Entertainment
Scream Makes One Fatal Mistake About Sequels
By Jennifer Asencio
| Published
Scream 7 is now out in theaters, marking the 30th anniversary of the original film, which came out December 20, 1996. We’ve seen many Ghostfaces since the originals because the movie spawned so many sequels. Whoever dons the Ghostface mask should really review the success rate when they start their murder sprees because their odds of survival are very low, and Sidney (Neve Campbell) typically makes them scream before ending this round’s killers. The franchise was aware of all this as early as 1997, in Scream 2.
This first sequel sees the survivors of the first movie now in college, with wise-cracking movie buff Randy (Jamie Kennedy) in a film class discussing sequels with his classmates, Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Mickey (Timothy Olyphant) among them. During this self-aware metacommentary, Randy states that “Sequels, by definition, suck.”
This starts a class discussion in which various sequels are nominated as violating this rule. The problem with this discussion is the fact that the movies they bring up are fundamentally different kinds of movies, not sequels in the truest sense.
Aliens Is Bigger, Badder, And Not A Slasher
“Get away from her, you bitch” is an iconic line from Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Aliens. This is the first movie that is brought up in that classroom discussion. Aliens is a very different kind of movie compared to Alien, which is at its core a slasher movie: a very claustrophobic film where the survivors have no escape from the killer, and a vastly more innocent Ripley.
Aliens may share an IP with the Alien characters and the universe in which they live, but the content and tone is fundamentally different. Aliens is action and horror with a greater focus on the badassness of the Marines and Ripley. The scope of the film is pulled back: Alien was shot in close angles, sharing that claustrophobic atmosphere of the Nostromo interior, while Aliens gives us a sprawling colony before taking us into its inner workings.
It would also be unfair to call Aliens a better movie than Alien because the motivations of the characters are distinct. The Marines go looking for a fight, not running from it like the Nostromo crew, trying to survive a singular killer. They’re heavily armed soldiers being overwhelmed by hundreds of biological weapons, not unprepared space truckers who don’t know what they’re getting into.
Terminator’s Transition From Sci-Fi Horror To Action Blockbuster
In the Scream 2 classroom, Cici accuses Mickey of having “a hard on for Cameron,” so naturally that means the next films discussed were Terminator and its continuation. Once again, though, the scope of the two movies are so diametrically opposed that to compare the movies side-by-side does both a great disservice.
The first movie is about a young woman named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) who is being pursued by an enemy that does not need to eat, to sleep, to stop, or to rest. The Terminator could follow her no matter where she ran. At this point in her life, she is an aggressively average young woman with no special skills or talents, a victim who has had her life ruined by something she may or may not even do in the future.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day, with its dramatic opening score and intense imagery, instantly alters the scope of Sarah’s universe. It’s more than just a young woman staying one step ahead of an unstoppable killing machine. We see the broken lives that the first Terminator left behind in its destruction. A company that will ensure SkyNet lives again. A son torn from his mother, fueling his delinquency as he moved from foster family to foster family.
The machines that haunt Sarah’s memories return, proving that she was not insane. It’s not just the survival of one woman based on a future act of creation: it concerns the entirety of the human race facing a monster of its own making. It falls into the same category as Aliens in that it expanded the franchise through action rather than relying on scares and that feeling of being stalked.
Its themes may have resonated strongly with audiences, but it was so divorced from the haunting terror of the T-800 in large part because the second movie turned the Terminator into an action hero and a way to defend the humans from the unstoppable force he seemed to be in the first movie, dampening the stalking element by making it too easy to fight.
House 2 Is An Unhinged Escalation
Mickey sardonically tells his Scream 2 classmates that House 2: The Second Story is his next suggestion. House and House 2 are two films that have absolutely nothing in common other than inheriting a creepy house that also just so happens to be a gate to another dimension. House tries to come off as a comedic horror movie, with casting that included sitcom stars William Katt, George Wendt, and Richard Moll. However, it is inconsistent in its application of theme and tone.
The intensity of the Vietnam flashbacks that influence the main character’s experiences with the other dimension hit on societal issues in the 1980s as America dealt with the aftermath of the war. The disappearance of his son in the pool at his aunt’s house, leading to his divorce, was also a glaringly serious theme in an otherwise comedic film. The conflict between the weight of memory and the promise of a better future underpins the theme of this movie, which contributed to how inconsistent it felt.
House 2 took out the trauma of the war. Instead, they decided to throw everything else at the script just to see what sticks. Horror is merely a consideration in this film, an excuse to have over-the-top effects.
What happens when you add a caveman from the epoch of the dinosaurs, some Aztecs, two zombie gunslingers, an actual dinosaur, and a dog-a-pede that is now some sort of pet? Don’t know? Neither does the movie. The madcap escapades of this movie were closer to the tone the first film seemed to be chasing, so maybe in this case, Mickey had a point, even if he was both being sarcastic and secretly a serial killer.
Randy Fumbles On The Godfather
Seminal and iconic movies The Godfather Part 1 & 2 are not two movies in the distinct way the others were, but they are the final movie in the classroom discussion. These two movies are a much longer single work, segmented out of sequence, almost like a Tarantino film. The Godfather 2 doesn’t so much continue the original as much as frames it. While it would be incredibly difficult to understand the plot elements of Part 2 without seeing Part 1, this is because they are the parts of the book that were cut out to make the first movie.
Of all the examples that are brought up in the film class scene, The Godfather and The Godfather 2 are the ones least like what they are discussing. These two movies go together in a way the others cannot. They do exhibit great storytelling told over the span of decades. Both movies contain a scope that mirrors the epic poems of our collective past. This “hero’s journey” is told from the vantage of the criminal boss about themes of family, duty, loyalty, and, in their twisted world, a form of honor. But one is not the sequel of the other.
For someone who was supposed to be as knowledgeable about films as Randy from the Scream franchise, he let this one slide when it was so clearly incorrect. This is especially remarkable since he later denies the sequelhood of The Empire Strikes Back on the same grounds.
An Apples And Oranges Debate
“Name one sequel that surpasses the original” was Randy’s challenge to his class to start the discussion in Scream 2. The ones mentioned in that scene are widely considered to “be better” than the original. But other than sharing a name and setting, the movies are largely only better because they’re different from the originals and deserve to be recognized on their own merits. There are plenty of sequels that better fit the parameters of the discussion, but odds are pretty good that none rises to the challenge, except maybe some of the Scream sequels themselves.
Scream 7 is in theaters now. Does it surpass the original?