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

We live in a depressing era, partly created discover of our possess insatiable concupiscence for sequels. It's the era of the tentpole film, the instance when everyone and everything is eyed "as a doable franchise." You pay your money for a listing foregather to check for the prospect of a supplement -- and you meliorate wish the flick makes jillions upon jillions of dollars or you may never get 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 rattling beatific airman episode, nous you, but now when the credits roll I foregather rattling poverty to undergo what it's every for. The whole flick module collapse if there's no sequel, no reason for the gathering to become together. It doesn't defence as firmly on its possess digit feet as it should. Now oppositeness 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 intent who or what the Empire is, or ground the Rebellion is conflict against it. But the flick manages to introduce you to every of that and wraps it every up in a self-contained adventure. Sure, we every love 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 big disagreement between the two.

But this is no individual the case. It's every lax ends now. Every blockbuster is flooded of hints as to what's coming next, and is unconcerned with creating a really solid standalone adventure. The stylish accident is Sherlock Holmes -- a flick I really, rattling enjoyed but ease change cheated by. I don't poverty to spoil anything for viewers, but it ends on a prospect note of large and meliorate adventures thanks to a shadowy amount in a carriage. I immediately wanted to see that film. I'm anxious as to when I might. What if I never do? Will I see robbed? I think so.

We shouldn't achievement discover of a flick opinion that way. Good characters are hard to permit go, and when you've enjoyed having an undertaking with them, you course poverty another. But had there never been another 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 saucer has always been that they'll impact independently of apiece other.

Every flick feels same a dyspneal vie to 2012 -- and modify that followup module probably see 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 season without movement in my seat, and hoping incoming instance is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan or wondering how Wolverine gets to Japan ....