Sequels With Really Long Titles
- Thread starter Mr Light
- Start date
What's even funnier is if ya remember The Mummy is a remake...
So, Rise of the Warrior is a prequel to a spin-off from a sequel of a remake!
Which is just awesome.
I read somewhere that the longer titles and absence of numbers for sequels is thanks, in part, to The Dark Knight - a sequel that had no number and did huge business. But, to make sure the franchise stays goin', execs include the first movie's title with the new movie.
As for askin' how are folks supposed to tell the difference between the movies from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy...have you seen the DVD cases? Their numbered on the spine!
I actually prefer the title with the prefix. It gives the whole thing a more "pulp action-adventure" feel.
I do think that KotCS is a little too wordy. Either "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" or "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Skull" would have been nice.
What annoys me the most about the addition of subtitles is that movie execs must think all of their target audience are complete idiots and are not aware of the movie that they are going to see. X-Men: Origins Wolverine was simply Wolverine for like over a year until Fox decided to make it KEWL and more "accessible" by adding X-Men Origins. The same deal about X2...subtitles are unneccessary, the people who are most going to see these movies are the same people who flocked to see the first films. I hate how execs think we're all retarded.
Tim Burton wanted to call Batman Returns 'Batman' and it be obvious which it was.
someone pointed out this was no help if they made six movies all called 'Batman'.
someone pointed out this was no help if they made six movies all called 'Batman'.
That doesn't make a lot of sense as many movies with overly long sequel names have been around for years before Dark Knight, and even some of the more recent ones already had their title before Dark Knight came out. Of course it's not going to hurt them continuing the trend either since DK was so successful.
AvP2: Aliens vs. Predator Requiem seems a little redundant
Then abbreviate it. The guidelines for a formal title to a work of fiction don't have to be constrained by the guidelines for casual conversation. They're two entirely different things.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X2: X-Men United are both 3 words long, unless you count "X" as a separate word. And a title should be as long as it needs to be. It's always possible to use shorthand.
Heck, people have been using shorthand for centuries. The book we call "Alice in Wonderland" is actually Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Its sequel is Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, but it's usually just called Through the Looking Glass. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is actually Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. And heck, the real title of Gulliver's Travels is Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a Surgeon and then a Captain of several Ships.
Again, that's fine for casual conversation, but why should that mean the film should be forbidden from using a supertitle in addition to that? Titles serve more functions than just giving people something to say around the water cooler. If a film is part of a series or franchise, it makes sense to give it a title that includes the name of that series or franchise, because that's one of the functions a title can serve. I have no problem with people referring to the film as Wolverine in casual conversation. But I cannot for the life of me understand why that should prevent the filmmakers from adding more to the actual formal title of the film. Formal and informal usage are two distinct considerations.
Heck, it didn't even have the series title, which was somewhat unprecedented (unless you count Batman Forever and Superman Returns, whose actual onscreen titles were just "Forever" superimposed on the Batman logo and "Returns" superimposed on the Superman logo).
On the contrary, I think that calling a movie "X2" instead of X-Men 2 is grossly insulting to our intelligence, as if assuming we're too stupid to wrap our heads around a word more than two characters long. And I don't understand why you'd think that providing more information is an insult to people's intelligence. I think it's just the opposite. Smarter people are able to process more information. They don't need their titles dumbed down and oversimplified.
As my examples above indicated, titles have come in many different lengths over the centuries. There is no correlation between the length and complexity of a title and the presumed intelligence of the audience. It's simply a matter of style and convention. The custom of giving sequels numbers didn't really become routine until the '70s or '80s. Look at earlier film franchises, and you'll see that each one had its own distinctive title following a common pattern or containing a common name or phrase. Abbott and Costello Meet _____. The Road to ____. Blondie (based on the comic strip) was followed by Blondie Meets the Boss, Blondie Takes a Vacation, Blondie Brings Up Baby, and over 20 more films in that vein. The sequel to The Thin Man was called After the Thin Man, then Another Thin Man, and so on. The sequel to The Pink Panther was A Shot in the Dark, then The Return of the Pink Panther, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, and Revenge of the Pink Panther. It wasn't because they thought audiences were stupid, it was because the convention of using numerical sequel titles hadn't become fashionable yet. Fashion has nothing to do with intelligence.
Again it comes down, for me anyway, to an issue of style. I have no problems with how people refer to a movie formally or informally. Maybe the problem I have with the title isn't so much how long it is, but in what order it is in. For some reason Wolverine: X-Men Origins makes much more sense to me.
Take Transformers 2 for example. Most people will probably refer to it as I just did instead of its more lengthy title. Th emphasis is on the Transformers part and not on The Revenge of the Fallen. It wouldn't seem right to me if it was Revenge of the Fallen: Transformers.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that in my opinion, the emphasis of the title should be the Wolverine part. Since that's what most will call it anyways, why not put it first. Of course, like you said, if they are going for a series of X-Men Origin stories, it would make sense for the them to use that first, but I still would think a "Beast: X-Men Origins" sounds better than the other way around.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that in my opinion, the emphasis of the title should be the Wolverine part. Since that's what most will call it anyways, why not put it first. Of course, like you said, if they are going for a series of X-Men Origin stories, it would make sense for the them to use that first, but I still would think a "Beast: X-Men Origins" sounds better than the other way around.
It's customary for a series title to precede an installment title. For instance, I don't think it would've made sense to name my first novel Ex Machina: Star Trek instead of Star Trek: Ex Machina. But in casual conversation, I and everyone else just call the novel Ex Machina. The same goes for every other Star Trek novel, every Star Wars novel, every Stargate or Doctor Who or Torchwood or Primeval novel. By the same token, we have titles such as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Superman: The Man of Steel, etc. There are thousands upon thousands of works of fiction where the series title comes before the individual story title, but it's still commonplace to refer to each individual installment by its own title, the part that comes second. Emphasis isn't dependent on order, or vice-versa.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that in my opinion, the emphasis of the title should be the Wolverine part. Since that's what most will call it anyways, why not put it first. Of course, like you said, if they are going for a series of X-Men Origin stories, it would make sense for the them to use that first, but I still would think a "Beast: X-Men Origins" sounds better than the other way around.
It's customary for a series title to precede an installment title. For instance, I don't think it would've made sense to name my first novel Ex Machina: Star Trek instead of Star Trek: Ex Machina. But in casual conversation, I and everyone else just call the novel Ex Machina. The same goes for every other Star Trek novel, every Star Wars novel, every Stargate or Doctor Who or Torchwood or Primeval novel. By the same token, we have titles such as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Superman: The Man of Steel, etc. There are thousands upon thousands of works of fiction where the series title comes before the individual story title, but it's still commonplace to refer to each individual installment by its own title, the part that comes second. Emphasis isn't dependent on order, or vice-versa.
Touche.
You can't call it "Wolverine: X-Men Origins" because then the movie will no longer appear in alphabetical order next to the other movies when it's on a shelf at a store. This is why "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was changed to "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark".
Great success!
Not a sequel, per se, unless you count it as a continuation spinoff of Da Ali G Show's movie, Ali G In Da House, but one of my all time favorite movie titles is:
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
In the mid-1980s, when the tv show that ultimately became Star Trek: The Next Generation was being planned, someone at one stage suggested just calling it 'Star Trek' and again, letting the viewer figure out which version it was. Obviously, that idea was nixed, though the idea wasn't entirely without precedent. IIRC, the revived Mission Impossible tv series didn't have any 'Next Gen' or '1980' type tag to it.
Then again, it wasn't quite as successful as TNG ...
as an aside, in casual conversations, i've refered to Bay's opus as both Transformers 2 and Revenge of the Fallen. or even 'the new Transformers film/movie'
^ Not forgetting 'the worst film of the year.'
