How do we avoid the third act curse?

[Chris Wallace]

Indeed. But I think that the reboot hysteria is also contributing to the problem, & will ultimately make it worse. If the studio goes into the 3rd movie with the mentality that, "Hey, who cares if this movie's good or not? We can just reboot"-we'll NEVER get quality trilogies. I think part of the reason why "Blade: Trinity" failed is because Goyer was more focused on the spin-off he wanted to make than the movie he was making.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

IMO execs will realize reboots are terrible ideas. Even though the new Spiderman will probably gross a lot of money, I won't be surprised if it doesn't gross as much as Spiderman 3 or barely grosses more than Spiderman 3.

Both Batman begins and The Incredible Hulk, despite being better films than their predecessors (arguably for TIH), barely did better in the box office than their predecessors because let's be honest, as much as bad films hurt the confidence of filmgoers, reboots can too.

Execs will eventually realize that continuity > reboot any day, everyday of the week.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

double post

 

[Chris Wallace]

IMO execs will realize reboots are terrible ideas. Even though the new Spiderman will probably gross a lot of money, I won't be surprised if it doesn't gross as much as Spiderman 3 or barely grosses more than Spiderman 3.

Both Batman begins and The Incredible Hulk, despite being better films than their predecessors (arguably for TIH), barely did better in the box office than their predecessors because let's be honest, as much as bad films hurt the confidence of filmgoers, reboots can too.

Execs will eventually realize that continuity > reboot any day, everyday of the week.

Let's hope.

 

[Chris Wallace]

Then there's the double-edged sword/Catch 22 of it all; money. X3 did well commercially-hell, it outperformed "Superman Returns" despite not getting 1/10 as much press-but got bad reviews & poor fan response. Same holds true for Spider-Man 3, which outsold its vastly more well-received predecessor. Now while I am thoroughly convinced we would have gotten a better movie had they not forced Venom in, it probably wouldn't have sold as much, since Venom was the movie's big draw. Hence, he was simultaneously the key to the movie's commercial success and its ultimate downfall-if not the downfall of the series. Sony made money but at the expense of droves & droves of pissed-off fans. So it's possible that we'd be seeing this reboot plan either way.

 

[dude stannis]

Look at Die Hard 3, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Return of the King, Last Crusade. etc.

1. They don't reuse the same plot as the original.
2. The studios didn't screw around with the director and writers ideas.
3. They kept the same tone and style as the originals. I.E. no shark jumping.
4. The filmmakers listened to criticisms of the original films.
5. The action was consistent with the others.
6. None where rushed to meet a release date.

As far as I'm concerned Nolan is the kind of guy that would adhere to all of those (Except for 4, somebody get Bale some throat medication please).

 

[spider-neil]

1. establish the character
2. improve and evolve the character
3. tie up loose ends (because the actors are probably on a 3 picture deal)

basically with the 3rd movie you are trying to go out with a bang instead of simply trying to continue a theme, the pace and content of the movie is changing because you are trying t include more.

take blade, what made the blade movie so good was lots and lots of shots of blade kicking vampire arse, so instead of giving the audience THAT (which is sure as heck the only eason I want to watch a blade movie) you are introducing a characters I don't give a **** about, dilluting the time blade is on screen (which was the only bits worth watching).

or spider-man, one bad guy one hero, both get developed in 3 TOO many villians one of whom (venom) I absolute HATE. so whilst SM3 could have been a lot worse it could soooo easily have been so much better if sony hadn't stuck their nose in.

 

[Kevin Roegele]

I think it's down to three things.

1. The story has already been told, or atleast the most important part.

2. The third movie is often unavoidably repetative of past glories.

3. Because of point 2, the filmakers have to throw in new things to keep the audience intrested, and often the new stuff takes the focus off the main character(s). X-Men III, Spider-Man 3, Blade Trinity, Superman III - all have simply too many characters. X3 especially has quite a ridiculous ammount of character juggling going on. Superman III focuses on the wrong characters and the wrong parts of the story - the romance with Lana and Clark and the battle between Supes and Clark should be the major elements.

I'd argue that Batman Forever actually brings all it's characters and story elements together better than any other superhero movie. It's quite brilliant how everything builds up to the climax, which encapsulates everything in the story and all five main characters, and the theme of duality. So could the first Spider-Man movie burrowed it, but to lesser effect.

 

[Chris Wallace]

Batman Forever also-for the most part-functions independently of its predecessors. There ARE no loose ends to tie up & with Schumacher having such a drastically different take on the characters than Burton did, it wasn't bogged down the way the Marvel 3rd acts have been. Sadly, he then helmed a 4th installment that took everything he'd done right and ran it into the ground, took everything he'd done wrong & magnified it, and brought on such campiness and cheese the likes of which had not been seen in almost 30 years. THIS played a bigger role in engendering both the reboot hysteria and the 3rd act curse than anything else. Between the dreadful "Superman IV" and the relentlessly goofy "Batman & Robin", audiences had gotten a taste of the 4th act curse and developed a fear of it. So what do we say? Don't go past 3. Wrap it up. DO NOT make a 4th movie, ever. Subsequently bringing about the 3rd act curse. Add to this the series was broken beyond redemption. So the only way to continue was to remove every trace of what Schumacher had done, bringing about the first ever, truly rebooted film franchise. It worked, and had the unfortunate side effect of making audiences-and now the studios-believe that this was the answer eny time anything went wrong with a film franchise. So thank you, Mr. Schumacher. You not only screwed Batman but every other superhero in the entire genre.

 

[dude stannis]

Yeah self contained stories are a must. Batman 3 seems like it will be fine there too, the only real carry over being Batman is a fugitive from the law.

And yes, damn you Schuf***er, damn you straight to hell.

 

[E-Man]

Now I'm going to have the Dude Love theme song stuck in my head for awhile. lol

 

[Figs]

Aside from a possible third Batman film from Nolan Iron Man just might be another contender to try to break the curse. Still way too early to tell of course.

If IM2 is as good as it looks then Nolan and Favreau will both have my vote to be the one or ones to break the comic trilogy curse.

 

[Heretic]

Part of the problem is that everyone involved with this type of film thinks in trilogies...

They realize that their story wont wrap up by the end of part 3, so they force the story into unnatural places and cram as many characters in as possible. Everyone has this "how do we top our previous success" mentality, so everything is tried all at once, when all the audience wanted was a natural continuation of the story.

 

[dude stannis]

Now I'm going to have the Dude Love theme song stuck in my head for awhile. lol

Ooooh haaaave meeercy!

 

[Chris Wallace]

Part of the problem is that everyone involved with this type of film thinks in trilogies...

They realize that their story wont wrap up by the end of part 3, so they force the story into unnatural places and cram as many characters in as possible. Everyone has this "how do we top our previous success" mentality, so everything is tried all at once, when all the audience wanted was a natural continuation of the story.

Exactly. Kill off all the vampires! Bring in Dracula! Bring in Juggernaut & Phoenix, and eliminate the threat of Magneto once and for all! Hell, just for fun, why not throw Beast in there, too? Wrap up the Goblin Saga & let the star have his favorite villain! But don't forget to throw in that villain that you ahte but the fans have been begging for! Who cares if he doesn't fit? MAKE HIM FIT!

 

[Kevin Roegele]

I would be the first to say the version of Dracula in Blade Trinity is awful and barely deserves the name (see also Van Helsing; the two worst ever screen Draculas, and in the same year!).

However, the concept of bringing in Dracula was not a silly idea for Blade; quite the opposite, it was the obvious and indeed only proper climax to the series. Blade the character was invented to fight Dracula (in The Tomb of Dracula). It's perfect that he works his way up in the first two films to finally battle the king of the vampires in the final act. It makes perfect sense and anything else would be disappointing.

The mistake is that it's such a lame attempt at Dracula. Admittedly the classic Lugosi style Dracula of the comic would not work in the urban style of the Blade series. But even so, there are other ways of doing it - Nomak's father in Blade II is a clear copy of Nosferatu, and that worked.

 

[Chris Wallace]

Dracula is such a hard character to do, though; he's been re-interpreted so many times we all feel like he's been done to death. When's the last time you saw anything good where his name was connected?

 

[The Chris]

Bram Stoker's Dracula probably.

 

[Chris Wallace]

Exactly. MANY moons ago.

 

[Majik1387]

I think studios need to stop thinking in terms of trilogies and more in terms of franchises.

Let's use James Bond as an example.

Now I'm not trying to say all comic movies should be like James Bond, but for it to survive so many years with 22 official movies under his belt, his franchise is obviously doing something right. You have your main core characters(Bond, M, Moneypenny, Q, R, other MI6), familiar roles and trademarks(villains, bond girls, gadgets, action, etc) and you just tell a story in each movie; Sometimes they're relative to each other, sometimes they take a break. And yes, they have their bad movies in the franchise too, but that has yet to stop them, only hold them back a bit.

If the same mode of thinking was applied to comic movies, I don't think we'd have to deal with 3rd movie/trilogy b.s.

 

[Chris Wallace]

Quite true.
One more note on Dracula, I do think it was silly to squeeze him into the Blade movies simply because the previous films (in my opinion) negated his existence with the whole "virus" angle. Now while a showdown with the first vampire or the progenitor of vampirism could've been a good idea, his name alone has become a ridiculous cliche.

 

[E-Man]

It wasn't Dracula that killed Blade:Trinity, it was the vampire clique and the Nightstalkers getting more screen time than Drake and Blade, respectively. Instead of having the baddest villain take on the most bad-ass vampire hunter, we got a *****ey group of vampires overshadowing Dracula, Nightstalkers who should've been a cameo only, and a very sissified move of using a baby as a hostage. Drake running like a ***** and stealing a baby still gets a facepalm from me.

 

[Deaths Head II]

I think studios need to stop thinking in terms of trilogies and more in terms of franchises.

I felt this way for the longest time. I'm sick of the trilogy mindset. It kills franchises way too early most the time.

 

[E-Man]

I felt this way for the longest time. I'm sick of the trilogy mindset. It kills franchises way too early most the time.

It looks like studios may start thinking more towards that mindset. In today's age, no property is done if the studio can still think of a way to make money from it. My beef is that there are too many remakes that don't add much to the franchises. All you're doing is telling the same damn story over again, throwing in a few differences so that it's all "new and excitingly updated," and banking on the product's familiarity to sell a few tickets. They might as well just add a sequel or prequel to add to the story. Remakes only hurt creativity, because there really isn't anything all that creative than retelling someone else's work.

 

[Chris Wallace]

We need to get over our fear of four, first of all. I think if we can do that, stop thinking that EVERY 4th installment is going to be a train wreck, we can put an end to all this nonsense. The Batman & Superman franchises were NOT taken too far; they were taken in the wrong direction. And even they could have potentially been redeemed but the studio just gave up on them. Which is something Majik1387 touched on; why do the studios give up when something goes wrong? "Oops-we f***ed up. Back to the drawing board!" I'm sorry, one movie-good or bad-does not a franchise make. There are ways around it. You don't cancel a successful tv show because of a bad episode. Many aren't canceled after a bad season. You don't cancel a successful comic book series after one bad issue or story arc. Why do they apply this mentality to movies?