Borak: Stop the Encores

“Transformers is all that matters, isn't it?” Sarah said, and even though I missed a big bulk of this year’s summer blockbusters—Pirates 3, Ocean's Thirteen and Spider Man-3—I didn't feel like I missed out at all on the action. This feeling has been bugging me for the past two years, and despite Michael Bay's robotic efforts, I find it hard to believe that next year's movies will prove to be any better.

It dawned on me how unspectacular these movies are when, for the twentieth time, I watched Michael J Fox jump on a skateboard, hop over a car, and lead Biff and his bumbling gang into the manure truck. I should be bored of that movie by now; bored enough at least to stay at home and flip to America's Next Top Model.

I doubt Transformers can hold the same appeal for so long. It's been said that Bay avoided death from fanboys (stoning by GoBots?) because it's the first movie in which he directed more robots than humans; it's evident now that the presence of a soul has held his creative genius back thus far. Of course, Transformers had all the trappings of the year's best action movie, but the movie (save for John Turturro's minor role) lacked a figure like Doc Brown or Han Solo, whose rogue spark always threw an otherwise robotic script out of whack. The movie needed a soul; the script felt like it was mangled out of an algorithmic software. And if it was indeed the year's best action movie, what's even more worrying is how utterly the competition paled in comparison.

This year was one of sequels (in itself a sequel to the sequels trend of the past several years). In the span of two months, summer 2007 threw up more numbers than a binge night on Sesame Street; there was, Ocean's 13, SpiderMan 3, Shrek 3, as well as Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, all seemingly manufactured on the assumption that if we liked what we saw the first (or second) time, we're bound to want one (or two) more. And here's the thing: We’re sick of encores.

As I came to realise when Back To The Future 3 came to a close, watching a great movie should leave you, not whooping with joy, but sad and depressed. I remember how audiences stayed back at the end of Lord of The Rings: Return of the King, Gladiator, and (even) 300, their glazed eyes blankly staring at the post-movie credits. Like orphans returning from Neverland, they were dumbstruck, mindphucked and wondering if the adventure had really come to an end. That was cinema magic: leave ‘em wanting more, and not give in. If only new movies would heed the same lesson.

“As Spider-Man 3 has proved, rumpus minus cohesion equals mess,” according to Anthony Lane, The New Yorker's sharpest movie critic. As proven with X-Men: The Last Stand, Ocean's 12, and Pirates of The Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, the demand for sequels are insatiable, with the results often disappointing. Fans demand so much more in the sequel that plots and characters are flung about limply like the tentacles on Davy Jones's face.

“The people making these sequels are so drenched in the saga that they commit the fatal error of presuming that we are in the same boat,” writes Lane, “that we have spotless recall of every twist in the earlier films and can barely breathe because of our desperation for more. What they fail to realise is that big summer movies, even the successful ones, are designed to be forgettable, passing through our system at precisely the same rate as a pint of Pepsi. Nothing is left but fizzing nerve ends and a sugary soupÁon of rot.”

It was this formula of pep and fizz that made Marty McFly so watchable. BTTF (it now sounds like a dirty abbreviation) was everything a great summer movie had—it was sweet, poppy, predictable, and for some reason, never remembered in accurate detail (I had this problem with BTTF2). More importantly, you knew that the trilogy ended as the DeLorean got crumpled, never to be resurrected again. And so it was with other cult movies. Sauron's Ring melted. The 300 Spartans died. Spinal Tap disbanded. Deal with it. If you want more, tough luck, kiddos. Great movies, as Lane says, should dissolve from memory as time passes, only for nostalgia to hit us later, to coincide with the tenth anniversary DVD release.

They don't make movies like that anymore—the moment a movie becomes successful, it gets a sequel within two years. Transformers 2 will yet be another here-we-go-again mess of more robots, more plots, and more ass, followed by a third movie made to redeem the franchise (take Ocean’s 13). The unnecessary Pirates of The Carribean add-ons and revival of Star Wars should have ended this trend of sequels. But nostalgia, it seems, is too valuable to be wasted on just DVD sales—Indiana Jones 4, Goonies 2, and Rambo 4 are in the works. Just stop the sequels already, and call an end an end. Lest we repeat the unholy mistakes that were Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.


John Lim thinks all of you should watch BTTF again. And support Huey Lewis.