Making a prequel can be a tough task for a filmmaker. It might even be tougher than writing a sequel. With a sequel, the story can go somewhere new. It can continue what has already been told. There’s a blank canvas ahead, with only a writer’s imagination as the limit. That’s not the case with a prequel. The story can’t go anywhere it wants. Everything must lead to a certain destination. If not at the end of the prequel, then within the future of the prequel. It must be able to line up with the movies that chronologically follow.
Keeping in line with that continuity is easily the most difficult part of making a prequel film. That’s not to say it is the only difficult part of prequelizing. There are a multitude of things that could help or hamper the success of a prequel. Casting, backstory, and even references could lead to audiences groaning as much as it could lead to cheers. Cheers or jeers. A good prequel will slide right into the canon without feeling like fan-service, while a bad prequel could ruin a fan’s day.
I say all this, having just watched Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, an origin story sort of movie for the Tremors franchise. The action was taken back to 1889. Hiram Gummer (Michael Gross), ancestor of franchise protagonist Burt, arrived in the town of Rejection, Nevada to investigate why people were dying in a silver mine he owned. He quickly discovered killer worms infesting the area. It was up to Hiram and the people of Rejection to get rid of the pesky worms so the mine and town could flourish. Well, as much as a small desert town could flourish, that is.
Tremors 4: The Legend Begins was a prequel to the entire franchise. It took place before the three movies and short-lived television series that preceded it. As a prequel, it fell into many of the trappings that a prequel might fall into. It had to tell a story that could take place before the rest of the franchise, without breaking continuity. It referenced some of the events and stuff that would happen in the other movies. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Let’s get into those elements.
Hiram Gummer was an ancestor of Burt Gummer, the gun-nut who was a part of every other entry in the franchise, both before and after the prequel. He was a completely different character, however. He was mild-mannered, had never fired a gun, and wasn’t even from the area of Rejection (I’ll get to Rejection in a bit). The crux of the movie was spent getting Hiram to the point where the audience would believe that his grandson or great grandson could be Burt Gummer. It was a strange origin story, in that sense. It got even stranger when looking at what Hiram was up against.
The first Tremors movie was all about the people of Perfection discovering giant, carnivorous worms beneath them. They had to find a way to kill the worms while also not making enough sound or vibrations to attract the worms’ attention. How was it that the people in modern day Perfection didn’t know about the worms that tormented 1889 Rejection? Their ancestors were there. Their ancestors experienced the graboids before. This was where the problem with prequels reared its ugly head.
You see, a prequel takes place before the initial story. In this case, the initial story was a town dealing with a new infestation. They were being killed by giant worms. Surely, this was the first time, or they would have heard about previous attacks. It would be like making a Die Hard prequel, when the entire point of the first film was that John McClane was an average cop thrust into a new situation he had never experienced before. How would you make a story set before the first film when the backstory given in the first film was that this sort of thing had never happened before?
In the case of Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, they tossed a bit of dialogue in at the end of the movie to explain it away. After killing all three graboids that were attacking them, the people of Rejection were able to reopen the silver mine nearby. Hiram told them that they shouldn’t mention the monsters to anyone. If they did, nobody would want to come to the area and work in the mine. They were going to sweep it all under the rug. They were going to perform a cover-up. And it worked, too. Nobody in present day Perfection had heard of the graboids before the attacks in the first flick. Hiram and his community kept their word and told nobody. Not even their families.
Back to Hiram for a minute, he was still the main arc of Tremors 4: The Legend Begins. As much as the movie was about a community coming together to take down graboids, it was about Hiram becoming the Gummer that we all knew through Burt. He began the movie as a rich, east coast guy who cared more about feeling pampered than actually getting his hands dirty and doing work. Most of the arc involved him becoming a gunslinger, of sorts, and being happy while killing graboids. This could very much be seen in the final moments when the local innkeeper gave him a gatling gun for shooting practice. He loved it.
However, in true prequel fashion, there were other things that happened with Hiram that were clear references to Burt. When I say, “true prequel fashion,” I mean that a lot of prequels feel the need to shoehorn things from earlier movies into the prequel to pay off backstory that wasn’t necessarily needed. Hiram, at one point, referenced staying in town and building a home on a hill for better perspective, and having a basement in the home. This was a clear reference to the gun bunker Burt had in Tremors.
Another example of this kind of shoe-horning of references was the movie Solo. You know, the Star Wars one. It was a prequel to the original trilogy of Star Wars films that was an origin story of how Han Solo got into the smuggling business. The movie went a little overboard with Han Solo’s origins, though. It tried to do a little too much with one movie. He met Chewbacca. Cool. He won the Millennium Falcon from Lando through gambling. Sure. He did the Kessel Run. Okay, maybe that was a little much. That could have been held off for a sequel. He met Jabba. He got his last name Solo. If I’m remembering correctly, even R2-D2 and C-3PO made appearances. There was no need for all that stuff to make it into the movie, but it did. Because the filmmakers decided there needed to be a whole bunch of references.
The final piece of the prequel puzzle for Tremors 4: The Legend Begins was the town, itself. Rejection became Perfection, if you couldn’t already tell. That played into the Hiram arc. When he first got to the town, he rejected it. Hence the name. There was an inn, a shop, a water tower, and… One other building owned by an Indigenous man. That was kind of it, really. None of the buildings had actual walls. They had a wooden front, and then canvas everywhere else. By the end, after the big battle with the graboids, Hiram liked the town. It was perfect. He was going to live there. They changed the name to Perfection to suit Hiram’s change of mind. Sure, the town didn’t really grow after that. The town in the first Tremors movie was still pretty small. But it felt more lived-in. More permanent.
This sort of thing happens in a lot of prequels. There will be a place or thing that becomes the recognizable place or thing over the course of the runtime. Death Race 2 was a good example of this. It showed the origins of the Death Race, but it had to evolve into the Death Race after starting as a gladiatorial fight sort of thing. The fight was something similar, only with hand-to-hand combat instead of cars. It evolved into the race, much like Rejection evolved into Perfection.
Tremors 4: The Legend Begins wasn’t the worst prequel ever made. It didn’t ruin the continuity in any way, thanks to the dialogue about not telling future generations what they went through. It enlightened audiences about how the town came to get its name, Perfection. And it gave some backstory to the Gummer family. The issue was that it was completely unnecessary. Nobody asked for an origin story for the town. Nobody demanded a wild west version of Tremors. Okay, maybe someone out there did. I don’t know. But they were definitely a very, very small minority. Considering Tremors made it out to be the first time the town experienced graboids, there was no reason to tell a graboid story in the past.
Prequels typically show events that lead up to the events of the original film. The original film might show a character’s story, but that character is a part of something much larger. The Purge showed how the Sandins fought off intruders on Purge Night, while The First Purge showed the origin of Purge Night. Star Wars featured Han Solo, an established smuggler, helping the resistance. Solo showed how Han Solo got into smuggling. Death Race featured the titular Death Race, while Death Race 2 and Death Race: Inferno showed how the Death Race came to be and what happened with the original Frankenstein.
Tremors 4: The Legend Begins failed to shed a new light on anything. It simply took the idea of graboids going after the town and took that into an 1889 setting. It didn’t shed new light on any of the characters. It didn’t shed new light on the graboids. At most, it established the town as Perfection and brought the Gummers into the community. And, even then, Perfection existed before the Gummers, as Rejection. So, really, it didn’t even establish the town, only the name. There were no new layers to things, though. No curtains were pulled back. It was just a new adventure in old times.
There are many things that could make or break a prequel. It must be beholden to what came before it. It must slide into continuity without contradicting established elements of the universe. But it can’t be too referential, or it will take people out of the story. If they are focused on cameos and name drops, they might not be as invested in the emotional arc the characters go through. There should also be a reason for the prequel. It should fill in some backstory, whether to a specific character or to the world that was built. If it feels too disconnected, or if the events barely matter when brought into the rest of the franchise, the audience could feel cheated. A prequel should also try to do something new, or it’ll end up feeling like a repeat of what came before. That’s a sequel issue, too.
Sometimes, a prequel can be a fantastic thing. It can slide into a series as something that happened earlier, bringing new light to the places and characters that the audience fell in love with. With the right story and the right filmmaker, a prequel could end up being one of the best installments of a franchise. That didn’t happen this time around. It has happened before, though. And when it does, it is magical. As movies should be.
That was a cheesy ending. Now it’s time for some notes:
- S.S. Wilson directed Tremors 4: The Legend Begins and Tremors II: Aftershocks (week 360).
- Tremors 4: The Legend Begins has put Michael Gross at seven Sunday “Bad” Movies entries. The other six were Cool As Ice (week 348), Tremors (week 360), Tremors II: Aftershocks (week 360), Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (week 360), Ground Control (week 474), and Atlas Shrugged: Part II (week 490).
- Matthew Seth Wilson returned from Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (week 360) to be in Tremors 4: The Legend Begins.
- Tremors 4: The Legend Begins featured J.E. Freeman, who was previously seen in Aces: Iron Eagle III (week 90).
- Ming Lo was in Tremors 4: The Legend Begins and Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (week 234).
- Have you seen Tremors 4: The Legend Begins? What did you think? Was it a good prequel, or did it leave something to be desired? What makes a good prequel? Give me all your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments.
- If there’s a movie that you think would fit into the Sunday “Bad” Movies schedule, hit me up on Twitter and tell me about it. I’m always looking for movies to add in here that I may not have thought of otherwise. You could also drop your suggestions in the comments below.
- Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram, too.
- It’s time to look at next week’s movie. It isn’t going to be another franchise movie. I’m putting the franchises on hold for a bit. It does share some similarities to the Tremors movies, though. It’s a small group of people fighting off some monsters. Only, instead of a small western town, it’s on a spaceship. Instead of graboids, it’s alien parasites. I’ll be checking out a 2020 movie called Breach. Come back next week to see what I thought about it. See you then.
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