Sequels have been around since nearly the dawn of movies.
They are a way to continue a story so that audiences can enjoy more time with
the characters they have grown to love. Or a sequel can continue the story with
a bunch of other characters to help flesh out a world that people enjoyed
seeing the first time around. But there are times when a sequel isn’t enough.
People want to know how the world got to the point that it was prior to one of
the franchise entries. Thus, the prequel exists.
Prequels help fill in the backstory of events that people
have witnessed in other movies. It could be the events that caused those
events. It could be the earlier years of a character’s life that made them the
character that audiences know. A prequel could simply be a story in the same
world set before the story that was already shown. Or it could be in between
some of the movies, filling in a timespan that was previously unseen. No matter
what, a prequel takes place before at least one entry of the franchise that was
released before it.
The Star Wars franchise is no stranger to prequels.
Ignoring the vast number of books in both the legends and canonical lines,
there are six prequel films and four prequel television series that I know of.
The prequel trilogy of films (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the
Clones, and Revenge of the Sith) took place in Anakin Skywalker’s
younger years as he transformed into the Darth Vader character from the
original trilogy (A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return
of the Jedi). The Clone Wars was a theatrical animated film that
took place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith,
which served as a pilot episode to a Clone Wars series that chronicled
that war. There was another Clone Wars animated show at one point, as
well. Star Wars: Rebels took place between the prequels and original
trilogy, as did the films Rogue One and Solo. Finally, there’s The
Mandalorian, which is a prequel to the newer trilogy of films (The Force
Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker).
Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the movie from 2008, might
be the most interesting of the prequels. It was a theatrical animated movie
meant to set up a television series. It came out four years after the prequel
trilogy concluded, making it a prequel to one of the prequels. Anakin Skywalker
(Matt Lanter) was assigned a new padawan, Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein).
Together with Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor), they had to stop Count
Dooku (Christopher Lee) and save the son of Jabba the Hutt (Kevin Michael Richardson).
The animated film was not good. The relationships between
the main characters of Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka never felt fully formed. In
the case of Ahsoka, that could have been that she had just met the two Jedi.
The banter between the characters didn’t work because those relationships
weren’t where they needed to be. The standalone story, though having some
stakes in the overall turning of the Clone Wars, felt a little light. The Jedi
had to get the baby and take it home. At no point did it feel like they were in
any real danger of failing their mission. Then there was the comedy. The jokes
throughout the film were mostly about how dumb the B1 Battle Droids were. They
usually fell as flat as the many droids that fell off cliffs.
But what made Star Wars: The Clone Wars interesting
was its placement within the timeline. The prequel trilogy of films was meant
to show Anakin’s turn to the dark side as he became Darth Vader. It was a
trilogy designed to give background to the villain of the original films.
Within that story, a new part of the Star Wars world was shown. The Jedi
Council came to life on the screen. The senate was debating the issues of the
galaxy. Within that world, and a big reason that things shifted from the
Republic to the Empire, were the Clone Wars. The animated series, and the
theatrical pilot, would help shed some light on the events of the Clone Wars
and show how important they were to the state of the galaxy.
Going away from the Star Wars franchise, there have
been other prequels featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies. There have been three,
in fact. For two of them, they were prequels because there needed to be an
entirely new cast. They were direct-to-video movies and didn’t have the budget
to get the original, star-studded cast back. For the other prequel, it was
because there wasn’t much more story to tell after the events of the first
film, so they went to a time before those events.
Death Race 2 and Death Race: Inferno were two
direct-to-video prequels to the 2008 Death Race reboot. Death Race 2
was about the implementation of the Death Race competition. The original
competition was a Death Match, which was a futuristic gladiatorial fight. It
would soon be switched to a race in which the drivers tried to kill each other
while attempting to win their freedom. The main character took on the role of
Frankenstein, a racing persona that would be taken up by the main character of
the 2008 Death Race. Death Race: Inferno saw that same driver
plan his escape from prison and pass his racing persona onto someone else.
The idea behind the Death Race prequels, story wise,
was to build the history of the race and the history of the Frankenstein
persona. Frankenstein was more than a driver. He was a hero to the people who
watched the races. But he was also a mask. Anyone could be behind that mask.
The prequels established the early versions of the race and built Frankenstein
into the mythical racer that he was at the beginning of the 2008 original.
The other prequel to be featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies
was Transmorphers: Fall of Man, the prequel to Transmorphers. The
original Transmorphers was an attempt to cash in on the popularity of Transformers.
Yet the stories were way different. Transmorphers was set in the future
with an underground military colony putting together their last stand against
an invading alien robot army. The only similarity it had to Transformers
was the alien robots.
Transmorphers: Fall of Man was set in the present day
and showed the initial invasion of the alien robot army. People were being
attacked. Communities were in danger. One man and one woman did whatever they
could to survive. It was giving the background of the invasion to better inform
what happened in the original. Transmorphers was the end of the alien
robot army attack on Earth. Transmorphers: Fall of Man was the
beginning.
Prequels can be seen all through film. The Insidious
films got a couple sequels. The Conjuring universe is filled with
prequel spin-offs. The First Purge was a prequel to all the other Purge
films. Marvel is even getting in on the prequel business by putting out Black
Widow this year. Sometimes a franchise needs to go to a time before what
has already been shown in order to better inform the stories that people know
and love.
A good way to fill in the backstory of a character or the
events of a film is to make a prequel. Sometimes people want to know more about
the stories they watch. They don’t want a simple continuation. They want to see
how things ended up the way they ended up. Where sequels can present the
beloved characters in a new story, or a continuation of the same story,
prequels can bring some backstory to what unfolded. Whether sequels or
prequels, one thing remains the same. The audience gets to revisit a world they
enjoyed the first time around. That’s franchise filmmaking for you.
There are a few notes for this one, so hold on to your
butts:
- Death Race (week 9), Death Race 2 (week 9), DeathRace: Inferno (week 9), Transmorphers (week 130), and Transmorphers: Fall of Man (week 130) were mentioned in this post.
- Ian Abercrombie provided his voice for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He was featured in a handful of other Sunday “Bad” Movies. They were The Ice Pirates (week 128), Sextette (week 141), Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (week 159), and Wild Wild West (week 296). That means he’s officially in the Five Timer’s Club.
- Kevin Michael Richardson voiced Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He also did some work on Mortal Kombat (week 140).
- James Arnold Taylor returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies this week. He was previously featured in Foodfight! (week 143).
- Nika Futterman has voiced two Sunday “Bad” Movies characters. One was in Delgo (week 148) and the other was in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
- Dee Bradley Baker made a second appearance with Star Wars: The Clone Wars. His first appearance was in Furry Vengeance (week 162).
- Christopher Lee voiced Count Dooku in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He also had a role in The Stupids (week 188).
- Anthony Daniels voiced his most famous character, C-3PO, in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He was featured in the film I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle (week 203).
- Corey Burton returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies this week, after previously appearing in Dudley Do-Right (week 336).
- Finally, Matthew Wood made a quick Sunday “Bad” Movies turnaround. He was recently featured in The Emoji Movie (week 373).
- Have you seen Star Wars: The Clone Wars? What did you think? Did you like the movie? Did you like the series? What do you think of prequels in general? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
- Twitter and the comments are also places where you can find me if you want to suggest a movie for me to watch. I’m always on the look out for movies that would fit with the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Let me know about them if you have any.
- Guess what? There’s a Sunday “Bad” Movies account on Instagram that you should be checking out. Go take a look.
- There’s one last note before everyone heads out. Of course it’s a look forward to what’s coming up. I could have saved next week’s movie for a franchise week and watched it with the movie that came before it. But I didn’t want to. I wanted it to get its own post. I’ll be checking out Mannequin: On the Move, the second Mannequin movie. That’s next week. I’ll see you then with the post.
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