I think we just had a miscommunication.
Sequels With Really Long Titles
- Thread starter Mr Light
- Start date
it will always be "Raiders" to me.
I can forgive a novel with a pre-existing title and the need to stay faithful to the novel as in the case of LOTR. I wouldn't want to call them "Lord of the Rings 2". You would just upset the purists doing that. That reminds me after 9/11 they considered dropping the title "The Two Towers" but eventually decided not to.
Just catching up on this thread, and I'm surprised to see the James Bond series hasn't come up yet. While 17 of the 22 films are titles of Ian Fleming novels or short stories, each film has a distinct title with no number, the star character is not mentioned in any title, and the success of the franchise suggests that audiences have never had difficulty identifying that a new film belongs in the series without either of these two conventions (that's what marketing is for, isn't it?). Even when the films were using original titles, Bond's name was never used in a title.
Here's a clip from the Angry Video Game Nerd about movie sequels and subtitles. It starts about 3:55. (contains harsh language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEVzPCY2T-g
The only sequel titles I don't like are the ones that don't sound like sequels, like Fast & Furious. Personally, I think Hollywood avoid putting numbers on some of their movies to hide the fact they are creatively bankrupt and only making sequels after sequels. Just another way to show that they are afraid of greenlighting any original for fear of losing box office profits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEVzPCY2T-g
The only sequel titles I don't like are the ones that don't sound like sequels, like Fast & Furious. Personally, I think Hollywood avoid putting numbers on some of their movies to hide the fact they are creatively bankrupt and only making sequels after sequels. Just another way to show that they are afraid of greenlighting any original for fear of losing box office profits.
^
How does Fast & Furious not sound like a sequel to The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift?
And its not like they were tryin' to hide it was a sequel to folks goin' to the movie theater - the poster had the four from the first movie and said "New Model, Original Parts" or something.
How does Fast & Furious not sound like a sequel to The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift?
And its not like they were tryin' to hide it was a sequel to folks goin' to the movie theater - the poster had the four from the first movie and said "New Model, Original Parts" or something.
Actually I was wondering if it was a remake of the first one.
The interesting thing about that is that the first 20 years of Bond movies were "based" on the Ian Fleming novels. It is sort of a different case. By the time they were doing their own titles, the precedent was already set.
That being said, it is worth noting that the movie credits all started (and were pretty much on all the posters, I believe) with "James Bond in". Also, the "007" logo was nearly always present on a poster. Even more interestingly, since Tomorrow Never Dies, the 007 has been integrated into the graphic for the film's title on the posters and DVDs.
2 Fast 2 Furious has the number 2
The Fast and the Furious : Tokyo Drift has the subtitle.
Fast & Furious has none of that.
When I first heard of it, I thought, "Isn't it way to early to reboot the franchise, and with the original actors... oh wait, it's a sequel."
That gets back to the marketing I was referencing. The 007 logo is used to make sure audiences know it's a James Bond film, but the actual title of the film doesn't refer to 007 or Bond by name, but rather is specific to the film.
The fact that most of the film titles are from Fleming does set it apart from other franchises, but the filmmakers could always have altered the title for the purposes of the films. For example, in Italy Goldfinger was titled Agente 007 Missione Goldfinger, and the Spanish title was James Bond contra Goldfinger. They didn't make those changes in the US or UK even though they could have.
Very true. Or, Quantum of Solace could have been titled Dr. No 21: Quantum of Solace.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Yep...I agree. I do agree that long titles do sometimes seem a bit over the top...but STAR TREK THE WRATH OF KHAN and STAR WARS RETURN OF THE JEDI, and others, not only are a title but they are also a lure...
Rob
Short titles equals lazy writing. Compare the titles of the original Star Trek, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine episodes to those of Voyager. Star Trek had always had longer, provocative, poetic titles. Then Voyager came in with it's one word title crap and ruin the whole thing. I'm not saying I disliked Voyager, actually, I'm one of the few who enjoyed it for the most part. I just thought the short one word titles were dull and boring.
To me a short movie title is just lazy on everyone's parts. The writers and the viewers. The writers don't actually want to write and create anything with meaning or that sounds interesting, they just want to get paid for writing crap and the audience refuses to have to put one seconds thought into movie they're watching. When the title makes formulate a thought, I guess their brain overloads.
To me a short movie title is just lazy on everyone's parts. The writers and the viewers. The writers don't actually want to write and create anything with meaning or that sounds interesting, they just want to get paid for writing crap and the audience refuses to have to put one seconds thought into movie they're watching. When the title makes formulate a thought, I guess their brain overloads.
All the series had their fair share of long and short titles.
This is a bizarre thought. What if a one word title captures what the author was going for? Things like Dune, Batman, Oklahoma!, Terminator, Shaft, Goldfinger, Thunderball (among other Bond titles), Mallrats, Dogma, Stargate, among others. Just because a title is one word, it doesn't automatically make it lazy writing.
(Responding to Odo's Bucket): Sometimes a short title works, though. There's no absolute rule. In my own work, I tend to prefer longer, evocative titles, but sometimes the most evocative and effective title of all is a single word that just plain sums up everything the story is about. I've had two of those in my published works, "Aftermath" and "Empathy." In both cases, the single word just had so many layers of meaning in relation to the story that anything more would've just gotten in the way. Sometimes less is more.
You guys are reading to far into what I said. Yes short titles are not always bad. There's a difference between calling a story "Terminator" and calling one "Hat" or "Shoelace". I'm a writer as well. I have written short stories and poems, some, not many, with one word titles. What I'm addressing is lazy titles that aren't at all catchy. Titles like "Speed", "Saw", "Ghost", and "Sky" do not peak my interest in seeing the movie or reading the book. When I hear titles like "City on the Edge of Forever", "By Any Other Name", "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", "Where Silence Has Lease", "Up the Long Ladder", "Who Watches the Watchers?", "All Good Things", "In the Hands of the Prophets", "The Die Is Cast", "Return To Grace", "Treachery Faith and the Great River", "The Changing Face of Evil", "Tacking Into the Wind", (I'll throw in some Twilight Zone) "And When the Sky Was Opened", "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street", "Time Enough At Last", "Five Characters In Search of an Exit", "Person or Persons Unknown", "A Kind of Stopwatch", "I am the Night, Color me Black", ... When I hear titles like that my interest is peaked. Of course my interest is also peaked when I hear a title like "Tapestry" or "Equinox", but not when I hear titles like "Drone", "One", "Faces", "Fury", "Drive", "Gravity", "Night", or "Rise". That's what I'm saying. Not that the episodes are bad, just that the titles sound lazy.
And actually thank you for helping me make my point. That being that some one word titles are good, others aren't. All the Trek shows have used them. Voyager though, seems to be the only one that used so many bad one word titles almost always.
And actually thank you for helping me make my point. That being that some one word titles are good, others aren't. All the Trek shows have used them. Voyager though, seems to be the only one that used so many bad one word titles almost always.
Speaking of weird sequel titles, the sequel to H. Rider Haggard's novel King Solomon's Mines, featuring Allan Quatermain, is Allan Quatermain. Which would be the equivalent of the sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark being called Indiana Jones. 
Speaking of weird sequel titles, the sequel to H. Rider Haggard's novel King Solomon's Mines, featuring Allan Quatermain, is Allan Quatermain. Which would be the equivalent of the sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark being called Indiana Jones.
Well, it basically was, except there was an "and the..." added after it. (Similarly, the second Richard Chamberlain Quatermain movie was called Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold.) And it's not a unique instance. The sequel to First Blood was Rambo: First Blood Part II. The third, largely forgotten Inspector Clouseau movie (produced without Blake Edwards or Peter Sellers, starring Alan Arkin in the title role) was called simply Inspector Clouseau. The sequel to Pitch Black was The Chronicles of Riddick. Then there was the comic strip Thimble Theater, whose animated adaptation became known as Popeye the Sailor. In some venues, Peanuts is reprinted as Snoopy, and its TV adaptations based their titles around the name Charlie Brown instead of Peanuts. (And for decades, the Sunday strips were titled Peanuts, Featuring Good Ol' Charlie Brown, pretty much de-emphasizing the original title which Schulz never really liked.) It's really not that uncommon for the name of a series' lead or most popular character to supercede its original, more generic title.
