Thursday Movie Picks: Prequels

Wow, it's been a while since I did one of these, but... um... I've been trying to do more writing somewhat more regularly and I suddenly remembered, I have this series and I got to wondering if it was still going on. Turns out it is! Awesome! Now I can see about participating in these events again. Hooray!

I can't promise I'll reliably have a post every week but I figure this will at least give me something to do in quarantine.

Also a chance to do some film discussion again. I know a lot of the few things I've posted recently have been more about video games with some incorporation of film theory, but what can I say? I've branched out, and there's a lot of stuff in film discussion that transfers well to other media.

Since I haven't done one of these in ages I suppose I should explain how it all works for whoever is actually still reading my sporadic ramblings. Thursday Movie Picks Meme is a regular activity hosted by a blog called Wandering Through the Shelves. The premise is pretty straight forward- each week there is a theme, and participants are challenged to pick three movies that fit the theme. The official page contains a schedule for all of this year's themes.

For this one, the theme is prequels- stories that are released after a prior installment but with stories set before the events of their predecessor, as opposed to a sequel, which usually tries to pick up where the previous entry left off.

Sometimes you can run into weird situations- like having an entry that is supposed to be a prequel but gets labelled as though its a sequel, for instance by having a "2" in the title. Other times you run into stories that are both prequels and sequels at the same time. One installment of the Borderlands series of games is cheekily titled the "pre-sequel" because it takes place in between the original game and Borderlands 2, making it a sequel to the former but a prequel to the lattter.

As I've often enjoyed doing, I decided to try to come up with some titles most people wouldn't think of. I know there are some obvious ones. I could easily point to the Star Wars prequel trilogy but that's probably going to be done by a few people. Instead, I chose some that you could almost be forgiven for not even realizing they were prequels.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Okay so technically the canonocity of Leone's "Dollars Trilogy," if one exists, is the subject of hot debate. Some fans can't even agree if Clint Eastwood plays the same character in all three films, letalone establish the a firm continuity. The fact that many of the supporting actors play different characters in each film (i.e. Mario Braga, who appears in all three films as a bad guy with a dramatic death scene) doesn't help. But most people agree that chronologically The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the last of the three films (after A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More) takes place before the other two. 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is undoubtedly the best of the trilogy, showing the full extent of the skill Leone developed over the course of making its predecessors. In this one, three men try to reach a hidden stash of gold based on partial information. Clint Eastwood, of course, returns as the "Man with no Name" (referred to here as "Blondie") from the previous films. The role of this film as a prequel is arguably most evident towards the end- when we see him finding his famous poncho and putting it on for the first time.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

You wouldn't think of this as a prequel, but The Temple of Doom takes place in 1935. Raiders of the Lost Ark takes place in 1936. Therefore it chronologically takes place before the first film, which makes it a prequel! The Temple of Doom admittedly doesn't have all that much to do with Raiders of the Lost Ark outside of the presence of Indiana Jones himself, mostly being a self-contained story that largely stands out from other films in the series in terms of narrative an aesthetic. Notably it is isn't a globe-trotting adventure like the other films (instead mostly taking place in India around a single area), and involves stopping the ruthless Thuggee cult, which is notably quite a jump from the Nazi and later Soviet armies Indy faces in his other adventures.

Some parts of the film are also just plain weird, even by Indiana Jones standards. One standout is the infamous dinner scene where our heroes are presented with the "fine dining" of live snakes, scarabs, eyeball soup, and "chilled monkey brains," a sequence that admittedly seems a lot more cartoonish compared to his later adventures. There's also a big sequence where Indy and his friends get chased in mine carts through a series of mine tunnels that look more like a roller coaster. Basically lots of insanity ensues.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Bet you weren't expecting this one. The more obvious choice for Star Wars would be the prequel trilogy, but in many ways Rogue One is a much better film.

Rogue One one is a prequel to the original Star Wars movie, following the events that led right up to its predecessor's opening sequence and (although unknown to the characters) allowing Luke's journey through the original trilogy to begin. Specifically, it chronicles the theft of the Death Star plans which, as you may recall, was crucial to the events of A New Hope, but originally happened offscreen. The film even ends more or less leading right into A New Hope's opening.

Rogue One is a really well made film, not even just as a prequel- it stands pretty nicely on its own, too. Jyn Erso has easily become one of my favorite Star Wars characters. Like the films made by George Lucas, it draws on a variety of sources. The plot itself is somewhere between a heist film and a war movie, with a lot of WWII influences. It also does a pretty good job of recreating familiar iconography and characters while still finding room for new material.

Bonus: Bioshock Infinite (2013)

I know, I'm cheating slightly by including a video game, but just hear me out!

Bioshock: Infinite takes on a number of peculiar deviations from its predecessors, most obviously the change in setting from an underwater city to a city in the sky. Basically, imagine a city that consists entirely of the worst parts of American history and culture, in the sky, with a turn-of-the-century aesthetic, and you've got the setting of Bioshock Infinite. In many ways it can be seen as a thematic successor to the original Bioshock, but it is also a prequel... sort of. The game takes place in 1912 (the original Bioshock was set in 1960). While the meddling of space and time by various characters in the game, as well as the protagonists' hopping between universes may complicate some of the timeline, chronologically it does take place before the first game. 

Interestingly, the downloadable storyline Burial at Sea directly ties Infinite to the original Bioshock, revealing how one of its key players set the events of that game into motion.