Image from Halloween (2018)
With film franchises like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, Rocky, Blade Runner, Top Gun, Halloween, and many others employing the storytelling strategy of a long-deferred sequel in the past 15 years, it is an appropriate time to start asking questions about how such deferrals change the nature of the much-studied concept of the film sequel: what ties these films together across multiple generations of filmgoers? What industrial and cultural conditions influence their production and call them into existence? Given the changes in film production and exhibition that separates the early films from their deferred sequels, how might we theorize reception for these serial texts? Film writer Matt Singer coined the term “legacyquels” for these films, based on their reliance upon the popularity and continued cultural relevance of the original films. However, that name does not capture the full range of effects of these films.
Laura Mulvey wrote of film’s malleability on video as creating “a dialectical relation between the old and the new, breaking down the separation from the past from which nostalgia is derived. But at the same time, it is elegiac: there is no escape from passing time and death itself.”[i] Mulvey’s astute observations about the way viewers who can pause, rewind, and fast-forward through a film when watching it at home provides insight into the ways that these delayed sequels operate in new mediums and new generations. Borrowing from Mulvey, I call these films elegiac sequels, given their existence as reminders that there is “no escape from passing time and death itself” as evidenced in their main features: (1) a delayed appearance of at least 10 years, and (2) the return of at least one actor from the original film(s). These features combine to put evidence of the passage of time on screen in the older bodies and often in-film deaths of the original actors/characters. As franchise-building exercises, elegiac sequels fare better than reboots and remakes because they affirm the importance, canonicity, and emotions that have been accreted around the original films as time has passed. Additionally, the elegiac sequel provides the occasion for the reevaluation of the cultural impact of the original film, opening up new conversations about cultural impact, casting, and celebrity.
Lucy and Andy and their son Marlon in Twin Peaks: The Return
I see the elegiac sequel as a storytelling strategy that allows for a wide variety of film and television discourses to be brought together in novel and valuable combinations because of its unique construction, outcomes, and effects. Though I primarily think of the elegiac sequel as a function of blockbuster filmmaking given the prominence of those kinds of films in the flashpoint year of 2008 and their prominence in many large franchises, the elegiac sequel is a mobile phenomenon that can appear within indie filmmaking (the Before trilogy) and television from prestige examples like Twin Peaks: The Return to commercial streaming content like Fuller House as easily as it does within the Star Wars franchise. As such, they allow for a study of what remains consistent between these varied filmed media including the general format of elegiac sequel stories and the importance of actors/characters in the digital age, as well as what changes between them including various expressions of seriality, aesthetic differences, and paradigms of audience/fan response. My primary lens used throughout this text will be a rhetorical one, informed by the work of James Phelan and Gilberto Perez, the latter of whom suggests that “whereas poetics looks at the work and its construction, and the study of reception looks at the audience and its response, rhetoric looks at the way construction elicits response and the way the work works on the audience.”[ii] This rhetorical lens allows, as Perez states, for an investigation of the elegiac sequel not only from the angle of construction, which for me will encompass industrial and artistic influences and outcomes, but also reception, which, given the elegiac sequel’s revivification of (varyingly) dormant franchises with prior and lasting fan attachments, will lend itself to a study of the various audiences the elegiac sequel addresses on different levels of discourse and with occasionally disparate results. The rhetorical lens will also enable a broader umbrella under which I will pull together the various disciplines from which I will borrow, including star studies, genre studies, new media theories, and fan studies. Finally, the rhetorical lens will aid in my political motives for investigating the elegiac sequel, as I put to the test Mulvey’s theory that the juxtaposition between the old and new breaks down nostalgia rather than reifies it. Does the elegiac sequel’s ability to revisit and revise ideas, themes, and representations contained within the original text while crafting new stories give it political relevance or are the studios and filmmakers behind elegiac sequels hesitant to go beyond aesthetic changes in representation? Are they making nostalgia’s inherent conservatism available for revision and reimagination by new generations of audiences, or are they reinscribing it and making its grasp more difficult to escape?
The elegiac sequel is one in a long line of what Frank Kelleter and Kathleen Loock call an “auto-adaptive, evolutionary structure” within the “evolving cinematic formatting process” of cinematic remaking, one which they see as “a practice that generates media-specific modes of variation and organizes them into historically variable categories such as, currently, the ‘remake’, the ‘sequel’, the ‘spin-off’, the ‘revision’, the ‘spoof’, the ‘re-imagining’, the ‘prequel’, the ‘franchise’, and – most recently – the ‘reboot’.”[iii] As a narrative structure, the elegiac sequel combines tendencies of the remake, the sequel, the revision, the franchise, and the reboot as it adapts and evolves within the modern media environment. This is all part of the process of near-constant creative and industrial churn produced within Hollywood. Barry Langford suggests that, “Above and beyond any defined or definable set of stylistic parameters or industrial practices, this ongoing reinvention may be the most classical of all Hollywood’s enduring traditions.”[iv] And, as David Bordwell writes, “Crucial practices of storytelling persisted, despite the demise of the studio system, the emergence of conglomerate control, and new methods of marketing and distribution.”[v] As such, the elegiac sequel tends to follow a certain formula after meeting the criteria that enable its existence, similar to any other blockbuster film which must first fulfill some criteria of marketability and adaptability to other revenue streams. The most important criteria for the elegiac sequel is that there must be some lasting cultural impact that the original film or films had and upon which the new elegiac sequel can capitalize. In order to ensure that the franchise does meet this condition, the elegiac sequel must come at least 10 years after the original film franchise’s latest entry to ensure that enough time has passed and the original’s popularity has maintained a certain level. Finally, in order to ensure that there is a sense of continuity between the original and elegiac sequel, there must be at least one returning actor whose aged visage will do the bulk of the affective labor in portraying the loss of time and, potentially, inspire grief at the ultimate fate of the beloved character they play. Once these conditions are met, the formula can play out with various results.
Celine almost touches Jesse in Before Sunset
The formula for an elegiac sequel sees audiences introduced to the new cast of characters and, frequently, an action scene or opening kill (in a horror film) before they are reintroduced to the returning character(s). The way that the plot plays out is highly dependent upon the genre in which the elegiac sequel and its antecedents appear. The neo-noir detective story of Blade Runner is repeated with a difference in its elegiac sequel, Blade Runner 2049, just as the wandering through a city on a first date indie movie “plot” of Before Sunrise is repeated nearly a decade later in Before Sunset for a second date. As the genre plot is set into motion, one of the new characters is usually revealed to be a child or grandchild of the returning character. Not only does this familial connection make the relationship between the new and returning characters easy to understand as they slot into traditional familial roles, but it also allows for the very reflections on the passage of time and eventual death, real or metaphorical, of the returning character that enables the new characters to take over both in the franchise in and the hearts of the new fans attracted by their presence. This emphasis on the bloodline also opens an opportunity for the filmmakers to either embrace or critique the inherent conservatism of following genealogies of celebrity and power. The middle of the film is then filled with exploits both exciting and poignant as the returning character, like Stallone’s Rocky or Ford’s Han Solo slowly comes to recognize some of themselves in the new characters (Jordan’s Creed or Ridley’s Rey) while reminding them that they are still the ones with all the knowledge and the charisma that once made them a star in the same kind of situation. These middle scenes, when executed well, are the engines that drive the elegiac sequel as a vehicle for both aging and newly arrived stars. If the newbies can match the old star’s ability to charm an audience and carry a film, there’s a great chance that it will launch their career into greater renown. If the aging star can remind us that behind the wrinkles and grey hair remains the same incandescent core that made them into indelible characters and movie stars in the first place, they can make the audience think about the value of the movie star as an aspirational figure, as an enduring and still entertaining performer who carries with them the weight of all of their previous performances but can still delight and surprise just as they did at the start of their careers. Time may pass, these scenes suggest, but it doesn’t entirely destroy, it only changes and provides opportunities for new experiences. As the Log Lady from Twin Peaks: The Return says towards the end of her final scene (filmed days before the actor, Catherine E. Coulson died in real life from cancer and two years before it aired within the show), “You know about death; that it’s just a change, not an end.” Unfortunately, one of those changes is indeed death, and so whether it is a metaphorical death, a health scare, or the real death of the character (and sometimes, tragically, the actor), the climax of the film often ends with the death of a returning character or characters in order to give audiences closure on that character before the new characters fully take over. In Hollywood, death is the only way out of the franchise.
The formula for elegiac sequels is open enough to allow for a wide variation in tone and effect. They can be triumphant, as in the dual victories of Adonis Creed and Rocky over their boxing opponent and cancer, respectively. They can be foreboding, as in the Halloween elegiac sequel confusingly just named Halloween in which Michael Myers seems to be defeated by the trio of Strode women who survived the events of the film but whose signature heavy breathing over the end credits signals his undying return. They can even be upsetting, as in the case of Blade Runner 2049 which sees its hero discover after 2.5 hours of mystery that he is not special or even the center of his own story but rather a side character whose investigation ends in the reunion Deckard and his special daughter. Or they can be mixed, as the Star Wars sequel trilogy attempted with the deaths of the three signature returning characters (in order: Han, Luke, and Leia) across the three planned films that are mixed in with narrow victories over the ultimate evil (also a returning character in the form of Emperor Palpatine).
K walks through an irradiated Las Vegas in Blade Runner 2049
Elegiac sequels can also have varied effects within the culture they come from. It is not a mistake that the elegiac sequel tends not to have white male characters as the primary new character, as studios respond (ever so slowly) to criticisms that their blockbusters were too focused on white male leads. With the metaphorical or actual death of the original characters and the prominence of the new, more diverse cast of characters introduced to replace them, Hollywood studios and creatives can point at their representational politics and say that they’ve fixed past mistakes. Whether those new representations are actually beneficial of course varies from example to example, though the tendency is towards surface-level representation without much appreciation for how the new characters’ non-white-male-ness might influence the story being told (the terrible fumbling of Finn’s arc in the Star Wars sequels are perhaps the best example of this kind of failure). Though the surface level representational politics might have been brought up to the standards of modern culture in these elegiac sequels, there is still a question of whether or not that representation is meaningful without a deeper revision of the themes and politics of the franchise.
[i] Laura Mulvey, Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. London: Reaktion Books, 2006, 194.
[ii] Gilberto Perez, The Eloquent Screen: A Rhetoric of Film. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019, IXX.
[iii] Kelleter, Frank and Kathleen Loock, “Hollywood Remaking as Second-Order Serialization.” Remake/Remodel: Film Remakes, Adaptations and Fan Productions, Kathleen Loock, and Constantine Verevis, eds.. E-Book. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 130.
[iv] Langford, Barry. Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style, and Ideology Since 1945. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010, 282-3.
[v] Bordwell, David. The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. E-Book. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006, 17.