10 Trends That Are Destroying Modern Movies
4. Colon: Please Give Us A Sequel
There's something rather dirty about a sequel whacking a number 2 on the end. It may have been cool when The Godfather did it (it was at the time groundbreaking) but now it stinks of a cheap cash-in on the original.
The solution, used on-and-off since Star Wars decided each film was an Episode, is to get a colon in there. Starting off small with adding a phrase to an existing title à la Babe: Pig In The City, it was a bit in your face, but harmless. In recent years, however, it's become unbearable. Because nowadays no major movie (unless it's a non-Batman Christopher Nolan film) exists without not-so-secretly wanting to become a big bucks franchise, making the first one seem as little like a standalone piece as possible is very important. That's the key motivation behind the previously discussed open ending and also led to the rise of the colon on just about any film going.
Pirates Of The Caribbean, Prince Of Persia and Captain America all boast first instalments with an added subtitle, while Transformers, Thor, Resident Evil, The Mummy The Purge, The Avengers, Night At The Museum, X-Men, Twilight, The Hunger Games and Mission: Impossible all added the colon for their sequels (amongst many others).
As you can tell from the list, they're not all bad movies, but this technique fuels a sense that a single movie is more akin to the episode of a TV series than an event in of itself.