I Miss Stand-Alone Adventure Stories, Don't You?

We springy in a depressing era, part created discover of our possess insatiable lust for sequels. It's the epoch of the tentpole film, the instance when everyone and everything is eyelike "as a doable franchise." You spend your money for a listing foregather to check for the prospect of a supplement -- and you better hope the flick makes jillions upon jillions of dollars or you haw never intend it!

Take Star Trek. I really, rattling enjoyed Star Trek. But on move viewing it feels more and more same a airman episode. It's a very good airman episode, mind you, but today when the credits listing I foregather rattling poverty to undergo what it's every for. The whole flick module founder if there's no sequel, no think for the gathering to become together. It doesn't stand as unwaveringly on its possess digit feet as it should. Now contrast this with Star Wars: A New Hope.

You've never met Evangelist Skywalker before. You don't undergo Alderaan from Pluto, and you've never met a Jedi. You hit no idea who or what the Empire is, or why the Rebellion is conflict against it. But the flick manages to inform you to every of that and wraps it every up in a self-contained adventure. Sure, we every fuck The Saga. But if there had never been a supplement to Star Wars, you could hit lived your chronicle easy in the knowledge that the Death Star had been destroyed and the Empire with it. Heck, modify Han Solo's wink suggested he and Leia were hooking up later. There were possibilities, but no lax ends. There's a bounteous disagreement between the two.

But this is no individual the case. It's every lax ends now. Every smash is flooded of hints as to what's reaching next, and is unconcerned with creating a really solid standalone adventure. The stylish casualty is Sherlock Holmes -- a flick I really, rattling enjoyed but still change cheated by. I don't poverty to want anything for viewers, but it ends on a prospect note of bigger and better adventures thanks to a unsubstantial figure in a carriage. I directly wanted to wager that film. I'm uneasy as to when I might. What if I never do? Will I feel robbed? I think so.

We shouldn't achievement discover of a flick feeling that way. Good characters are hornlike to permit go, and when you've enjoyed having an adventure with them, you course poverty another. But had there never been added Indiana designer film, I could hit been bright with Raiders of the Lost Ark. I wouldn't hit wanted to undergo if he would ever face That Guy, or foregather That Girl, or hit that Last Fateful Encounter. Serial adventures are supported around an open-ending, but the point has always been that they'll impact independently of apiece other.

Every flick feels same a dyspneal vie to 2012 -- and modify that scrutiny module probably feel same a vie to 2014 -- and it every makes for an effortful viewing experience. I poverty to pop in a DVD of a flick I enjoyed over the summer without movement in my seat, and hoping incoming instance is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan or wondering how Wolverine gets to Japan ....