Death Tube 2 (2010) and World Building in Sequels

When a sequel comes out, it is always interesting to see what form it takes.  Will the story continue or is it going to be an all new set of characters going on a new adventure?  Will the world expand or will it feel as contained as what came before?  Every sequel comes at the franchise in a different way.  They find a new world to explore.  They add a new character that changes the dynamic of the first movie.  There’s a new location, a new time, a new dilemma.  The sequel becomes a new movie.  In some form or another, it becomes a new movie.

One of the more interesting kind of sequels is the world expanding sequel.  This is the kind of sequel that moves the franchise out of the confines of the first film and builds the mythology to create a deeper background.  Or it just gives a bigger scope to everything.  Sometimes the world building can feel very small.  The writers give a little peek here or a little peek there at the wider world.  Other times, there could be a massive growth in the audience’s knowledge of the world the movies are set in.

Death Tube 2 was one of many movies that have expanded the world set by the movie before it.  Much like in Death Tube, a bunch of people were kidnapped and forced to participate in challenges.  Their competition was broadcast through a website called Death Tube.  If the people failed to pass the challenge, they would end up dead.  This group was smarter than the rest, though.  They started working together as a team to pass as many challenges as they could without anyone being seen as the loser.

The first movie had already set up what the stakes of the Death Tube games were.  The people went through the challenges and whoever lost was killed.  Sometimes they were killed by something in the challenge, such as the person in the first film who was poisoned and didn’t get an antidote because they came in last.  Or they could be killed by someone else, such as the guy at the beginning of the second movie who was shot because he hadn’t left the room in lock step with everyone else.  Whatever the case, the stakes were deadly.

The events that played out in Death Tube were contained to two primary locations.  The first was a set of bedrooms where the kidnapped woke up.  The second was a main room where they all assembled after escaping their rooms.  The sequel seemed like it was going to go that way.  The characters started off in the same small rooms before coming together in the bigger main room.  But Death Tube 2 was going to throw a twist into the mix.  The surviving characters would escape the room and try to figure out what was happening with Death Tube.

The growth of the world was the growth of the mystery behind Death Tube.  The characters maneuvered throughout the building, escaping one main room to end up in another one on another floor.  It may have been the main room from the first movie.  I can’t remember.  They discovered that the mascot character who was torturing them wasn’t the only one.  There were a few people throughout the building wearing the same costumes.  Then they ended up in a staff room type of area.  Even though they ended up there and found what connected each of the people, the characters never really discovered anything about Death Tube.  There was still as much mystery as before.

This is what I call the little peek of world building.  Death Tube 2 opened up the world of the franchise beyond the bedrooms and the main room.  But it still kept things within the confines of the same building.  The mystery of who was behind the website and the deadly games wasn’t answered.  More questions came up without answers.  It was a slightly bigger world with a slightly bigger mystery.  The people behind the movie gave little hints at a bigger world.  They didn’t break everything open, though.

A franchise that began as contained as Death Tube but opened up in a much bigger way was The Purge.  The first film was a home invasion movie.  The story was kept inside the house of a rich family.  Some younger folk tried to break in to kill one of the people being kept safe inside the confines of their security system.  It was the world that the film was set in that made things interesting.

The Purge is a franchise set in a world where, once a year, all crime is legal for twelve hours.  In the first film, it was purported that the purging time was meant to let the built-up law-breaking feelings dissipate.  The rest of the year wouldn’t be as crime-ridden as it was when there wasn’t a purge.  People could rape, kill, and steal whatever and whoever they wanted without any repercussions.  The first film never really capitalized on that, though.  It kept everything set in the home invasion.

The sequels played with the outside world.  With the concept of all crime being legal for twelve hours, it seemed strange to keep things confined to inside one house.  The Purge: Anarchy followed one man as he tried to get across the city and exact revenge on someone who had wronged him.  Along the way, he would build a group of people to travel with.  They would see some crazy things as all hell broke loose in the city streets.  There were hints at an even bigger world with government trucks roaming the streets and rich people paying to hunt the poor.  It had successfully opened the world while leading audiences towards something even bigger than simple law-breaking.

The Purge: Election Year made the politics much more apparent than The Purge: Anarchy.  The major political party was targeting a nominee who hoped to end the purge for good.  Minorities were specifically being targeted by the white men in power.  The threequel made sure that the racial allegories would be noticed if they hadn’t already been picked up in the second film.  From the confines of the house in the first film, the scope had now been enlarged to the entire nation with the government being the big bad guy.

Based on the ending of The Purge: Election Year, it might seem that the world couldn’t be built up anymore.  Purge night was only happening in America, as shown by the tourists who would show up from other nations to kill.  That’s why the fourth film, a prequel, was about the origins of purge night.  They couldn’t go bigger into a world of purges, but they could give background on the American purge night.  It showed how the New Founding Fathers, the political party, rose to prominence, how purge night became a thing, and how it was always a racially motivated event.  It wasn’t really about purging the bad thoughts.  It was about purging the people who weren’t straight, white, cis men.  The world was still being expanded by the origins of purge night.

Another film franchise that did well with the background world expansion was the John Wick franchise.  Each movie gave more depth to the assassin world, making something wholly unique.  What began as a simple revenge movie where the hero was a former assassin blossomed into something much bigger with worldwide implications.  Through three movies, audiences found many new details about John Wick and the assassin world in which he participated.

The first John Wick film was a revenge action film.  A group of local thugs broke into his home, killed his dog, and stole his car.  He wanted to get his car back and make them feel the pain he felt when he lost his dog.  A few of the world elements were introduced.  There were other assassins that John Wick interacted with.  There was the mystery of his nickname.  He stored a bunch of firearms in his home, encased in concrete.  And, of course, there was The Continental, a hotel where assassins were not allowed to murder anyone.  It was a holy ground of sorts.

John Wick: Chapter 2 introduced more of the assassin world to audiences.  The revenge that John Wick got in the first film got attention.  Someone from John’s past returned to cash in a deal they had made back in the day.  John went to Europe where there was another safe hotel.  The people in charge of the assassins were brought into the story.  Assassins from John’s past were fighting against him.  And, in the end, he broke some assassin rules and had to go on the run.

The threequel made the assassin world even bigger.  There was someone in charge of the people in charge of assassins.  There was someone introduced who was basically the judge for the assassin leaders.  A woman important to John’s past came back into his life, and John’s childhood was hinted at.  Everything in the franchise has been ever expanding, making a fully fleshed out world.

Sometimes sequels don’t do world building.  They’ll change a location.  They might swap out some characters.  But they feel like something that already happened.  A prime example is The Hangover Part II, which changed the location from Las Vegas to Bangkok, and changed the person who was lost.  Other than that, it told pretty much the same story, adding almost nothing new.  It wasn’t a peek at a bigger world.  It didn’t add depth to the characters or the world.  It simply took them on the same adventure in a different place.

World expanding is an important part of movie sequels.  Nobody wants a sequel to feel like the exact same movie as the one before.  Every sequel should try to do some sort of world building.  It might be the peek at something bigger that happened in Death Tube 2.  It could be The Purge: Anarchy going out of the house to show what was happening in the streets.  Or it could be like the John Wick franchise, deepening the mythology with each sequel.  Each route helps to make the sequels feel like something new, rather than more of the same.

These notes will be more of the same as any other post:

• Yohei Fukuda directed both Death Tube (week 201) and Death Tube 2.
• Have you seen either of the Death Tube movies?  What did you think?  What other franchises do good world building or expansion?  Tell me about them in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can also use the comments or Twitter to let me know about movies I should be checking out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies weeks.  I like the suggestions I’ve gotten, but I could always use more.
• There’s an Instagram account for Sunday “Bad” Movies if you want to check that out.
• I already have an idea of the post that I’ll end up writing for next week.  It’s not written yet, though, since I’m still finishing up this one.  The movie that will be covered is Soul Man.  It’s an interesting one about a rich white kid going to great lengths to get into Harvard.  There’s more to it than that.  I just don’t want to reveal it to those who don’t know the movie.  Trust me, it’s not a great idea.  That will all be written about for next week.  I’ll see you then.