10 Reasons Prequels Ruin Movie Franchises

10. You Know Where You're Going

This is perhaps the biggest challenge of any prequel. You're telling the lead-up to a story everyone already knows. Clearly, your hero is going to live, your villain is going to be bad or end up bad, and the stage has to be set at the end in a very specific way. Even Lucas (ironically enough) and Spielberg realized that a whole "How did Indiana Jones get his scar, hat, whip, and fear of snakes?" question wasn't worth a prequel - They nailed it in a 20 minute sequence. (We'll ignore TV productions; Besides, Lucas is in for a rough enough ride in this article...) Likewise, all tension or interest in a prequel story will depend on you creating a world that dovetails into your already established ones and characters who are good enough for a prequel but won't turn up again. So you've either marked them for death or disappearance, with the former seeming obvious and the latter seeming a bit odd in the context of the whole..... Really, it's difficult to tell any story when you know how it ends. With prequels, you know even more spoiler details beyond "The good guys win". I'm not saying it's impossible to tell a new story and do it well, but it's certainly got the deck stacked against it..... Guilty Parties: Well, "Star Wars" prequels stand tallest here. (In fact, I'll go out of my way NOT to mention them later, as they satisfy almost every aspect of this critique.) You knew all the characters who'd live or die, and no surprises were scripted in to mess with these expectations. Killing Obi-Wan in Episode 1, for instance. There was even a way to do it, what with clones showing up a film later.... To a degree, this concept has marred the "Paranormal Activity" series too, as each film really is creating only antecedent or parallel details. You could criticize the formula for the films too, but the bottom line is that the family story is established in the first film - Any sequel has only added details, and is further constrained by what came before. Exception: "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" - Rather than further praise "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", I figure I'll point out what some don't realize: "Temple" is set several years prior to "Raiders of the Lost Ark". This allows for an Indiana Jones who's a bit rougher and less principled to the character we meet, and explains the absence of the girl on his arm at the end of "Raiders." This jump back in his timeline allows us to not feel like a character reset button was hit, and means that any cast that don't return from the first film simply haven't been met yet. (Likewise, any we meet in "Temple" don't seem like they'd stick around once Jones got his more prestigious University gig - It probably still wasn't good back then for any collegiate staff to have an Asian boy inexplicably living with you, you know?)