Comic book movies: Why is #3 always bad?

[Gaith]

#1. Sets up the status quo. Tests the inexperienced protagonist.

#2. Challenges the status quo. Tests the experienced protagonist.

#3. Unless it concludes the status quo, is just another movie. How much further can you take the protagonist in a way that's not redundant? Also, the best non-origin idea was already taken up by #2.

Agreed, but I'd also argue that concluding things by making a trilogy is itself pretty dangerous, because the challenge-the-protagonist arc in #2 has already solved the biggest problems, meaning that there isn't all that much left to wrap up. This would make for wonderful 45-60 minute third acts, but the industry demands at least ninety minutes, whether the material justifies it or not.

So in Jedi, for instance, we get a ridiculously long fifty minutes on Tatooine to cover a single plot point (Han wakes up), and then the actual plot of the movie starts. Pirates 3 is similar: Jack's already decided to be (sorta) good, so we have to sit through lots of lame distractions (the Pirate Court) before we can get down to the confrontations. Ditto Spider-Man 3: Harry has to get amnesia and forget what he learned in 2 for an hour or more in order to set up the new villains. Back to the Future III was cannily set up by its predecessor in that II introduced two big flaws in Marty - greed and temper - and only solved the former, allowing III to work on the latter, but this isn't quite enough to sustain the movie in the absence of Biff's villainy (and no, Buford doesn't count; he's just a buffoon with a temper of his own, not a legitimately dangerous time manipulator), so Doc gets a love interest of his own, which is charming enough, but his story doesn't mix with Marty's all that well. Return of the King avoided this pitfall by deliberately saving lots of Tolkien's plot for the third movie - more plot than its book, in fact.

A favorite third movie of mine, The Bourne Ultimatum, partly sidesteps this peril by being more of a sequel to the second movie than the second sequel to the first. In the same vein, my other favorite threequel, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, works by being more of a spinoff movie about a new character than by focusing on the first two movies' protagonist.

 

[shivkala]

Warning: Long rant! I went on for a while on this subject matter:

I think the villains also have something to do with this. Superman III is a perfect example of this. With the first two movies featuring Luthor and the second with the Kryptonian criminals, they went in a totally different direction, with one-off villains. And as cool as the Superman/Clark Kent fight may have been (that and the "Badass" Superman may be the only worthwhile parts of the movie), it might have made the movie better if Luthor invented the synthetic Kryptonite, which lead to the creation of Bizarro, who could have fought Superman in the junkyard scene. Of course, there are more problems with the movie than just the villain.

As for Batman Forever, you can count me in the group that likes it, for what it was. However, I always felt that Jim Carrey's Riddler was too "Jokeresque." And Two Face was also over the top, even for a movie veering hard into the camp genre. A more serious Riddler may have made for a better movie and a chance to show off Batman's detective skills.

X-Men: Last Stand also did away with "big named" bad guys, but you could argue that X2 did the same, as Stryker is not a name the casual comic reader might know.

Spider-Man 3, I think tried to incorporate a villain which arguably did not work, as filmed. Maybe Venom could have worked better if, as the rumors stated at the time, we were going to get one "Black/Evil Spider-Man" movie followed by a "Venom" movie. The other problem is that they should have set-up Eddie Brock way back in the first movie, to have his "betrayal" by Peter have more resonance. Surprisingly, the villain that they did set-up, The Lizard, never came to be. After being mentioned in the first movie and given a key cameo in the second, the third movie probably should have used him, instead of the Sandman.

Focusing on the villains, I also think the emotional resonance with them dies down by the third movie. Superman and Lex Luthor are like Yin and Yang, so it makes sense that he'd be the bad guy in the first movie. The Phantom Zone criminals, being the only other Kryptonians Kal met at the time to have survived the destruction of Krypton also had emotional resonance. But, all of that resonance is gone in the third movie, so why should we care that Superman is going up against them?

The first movie is going to either use or make-up the villain to be the "ultimate" foe for the character. With Batman, we get the Joker, his antithesis. X-Men gives us Magneto. Spider-Man ties the Green Goblin into his origin tale and presents us with a dark reflection, two men given powers by science, with one using them for good and the other for evil.

The second movie must then try to make the villain equally important to the character. Thus, we get the Phantom Zone criminals, as I said. Batman Returns, in my opinion fumbles the ball here with Catwoman, but tries to show us how the Penguin, also an orphan, though through his parent's choice, instead of cruel fate, is a reflection of Batman. Stryker works due to his ties to Wolverine. Dr. Octopus is another character who gains powers in a lab accident similar to Peter and Norman, but they made him a sympathetic character and showed us how someone decent (unlike Norman) could easily turn, again showing us a reflection of Peter's struggles.

Two-Face and the Riddler really don't get much in the way of origins and thus, don't give us anything to hold onto. They are cyphers and that makes them uninteresting. Warren Worthington II, might have had some impact if they developed him and his son earlier and his plot to "cure" mutants developed over the course of the three films. The Sandman was shoehorned into Peter's origin in a way that rang hollow and I've already explained how Venom was shoehorned in. The less said about Harry, the better, except, again if they went with him as Hobgoblin and focused the movie on him, it might have made it better.

It could have worked if the movie was solely "Black Goo Spider-Man" and Hobgoblin going at it, and maybe Peter killing Harry (to contrast with him being blamed for Norman's death, which was not his fault, well, as far as jumping out of the way of his own imminent death could be his fault). The guilt could have driven him to realise it was the costume that pushed him to do this, and then end the movie with Peter divesting himself of the costumed, and a fully developed over the course of the three movies, Eddie Brock becoming Venom in time for Spider-Man 4.

Similarly, the Phoenix, which I've avoided talking about so far could have, again, been a whole movie by itself. And again, it would have had more resonance with us than it did in X-Men: Last Stand.

So, in addition to everything else we've discussed, I truly think the villain of the movie adds to the failure of the third movies.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Agreed, but I'd also argue that concluding things by making a trilogy is itself pretty dangerous

It's even worse when the first movie doesn't even do well enough to warrant sequels, ala 'The Golden Compass', with the movie ending in a cliff-hanger that they wouldn't have been able to solve anyway. The first book was the strongest and the sequels wouldn't have made good movies considering all the conspirational content in them.

But yes, good discussion about villains in this thread. What I really liked about Batman Begins & The Dark Knight was how they made the city reluctant to trust him as a hero amid all the destruction that he caused and made him culpable for the damage. The price of heroism, I guess. It gave the story a realistic touch. And the trust was something he had to earn.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Here's my theory. With one film, it's lightning in a bottle, the studio knows something happened but they're not quite sure what but they damn well want to contain it so they strive to duplicate that success, whatever it may have been. This leads to the second film being given a bit of carte blanche to hit it out of the park again.

Now you're at the third film, now it's a franchise and everyone has an opinion of what works and what doesn't and a lot of armchair quarterbacking and second-guessing starts going on which leads to the decline.

That's my theory anyway...

 

[Anwar]

If there has to be a trilogy, then the best idea is the make the first movie a standalone and then the next two should be one continuing story that can be put into intermission by the end of the second and easily picked up by the third. Sort of like what the Matrix movies tried to do.

Spiderman didn't do this, it wrapped most everything up fine by SM2's end except Harry. Empire Strikes Back was great example of a movie that didn't conclude itself but rather set things up for the third while still being satisfying.

 

[Greg Cox]

Here's my theory. With one film, it's lightning in a bottle, the studio knows something happened but they're not quite sure what but they damn well want to contain it so they strive to duplicate that success, whatever it may have been. This leads to the second film being given a bit of carte blanche to hit it out of the park again.

Now you're at the third film, now it's a franchise and everyone has an opinion of what works and what doesn't and a lot of armchair quarterbacking and second-guessing starts going on which leads to the decline.

That's my theory anyway...

Sounds plausible to me.

Too many cooks is always dangerous . . . .

 

[Davros]

It's not just with comic book movies, 3rd movies of nearly any genre are usually bad. Getting passed 2 with quality seems almost impossible sometimes.

 

[Greg Cox]

It's not just with comic book movies, 3rd movies of nearly any genre are usually bad. Getting passed 2 with quality seems almost impossible sometimes.

Indeed. Which makes "Goldfinger" something of minor miracle. Makes you wonder what went right.

One has to give credit to the "Harry Potter" saga, too, for maintaining a consistent level of quality for so long, although, of course, they had the solid foundation of a successful book series.

 

[Cicero]

It's not just with comic book movies, 3rd movies of nearly any genre are usually bad. Getting passed 2 with quality seems almost impossible sometimes.

I'm struck by the success of The Last Crusade. It has a rating at Rotten Tomatoes 4% higher than the rating of The Temple of Doom, and the movies had roughly comparable box office performance. (It's also always been my personal favorite of the series.

Does beginning with the origin story cripple most series? (The closest we saw to a theatrical origin sequence for Indiana Jones was at the start of the first film, not the first.)

#1. Sets up the status quo. Tests the inexperienced protagonist.

#2. Challenges the status quo. Tests the experienced protagonist.

#3. Unless it concludes the status quo, is just another movie. How much further can you take the protagonist in a way that's not redundant? Also, the best non-origin idea was already taken up by #2.

#4. After #3, #4 goes to extreme, outlandish, and exaggerated lengths to keep things interesting. Or starts to move so far away from #1, 2, and even 3 that it's unrecognizable.

A movie series that can get to #4 and not suck is a good one.

Indiana Jones doesn't seem to have followed this pattern at all during its initial production. Instead, we saw:

1. Introduces the audience to the established status quo and the experienced protagonist.

2. Presents an earlier adventure of the experienced protagonist.

3. Presents a later adventure of the experienced protagonist, introducing the audience to a new element that makes him uncomfortable - his past.

4. Guilty on all counts. Interestingly, this is the first film to attempt to show progression. The Bond series, another known for its initial quality, also was purely episodic during its glory days.

(The Thin Man series from the 1930s and Boston Blackie pictures of the 1940s were also structured mostly episodically; the former began to founder in its fifth installment, the latter ran for more than a dozen films. Both series were essentially episodic, with only some brief mentions of earlier productions. To my knowledge, the Boston Blackie series never filmed an origin story; the character was already generally well-known to audiences at the time.)

 

[Aragorn]

If it's a big studio film, there's always the issue of escalation in production. Bigger explosions, more action sequences. Let's throw more money into it. When the Batman sequels were being made, all the news and hype were about who was going to get cast as the villains. Didn't matter if they were right for the part as long as they were bigger or flashier names than the previous villains.

 

[exodus]

It's easy.

It's too hard of a challenge to top part two.

Seriously, back in the day with type of EFX they had in Donner's Superman 2.
How to you top Gen. Zod?
Did they have EFX to top Zod?
How do you top X2's "BAMF" effect of Nightcrawler with Beast in X3?
No matter how cool Kelsy Grammar was, Beast flipping like a Gorilla isn't going to match up.
How do you top Doc Ock with Sandman?
Michelle Phiffer's Catwoman dwarfs Jim Carrey's Riddler.
Even Jedi didn't top Empire as far as story.

Plus due to a sequels success, the studio usually rushes the 3 one into production before a decent script is written just to cash in on the positive momentum.

 

[Davros]

How do you top Doc Ock with Sandman?

Sandman isn't what was wrong with Spider-Man 3.

 

[exodus]

How do you top Doc Ock with Sandman?

Sandman isn't what was wrong with Spider-Man 3.

True, but Sandman even in the comics isn't nearly of a bad ass as Doc Ock.

Thomas Haden Church looked the part dead on and played it well but he's nowhere close to the actor Alfred Molina is. Now If they had gone forth and did part 4. John Malcovich's Vulture would no doubt given Molina a good run for his money. Topher Grace doesn't even register . He's on the D-List w/ Kathy Griffin.

However the point is, it took two or 3 actors as villains to equal Molina's one. Due to Doc Ock being so fuckin' kick ass, it's too hard an expectation to top it.

Even if they had cut out Sandman completely for Venom.
Toper Grace still can't beat Molina and the majority of the film would still have to be the black costume first and the very last part Venom. So you still would get a suck ass portrayal.

I will say this: I see where at least Spidey 3 tired but still failed.
Where as X3 was dead at the gate.
From the very opening scene, seeing Halle Berry fly in on strings(could the poor thing look more frightened?) set the tone for the entire film as a comedy.

 

[hyzmarca]

#1. Sets up the status quo. Tests the inexperienced protagonist.

#2. Challenges the status quo. Tests the experienced protagonist.

#3. Unless it concludes the status quo, is just another movie. How much further can you take the protagonist in a way that's not redundant? Also, the best non-origin idea was already taken up by #2.

#4. After #3, #4 goes to extreme, outlandish, and exaggerated lengths to keep things interesting. Or starts to move so far away from #1, 2, and even 3 that it's unrecognizable.

A movie series that can get to #4 and not suck is a good one.

If the first movie builds up the hero, and the second movie galvanizes him, then the third should tear him down completely so that the fourth can rebuild him.

Imagine, for example, a version of Surperman III where instead of a silly "evil" superman woh drinks beer and watches too much television we had a serious character deconstruction in which he is pushed to the limits of his emotional restraint and intentionally kills Lex.

Imagine, for example, a third Batman movie that ends with Bruce Wayne in a hospital bed, breathing through a tube, while Dr. Thompkins explains to Alfred that even if Bruce wakes up he'll never walk again, and outside the hospital window Gotham is in flames, the police pushed into hiding and the criminal underworld celebrating the rise of their new king, a man called Bane.

Imagine, for example, a third Spiderman movie in which Peter Parker does not get the girl back, but instead exiles himself from New York out of shame and desperation

Imagine, for example, a third X-men movie that didn't suck. There is all kinds of ways that they could have gone. The X-teams have been deconstructed more times than I care to count. A good Dark Pheonix would have been a good way to go, yes.

 

[Anwar]

X-Men is already rough as it is since the world already hates and fears them.

Mr Sinister taking out Magneto and Xavier right at the start, then igniting a war between the humans and the Xavier/Magneto factions with all three battling against each other in a total annihilation war (while Sinister uses his shapeshifting powers to help the humans as a scientist and the Mutant factions as Sinister with his Marauders, etc) so that he can wipe out the survivors and rule the remnants as their Savior would have been a good third movie. Maybe have Phoenix be his secret weapon.

 

[shivkala]

If the first movie builds up the hero, and the second movie galvanizes him, then the third should tear him down completely so that the fourth can rebuild him.

Problem is, will franchise fatique set in? Do people really want to see their heroes torn down? And if it continues, will it just become a cliche? The first movie as an origin movie makes sense, since you're starting off, but do we really need to see a string of third and fourth movies follow the same pattern?

And the other problem is, in a lot of cases, the second movie tears down the superhero and rebuilds them all in one movie. Why do we want to see this again, but stretched across two movies?

Superman II had Clark walk away from being Superman and live as a human, only to regain his powers at the climax.

Spider-Man II tore Spider-Man down as Peter experienced problems with his powers and walked away from being Spider-Man, only to return in time for the end.

The Dark Knight ended with Batman reduced to again to being hunted by the police and bearing the blame for Harvey's death. In this case, the hero wasn't built up again and I'd argue, maybe he shouldn't be.

You could argue that X-Men: The Last Stand tore down the X-Men. Some are dead, some are depowered, and the team is totally changed. And that didn't do much for the movie's quality.

Imagine, for example, a version of Surperman III where instead of a silly "evil" superman woh drinks beer and watches too much television we had a serious character deconstruction in which he is pushed to the limits of his emotional restraint and intentionally kills Lex.

That wouldn't tear down Superman, that would destroy the character.

Imagine, for example, a third Batman movie that ends with Bruce Wayne in a hospital bed, breathing through a tube, while Dr. Thompkins explains to Alfred that even if Bruce wakes up he'll never walk again, and outside the hospital window Gotham is in flames, the police pushed into hiding and the criminal underworld celebrating the rise of their new king, a man called Bane.

"Knightfall" might make a good animated movie, but I doubt it would be something the movie going public, who are fairly unfamiliar with the character would want to see.

Imagine, for example, a third Spiderman movie in which Peter Parker does not get the girl back, but instead exiles himself from New York out of shame and desperation

Part of the problem with the third movie, at least from comments I've read on the internet, was with "Emo Pete." This would give us more of "Emo Pete" and take longer to resolve.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

X-Men is already rough as it is since the world already hates and fears them.

Mr Sinister taking out Magneto and Xavier right at the start, then igniting a war between the humans and the Xavier/Magneto factions with all three battling against each other in a total annihilation war (while Sinister uses his shapeshifting powers to help the humans as a scientist and the Mutant factions as Sinister with his Marauders, etc) so that he can wipe out the survivors and rule the remnants as their Savior would have been a good third movie. Maybe have Phoenix be his secret weapon.

The problem is that, by the end of X2, there had been a great degree of reconciliation. Xavier's talk with the President seemed to foretell a shift in policy toward coexistence rather than regulation. One nice touch that called back to this in The Last Stand was the fact that there's a Cabinet-level position to represent mutant interests. Had the events of X2 not occurred, it might not have made as much sense.

But they never really exploited their premise. I always found the X-Men books most interesting when they were on the run, still trying to do the right thing in spite of a world that not just passively despised them, but actively set out to exterminate them. That's the one thing that always made the X-Men a different breed from other superhero teams. The Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Iron Man? They're celebrities. Everybody loves them. But the X-Men are out there fighting just as hard, even though most of the world would just as soon see them dead. They're risking their lives to protect people who don't appreciate it one bit. It was mentioned a time or two in the movies but it wasn't something that was ever explored with any depth. They just ended up with Wolverine more or less buying into that whole philosophy without giving us any insight as to why.

The third X-Men film should have been the first part of a two-part story--the first part having them struggle to deal with rising anti-mutant hysteria and setting up a Phoenix story, and the second film being devoted largely to said Phoenix storyline. It would still end basically the same way: Jean's dead, everybody tries to come to grips and move on. But there was just no resonance in the way it was done in The Last Stand.

I like the notion that, if you're going to have a trilogy, you should make the first film standalone, then make the second and third their own separate arc, building on events from the first. It worked for Back to the Future, as far as I'm concerned. Even the Lord of the Rings movies followed that pattern a little bit. The first film stood on its own a lot more than the second and third did, though it was intended as a 3-part series from the getgo.

 

[exodus]

X-Men is already rough as it is since the world already hates and fears them.

Mr Sinister taking out Magneto and Xavier right at the start, then igniting a war between the humans and the Xavier/Magneto factions with all three battling against each other in a total annihilation war (while Sinister uses his shapeshifting powers to help the humans as a scientist and the Mutant factions as Sinister with his Marauders, etc) so that he can wipe out the survivors and rule the remnants as their Savior would have been a good third movie. Maybe have Phoenix be his secret weapon.

The problem is that, by the end of X2, there had been a great degree of reconciliation. Xavier's talk with the President seemed to foretell a shift in policy toward coexistence rather than regulation. One nice touch that called back to this in The Last Stand was the fact that there's a Cabinet-level position to represent mutant interests. Had the events of X2 not occurred, it might not have made as much sense.

It still doesn't make much sense.
I don't care what Xavier told the President, that's still the second time Mutant's have entered the White House unchecked. That type of power should make the Presidernt even more fearful, that's a natual human reaction. Not call peace. That combined with what Magneto did at Liberty Island and the distruction of the dam at the Lake should have pushed forth the Mutant Registration Act. The Phoenix story should have been changed to a less personal one to one where she does something that seen as a threat to the world. Jean is a mutant so powerful and unchecked, she's a nearly unstoppable danger. The government should have been hunting down Mutants and created a story similar to the Mutant Massacare. It also would have been a better way to introduce the Morlocks & Calisto.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

X-Men is already rough as it is since the world already hates and fears them.

Mr Sinister taking out Magneto and Xavier right at the start, then igniting a war between the humans and the Xavier/Magneto factions with all three battling against each other in a total annihilation war (while Sinister uses his shapeshifting powers to help the humans as a scientist and the Mutant factions as Sinister with his Marauders, etc) so that he can wipe out the survivors and rule the remnants as their Savior would have been a good third movie. Maybe have Phoenix be his secret weapon.

The problem is that, by the end of X2, there had been a great degree of reconciliation. Xavier's talk with the President seemed to foretell a shift in policy toward coexistence rather than regulation. One nice touch that called back to this in The Last Stand was the fact that there's a Cabinet-level position to represent mutant interests. Had the events of X2 not occurred, it might not have made as much sense.

It still doesn't make much sense.
I don't care what Xavier told the President, that's still the second time Mutant's have entered the White House unchecked. That type of power should make the Presidernt even more fearful, that's a natual human reaction. Not call peace. That combined with what Magneto did at Liberty Island and the distruction of the dam at the Lake should have pushed forth the Mutant Registration Act. The Phoenix story should have been changed to a less personal one to one where she does something that seen as a threat to the world. Jean is a mutant so powerful and unchecked, she's a nearly unstoppable danger. The government should have been hunting down Mutants and created a story similar to the Mutant Massacare. It also would have been a better way to introduce the Morlocks & Calisto.

Things were definitely too easy for them, overall. They were never hunted and persecuted in the movies anywhere near the degree it occurred in the comics.

 

[exodus]

The problem is that, by the end of X2, there had been a great degree of reconciliation. Xavier's talk with the President seemed to foretell a shift in policy toward coexistence rather than regulation. One nice touch that called back to this in The Last Stand was the fact that there's a Cabinet-level position to represent mutant interests. Had the events of X2 not occurred, it might not have made as much sense.

It still doesn't make much sense.
I don't care what Xavier told the President, that's still the second time Mutant's have entered the White House unchecked. That type of power should make the Presidernt even more fearful, that's a natual human reaction. Not call peace. That combined with what Magneto did at Liberty Island and the distruction of the dam at the Lake should have pushed forth the Mutant Registration Act. The Phoenix story should have been changed to a less personal one to one where she does something that seen as a threat to the world. Jean is a mutant so powerful and unchecked, she's a nearly unstoppable danger. The government should have been hunting down Mutants and created a story similar to the Mutant Massacare. It also would have been a better way to introduce the Morlocks & Calisto.

Things were definitely too easy for them, overall. They were never hunted and persecuted in the movies anywhere near the degree it occurred in the comics.

Especially due to Mutants like Jean, Storm & Cyclops who are living weapons. Hell, Rogue just existing with her "ability" is extremely dangerous. Putting folks into comas with just a touch, killing them with just a hug? She's a danger to herself and EVERYONE around her. Who would give Mutants equal rights with some like her around? THE US government forced the Black Panters to disband due to them being to radical, yet Mutants still roam free?