Building a Trilogy
I saw Pirates of the Caribean 2 last night. I never saw 1, mostly cause I avoided it like the plague and tried very hard NOT to see it. Well, a series of circumstances led me to see 2 last night.
After listening to my fellow viewers whine alot, I started thinking about movie trilogies; characteristics of them, how they succeed, how they fail, etc. So now you get a new essay for your reading pleasure.
Movie Trilogies
There are several triolgies I am mostly going to reference here: (original) Star Wars, Back to the Future, Matrix, and Lord of the Rings. Other notable ones will be (mostly ) left out, such as Indiana Jones, The Godfather, the new Star Wars, and Pirates of the Caribean, because I've never sat and watched Jones as a complete whole as opposed to separate movies, I've never seen Godfather 3, the new Star Wars figures more as a septology (is that a word?) then a trilogy, and I've never seen parts 1 or 3 of Pirates. Others, such as X-Men, will be left out because they really are a sequel of a sequel vs a true triology.
The First Movie
The first movie, of the 3 of them, must have the most self-contained plot. One reason for this is because some creators aren't sure they'll get a chance to make the next part. Another reason it that, as much as suspense and intrigue gets an audience, if they walk out the door feeling nothing has been completed, they're less likely to like the movie. The purpose of the first movie is the get your audience to fall in love with the story and the characters. Leaving too much suspense will hurt that.
This movie must also establish the main characters. Just so we're all on the same page, here's a list of the movie's I'm using's main characters:
Star Wars: Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Threepio, and R2. Villian: Darth Vader
Back to the Future: Marty & Doc Villain: Biff?
Matrix: Neo, Morpheus, & Trinity Villain: Machines (more on this later)
Lord of the Rings: Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Pippen, Merry, & Boromir (who is, interestingly enough, seemlessly replaced with Gollum in 2 & 3) Villian: Sauron
Through the first movie, the main "good" characters spend most of the movie together. They form bonds, friendships, romantic relationships, etc, with each other, and we, as viewers, understand how they relate to one another.
The this movie establishes the "world" the movie exsists in, how it looks, how it feels, how characters act in this "world".
The Second Movie
One of the main characteristics of this movie is that the characters are spilt-up, and spend very little time together as a group. In Star Wars, they spend the beginning scenes together, but are quickly split into 2 groups. In Back to the Future, Marty and Doc run around solving problems, and reunite in-between. Same with the Matrix. And in Lord of the Rings, they are split into 3 groups before the movie even begins, and stay that way through the whole movie!
This also occurs in Pirates and Godfather (I would say that Michael and Vito are the main characters). The main characters are rarely all in the same place at the same time. I don't think this occurs in Jones, simply cause I can't think of a second main character.
The story is darker than the previous story, and the danger is much closer. The good guys are more likely to have a direct confrontation with the main bad guy then in the last one. All the Star Wars characters face Vader (Leia was really the only one who had before), Marty gets in more than one real fight with Biff (yeah, I'm stretching, he's a lame main villain), Neo fights machines face to face, and LotR characters face off large Orc armies.
The second movie has the LEAST resolved story of all of them. While the first movie sets up the universe, the second movie sets up the third movie. The suspense is greater.
Having said that, even this movie should have some type of beginning, climax, and resolution. SOMETHING should have been accomplished that furthers the main plot of the trilogy.
Here's another weird characteristic of second movies: they usually end with a main character (though not the "main" main character) having "died" or facing mortal peril. Star Wars it's Han being frozen in carbinite, Future it's Doc's disappearance, and Matrix it's Neo's collapse. LotR does NOT share this, however, it was SUPPOSED to. The second book ends with Frodo's capture and death. This sets up for the thrid movie's quest.
What goes wrong:
Where do second movies fail? One thing that causes problems is exsisting characters. Some fans miss seeing their favorites together. Some don't like the way their favorites are behaving. Some times this is just the fans being picky.
However, sometimes the creators really do lose the "voice" and the essence of their characters in-between movies. This will make for a bad movie.
Sometimes they lose the essence of the universe. One way that I really believe Matrix "failed" is that so much of movies 2 & 3 were spend in the real-world, and it was the Matrix we liked.
Next is New Characters. New characters can be a hindrance or a blessing. At their worst, they can feel like Mary Sues. Suddenly, old favorites thar we've spend 1-4 years enjoying are having their scenes and screen time stolen by new ones we have no alligence to. The creators assume that we'll just like them right away, without spending the time to craft them like they did the originals and disrespecting the originals in the process. Matrix did that. All of a sudden their were all these new charcters we really didn't care about, but had to follow anyway. I even felt this way a little bit with Eowyn in LotR, but I wasn't a LotR geek ahead of time, so maybe I just don't understand. :)
My last little pet peeve from Matrix: chose you're secondary characters to expand carefully. I enjoyed Agent Smith in the first Matrix, but he just bugged me in 2 & 3. Really, he never quite hit the "mega super-villain" role to me. He would have been better off dead.
What goes right:
Giving screen time & important roles to the main characters. This is key point; give us more of what we want. Also, expland the characters without losing their essence. Han and Leia may like each other, but they don't start acting like love-sick puppies (though I'm pretty sure people probably hated that development at the time). Sam really grows into his role, as does Aragorn. Things that were hinted at in them get developed more.
New Characters: Yes, they can be done well. Look at Faramir. It's important to use them sparingly, but with importance. They should be used to support the main characters' pursuits, not overshadow them. Give them to the fans a little at a time, and the characters will start to grow on them.
Up the stakes. Most triolgies tell some kind of epic story (even Jones was fighting Nazis), and this is where the shit really should hit the fan. Also, think about it this way: In almost all tv shows and movies, the climax is hit 3/4 of the way through it. In an hour tv show, it's at about the 40-45 minute mark. If you're watching a 2-hour movie on tv, it hits at the 1.5 hour mark. So in a trilogy, the climax of the whole thing should be hitting 20 minutes into the thrid movie. The second movie ends knee-deep in rising action. This movie should feel suspenseful, and should leave you excited and waiting for the finale.
The Third Movie:
The third movie wraps it all up, at the same time as really bringing on the drama. New characters are rarely introduced, the universe is not so much as expanded as broadened. Everything is bigger, grander, and scarier.
While 2 ended with the loss of a character, this movie begins with a quest to find said character. Strangely enough, this is usually a pretty quick quest, a little breather over in the first 20ish minutes before we hit the main climax.
In this movie, their is usually some type of reunion of the main characters. They don't quite spend as much time together as in 1, but definetally more than in 2. In Star Wars they're all together in the beginning, through a lot of the middle, and again at the end. Marty & Doc spend most of the movie together. Matrix, not so much, but we'll get to that. The LotR characters might spend only a few minutes all together at the end, but we get several other reunions too: Frodo & Sam; Merry, Pippen & Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli; Merry & Pippen, etc.
This movie's plot is more closely tied to the main plot than the other 2 movies. The resolution of the sub-plot is dirrectly tied to the resolution of the main plot.
While often in the other 2 movies the good chracters were mainly reacting to the bad characters, in this movie the good characters take the fight to the bad. Star Wars the characters attack the Death Star, instead of being attacked by it. Matrix the characters go to the Machines instead of avoid them. Sam & Frodo finally reach Sauron, and Aragorn literarlly takes the war to Sauron's doorstep in LotR. (And no, even I can't make this analogy in Future; that trilogy is becoming an annoying anomoly.)
The characters grow into their roles. Luke is a bad-ass Jedi Knight, Aragorn acts like a king, Neo is really a savior, Marty is a real adult, and even Doc seems to have finally matured (age and intelligence doesn't mean maturity). These are people who know who they are and what they must do.
What goes wrong:
Third movies have actually have a higher success rate I'd say than second movies. But they can disappoint.
Crappy ending. The creators spent all this time, effort, and money building up, and they can't deliver. If the main plot ends badly, it taints the whole trilogy. (See: Matrix)
Short/Lack-luster reunion: Fans want to see the main characters interact. They spend the entire last movie NOT seeing them interact. If it's too short, or worse, lack-luster (anit-climatic, boring, characters don't interact "right" with each other), it will hurt the movie. Matrix failed here. The characters died (at least, Neo & Trinity did; I can't for the life of my remember what happened to Morpheus) pretty much alone, and we didn't see enough of them together before that.
This is a repeat from the second movie: too much secondary character time. If you did your job right last movie, we may like them now, but don't Mary Sue them. They still aren't the stars. And it you didn't do them right, we will just hate them (and the movie) more.
What goes right:
Starting with a bang. Knock the viewer socks off in the first act of the movie. I still think this Star Wars has one of the most kick-ass openings of any movie. You start a movie off with high-energy, high-stakes, and a lot of fun, and fans will be grinning in their seats, thinking "this is so sweet", and be really excited for the rest of if. You sell the movie early on, and they'll buy the rest. Don't believe me? Watch Kung Pow. You won't be sure about the movie until the baby sequence. After that, you'll laugh at pretty much anything they give you.
Showing the main characters at their finest. Sure, they can still be flawd, but they have to be heroic enough that they do it right when it counts.
Giving a hint of what comes after. We don't need to see in detail the rest of the history of time, but enough to know that Everything Will Be Alright In The End will leave us with a bit of hope at the end. Face it, people do want to be inspired, and most really do want everything to work out for the good in the end.
A good reunion. I really think this hits the most important key of the third movie. Fans want to see the main characters together, happy, and united, at least for a little bit. Give the main characters screen time, important stuff to do, and let them spend sometime together, and your movie will work.
The End
Why do my posts always go so much longer than I intend?
PS. In case you didn't notice, I had a real hard time fitting Future into all this. It never really seemed to fit. However, taking it out would just be ignoring it, and since I'm trying to make generalizations about triologies, that seemed like a cop-out.
However, thinking about it gave me a weird theory. The biggest problem with it was that it doesn't seem to have a main threat, and Biff/Biff's ancestors seem like pretty lame main villains. So I wonder, is time itself sort-of the main villain? All the problems they faced really were because they messed with time....
Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.....
After listening to my fellow viewers whine alot, I started thinking about movie trilogies; characteristics of them, how they succeed, how they fail, etc. So now you get a new essay for your reading pleasure.
Movie Trilogies
There are several triolgies I am mostly going to reference here: (original) Star Wars, Back to the Future, Matrix, and Lord of the Rings. Other notable ones will be (mostly ) left out, such as Indiana Jones, The Godfather, the new Star Wars, and Pirates of the Caribean, because I've never sat and watched Jones as a complete whole as opposed to separate movies, I've never seen Godfather 3, the new Star Wars figures more as a septology (is that a word?) then a trilogy, and I've never seen parts 1 or 3 of Pirates. Others, such as X-Men, will be left out because they really are a sequel of a sequel vs a true triology.
The First Movie
The first movie, of the 3 of them, must have the most self-contained plot. One reason for this is because some creators aren't sure they'll get a chance to make the next part. Another reason it that, as much as suspense and intrigue gets an audience, if they walk out the door feeling nothing has been completed, they're less likely to like the movie. The purpose of the first movie is the get your audience to fall in love with the story and the characters. Leaving too much suspense will hurt that.
This movie must also establish the main characters. Just so we're all on the same page, here's a list of the movie's I'm using's main characters:
Star Wars: Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Threepio, and R2. Villian: Darth Vader
Back to the Future: Marty & Doc Villain: Biff?
Matrix: Neo, Morpheus, & Trinity Villain: Machines (more on this later)
Lord of the Rings: Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Pippen, Merry, & Boromir (who is, interestingly enough, seemlessly replaced with Gollum in 2 & 3) Villian: Sauron
Through the first movie, the main "good" characters spend most of the movie together. They form bonds, friendships, romantic relationships, etc, with each other, and we, as viewers, understand how they relate to one another.
The this movie establishes the "world" the movie exsists in, how it looks, how it feels, how characters act in this "world".
The Second Movie
One of the main characteristics of this movie is that the characters are spilt-up, and spend very little time together as a group. In Star Wars, they spend the beginning scenes together, but are quickly split into 2 groups. In Back to the Future, Marty and Doc run around solving problems, and reunite in-between. Same with the Matrix. And in Lord of the Rings, they are split into 3 groups before the movie even begins, and stay that way through the whole movie!
This also occurs in Pirates and Godfather (I would say that Michael and Vito are the main characters). The main characters are rarely all in the same place at the same time. I don't think this occurs in Jones, simply cause I can't think of a second main character.
The story is darker than the previous story, and the danger is much closer. The good guys are more likely to have a direct confrontation with the main bad guy then in the last one. All the Star Wars characters face Vader (Leia was really the only one who had before), Marty gets in more than one real fight with Biff (yeah, I'm stretching, he's a lame main villain), Neo fights machines face to face, and LotR characters face off large Orc armies.
The second movie has the LEAST resolved story of all of them. While the first movie sets up the universe, the second movie sets up the third movie. The suspense is greater.
Having said that, even this movie should have some type of beginning, climax, and resolution. SOMETHING should have been accomplished that furthers the main plot of the trilogy.
Here's another weird characteristic of second movies: they usually end with a main character (though not the "main" main character) having "died" or facing mortal peril. Star Wars it's Han being frozen in carbinite, Future it's Doc's disappearance, and Matrix it's Neo's collapse. LotR does NOT share this, however, it was SUPPOSED to. The second book ends with Frodo's capture and death. This sets up for the thrid movie's quest.
What goes wrong:
Where do second movies fail? One thing that causes problems is exsisting characters. Some fans miss seeing their favorites together. Some don't like the way their favorites are behaving. Some times this is just the fans being picky.
However, sometimes the creators really do lose the "voice" and the essence of their characters in-between movies. This will make for a bad movie.
Sometimes they lose the essence of the universe. One way that I really believe Matrix "failed" is that so much of movies 2 & 3 were spend in the real-world, and it was the Matrix we liked.
Next is New Characters. New characters can be a hindrance or a blessing. At their worst, they can feel like Mary Sues. Suddenly, old favorites thar we've spend 1-4 years enjoying are having their scenes and screen time stolen by new ones we have no alligence to. The creators assume that we'll just like them right away, without spending the time to craft them like they did the originals and disrespecting the originals in the process. Matrix did that. All of a sudden their were all these new charcters we really didn't care about, but had to follow anyway. I even felt this way a little bit with Eowyn in LotR, but I wasn't a LotR geek ahead of time, so maybe I just don't understand. :)
My last little pet peeve from Matrix: chose you're secondary characters to expand carefully. I enjoyed Agent Smith in the first Matrix, but he just bugged me in 2 & 3. Really, he never quite hit the "mega super-villain" role to me. He would have been better off dead.
What goes right:
Giving screen time & important roles to the main characters. This is key point; give us more of what we want. Also, expland the characters without losing their essence. Han and Leia may like each other, but they don't start acting like love-sick puppies (though I'm pretty sure people probably hated that development at the time). Sam really grows into his role, as does Aragorn. Things that were hinted at in them get developed more.
New Characters: Yes, they can be done well. Look at Faramir. It's important to use them sparingly, but with importance. They should be used to support the main characters' pursuits, not overshadow them. Give them to the fans a little at a time, and the characters will start to grow on them.
Up the stakes. Most triolgies tell some kind of epic story (even Jones was fighting Nazis), and this is where the shit really should hit the fan. Also, think about it this way: In almost all tv shows and movies, the climax is hit 3/4 of the way through it. In an hour tv show, it's at about the 40-45 minute mark. If you're watching a 2-hour movie on tv, it hits at the 1.5 hour mark. So in a trilogy, the climax of the whole thing should be hitting 20 minutes into the thrid movie. The second movie ends knee-deep in rising action. This movie should feel suspenseful, and should leave you excited and waiting for the finale.
The Third Movie:
The third movie wraps it all up, at the same time as really bringing on the drama. New characters are rarely introduced, the universe is not so much as expanded as broadened. Everything is bigger, grander, and scarier.
While 2 ended with the loss of a character, this movie begins with a quest to find said character. Strangely enough, this is usually a pretty quick quest, a little breather over in the first 20ish minutes before we hit the main climax.
In this movie, their is usually some type of reunion of the main characters. They don't quite spend as much time together as in 1, but definetally more than in 2. In Star Wars they're all together in the beginning, through a lot of the middle, and again at the end. Marty & Doc spend most of the movie together. Matrix, not so much, but we'll get to that. The LotR characters might spend only a few minutes all together at the end, but we get several other reunions too: Frodo & Sam; Merry, Pippen & Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli; Merry & Pippen, etc.
This movie's plot is more closely tied to the main plot than the other 2 movies. The resolution of the sub-plot is dirrectly tied to the resolution of the main plot.
While often in the other 2 movies the good chracters were mainly reacting to the bad characters, in this movie the good characters take the fight to the bad. Star Wars the characters attack the Death Star, instead of being attacked by it. Matrix the characters go to the Machines instead of avoid them. Sam & Frodo finally reach Sauron, and Aragorn literarlly takes the war to Sauron's doorstep in LotR. (And no, even I can't make this analogy in Future; that trilogy is becoming an annoying anomoly.)
The characters grow into their roles. Luke is a bad-ass Jedi Knight, Aragorn acts like a king, Neo is really a savior, Marty is a real adult, and even Doc seems to have finally matured (age and intelligence doesn't mean maturity). These are people who know who they are and what they must do.
What goes wrong:
Third movies have actually have a higher success rate I'd say than second movies. But they can disappoint.
Crappy ending. The creators spent all this time, effort, and money building up, and they can't deliver. If the main plot ends badly, it taints the whole trilogy. (See: Matrix)
Short/Lack-luster reunion: Fans want to see the main characters interact. They spend the entire last movie NOT seeing them interact. If it's too short, or worse, lack-luster (anit-climatic, boring, characters don't interact "right" with each other), it will hurt the movie. Matrix failed here. The characters died (at least, Neo & Trinity did; I can't for the life of my remember what happened to Morpheus) pretty much alone, and we didn't see enough of them together before that.
This is a repeat from the second movie: too much secondary character time. If you did your job right last movie, we may like them now, but don't Mary Sue them. They still aren't the stars. And it you didn't do them right, we will just hate them (and the movie) more.
What goes right:
Starting with a bang. Knock the viewer socks off in the first act of the movie. I still think this Star Wars has one of the most kick-ass openings of any movie. You start a movie off with high-energy, high-stakes, and a lot of fun, and fans will be grinning in their seats, thinking "this is so sweet", and be really excited for the rest of if. You sell the movie early on, and they'll buy the rest. Don't believe me? Watch Kung Pow. You won't be sure about the movie until the baby sequence. After that, you'll laugh at pretty much anything they give you.
Showing the main characters at their finest. Sure, they can still be flawd, but they have to be heroic enough that they do it right when it counts.
Giving a hint of what comes after. We don't need to see in detail the rest of the history of time, but enough to know that Everything Will Be Alright In The End will leave us with a bit of hope at the end. Face it, people do want to be inspired, and most really do want everything to work out for the good in the end.
A good reunion. I really think this hits the most important key of the third movie. Fans want to see the main characters together, happy, and united, at least for a little bit. Give the main characters screen time, important stuff to do, and let them spend sometime together, and your movie will work.
The End
Why do my posts always go so much longer than I intend?
PS. In case you didn't notice, I had a real hard time fitting Future into all this. It never really seemed to fit. However, taking it out would just be ignoring it, and since I'm trying to make generalizations about triologies, that seemed like a cop-out.
However, thinking about it gave me a weird theory. The biggest problem with it was that it doesn't seem to have a main threat, and Biff/Biff's ancestors seem like pretty lame main villains. So I wonder, is time itself sort-of the main villain? All the problems they faced really were because they messed with time....
Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.....