor's past with events in the present (and it ties into his relationshp with Kurgan) with all the tantalizing glimpses we get pertaining to Immortals. Even looking back it seems like they balanced things well enough that it works on its own, and its something the subsequent moveis never really grasped.

A good movie needs some more spectacle though. It's a weird fantasy concept that uses contemporary settings to have cheap fights between a huge guy and a half-blind Frenchman with swords and sparklers triggered by said swords.

Well yeah. The TV show still had plenty of swordfighting and you still had a huge number of eps where Duncan ends up killing the immortal bad guy that it becomes a bit predictable, but the TV series also managed to explore other avenues and shake things up from time to time. I remember watching when Tessa and Ritchie got shot - that was an entirely 'out of the blue' sort of thing but it worked too. Or the plotline where they introduced the watchers, or Methos, etc.

The two post TV series movies aren't wholly bad in concept, but there execution was terrible. Ideally they should have just dropped Paul and Lambert as the big stars and focused on new immortals so it would be easier to sell us making the audience care about smaller stakes. Connor won the prize three times and Duncan had defeated so many immortals that there was little left to do with them.

Well the movies are basically an extended TV episode, so yeah the concepts they had were pretty good, but they fixated on the wrong things for the movies. In 'Endgame' for example we had this fascinating idea of an Immortal hunting for this sort of 'neutral ground/retirement village' where Immortals can go if they are tired of the Game. As I recall they even had some watchers there who feared the game ending and what might happen (thus interfering with things) which would have been another interesting point to explore in the series. But those plotlines died off about midway through so we could focus on the guy who had all the powerups, and Duncan having to kill Connor so he could get enough powerups to gain even more powerups. It reduces the idea of the prize to something on the level of 'achievement unlocked' which kinda ruined the potential of that movie. They could have focused on the sanctuary for the whole of the movie, the bad guy's desire to get vengeance on Connor (thus hunting him - that was motivation enough IMHO), and the whole 'what happens if we let one Immortal claim the prize'. And they could have still had the 'lightning orgasm' at the end like you said. (how many did Highlander Endgame have btw? I'm pretty sure they escalated that.)

And the Source could have been a fascinating way to explore Immortal mythology like they did at times in the series in various ways - they didnt even have to ruin anything or explain anything - it could have been left mysterious - but I think they ruined that too by focusing on the wrong things.

*****

And regarding the 'bullets' in general. Immortals have some really bizarre aspects to their biology (in that they appear to be completely and utterly human and otherwise different from a mortal yet can in certain ways defy biology. EG like being able to breathe and swim underwater without dying.) There's something almost bizarrely 'vampire-like' about it really, and I'm not sure you could make sense of it (might be fun to try, I never bothered lol) but it exists.

I'm also pretty sure that betwene the movies and TV adaptations they've run the gamut of effects that various kinds of weapons have on killing or incapacitating mortals (Xavier using his poison gas for example) as well as how 'faithful' to the rules an immortal was - again we dont quite know why Kurgan never used guns or grenades or anything whilst Xavier used poison gas, but it happened (Immortal version of the GEneva convention?)

[jollyreaper]

If you're talking about the Nazi scene, all we see of his fighting ability is him kicking the Nazi in the knee to get him to drop his gun and then gunning him down. Though it's clear from that scene that such injuries won't incapacitate an immortal. We also see the Kurgan take a clip from an SMG to the chest and then immediately get up and is able to impale his attacker, lift him over his head with his sword and then casually toss him aside. In the scene VF mentions, Connor is stabbed several times and immediately gets up again. And in Highlander II, Ramirez and Connor each take over 100 bullets and presumably never dig them out and are still able to move and fight effectively. So yeah, we have plenty of evidence that guns have very limited effectiveness on immortals.

There's also the issue that the immortals want to keep their existence secret, and gunfights are much more likely to attract attention than sword fights.

The tv series has them die after a lethal injury and then come back. Which continuity is canon? All of them?

[VF5SS]

Yeah poor Duncan was out grocery shopping late at night and got run over by a car. They took him to the hospital and declared him legally dead. Like less than an hour later he got up and left.

Ruined his whole evening.

[JME2]

Excuse me? The very freaking end of the movie said there would be a sequel.

Actually, Zemeckis and Gale never had a plan for additional movies; the ending was just another gag, not a sequel hook. This caused problems in plotting out Part 2, such as Jennifer's presence.

When Universal greenlit the sequels, the "To be Continued..." was added for the home video release.

[The Yosemite Bear]

mind you I've always wanted to write something with a near total bodycount, but than my brain gets nagged on who do we know this story....

[Connor MacLeod]

Actually, Zemeckis and Gale never had a plan for additional movies; the ending was just another gag, not a sequel hook. This caused problems in plotting out Part 2, such as Jennifer's presence.

When Universal greenlit the sequels, the "To be Continued..." was added for the home video release.

Yeah but the way the movie ended still left ample opportunity for there to be sequels. Hell, the same was true of the MAtrix. The story within the particular movie may be essentially self contained, but it did leave enough loose threads/open ends to allow for another movie.

Whereas with the first Highlander movie, it was entirely self contained. Connor kills the last immortal, gains the prize, becomes human, etc. - there's not much real room for expansion there, unless we go with HIGHLANDER - THE MORTAL ADVENTURES.

That's what makes the Highlander sequels (Connor's at least) so awkward - they basically involve hitting the reset button to undo everything that happened in the first movie, and it really ruins the flow of things. Nevermind the whole 'time travel/space aliens' plotline that never went anywhere.

[jollyreaper]

The left behind series would be hard to do sequels to which is why they had to string them out for so long. Once Satan is ultimately defeated and heaven reigns supreme there's not much room for anything else!

[Mr Bean]

The left behind series would be hard to do sequels to which is why they had to string them out for so long. Once Satan is ultimately defeated and heaven reigns supreme there's not much room for anything else!

The Old Ones...the Greek/Roman Pantheons or the Norse Gods, we all know we want to see Jesus VS Thor.

[jollyreaper]

Or what would be funny is if you only experienced the apocalypse of the religion you adhere to. You could go comparison shopping for the eschaton.

[JME2]

Actually, Zemeckis and Gale never had a plan for additional movies; the ending was just another gag, not a sequel hook. This caused problems in plotting out Part 2, such as Jennifer's presence.

When Universal greenlit the sequels, the "To be Continued..." was added for the home video release.

Yeah but the way the movie ended still left ample opportunity for there to be sequels. Hell, the same was true of the MAtrix. The story within the particular movie may be essentially self contained, but it did leave enough loose threads/open ends to allow for another movie.

Agreed, there was potential for future installments. But since they didn't have any such plans, it was one the cornerstones of problems of Part 2. I also think they got too ambitious.

[The Yosemite Bear]

The left behind series would be hard to do sequels to which is why they had to string them out for so long. Once Satan is ultimately defeated and heaven reigns supreme there's not much room for anything else!

The Old Ones...the Greek/Roman Pantheons or the Norse Gods, we all know we want to see Jesus VS Thor.

oooh, but Judas and Loki would be competing for who is a better team killer.

[jollyreaper]

The left behind series would be hard to do sequels to which is why they had to string them out for so long. Once Satan is ultimately defeated and heaven reigns supreme there's not much room for anything else!

The Old Ones...the Greek/Roman Pantheons or the Norse Gods, we all know we want to see Jesus VS Thor.

oooh, but Judas and Loki would be competing for who is a better team killer.

The Leroy Jenkins, if you will.