8 Ways Upcoming Movies Can Fix Franchise Mistakes
1. Halloween (2018) Will Wipe Out The Sequels
The Mistake: The bloated, excessive sequels.
How The Movie Will Fix It: The Halloween franchise consists of ten films that jump between multiple different continuities.
1981's Halloween II is a direct continuation of the first movie, but Halloween III told a standalone tale without Michael Myers, only for the masked killer to return in Halloween 4, 5 and 6, only for those films to be wiped from existence by Halloween H20, with the franchise being rebooted completely in 2007 with Rob Zombie's Halloween... keeping up?
Like Terminator, Halloween was once a strong, simple idea that's been run into the ground and turned into something unnecessarily convoluted. Fortunately - and also like Terminator - 2018's Halloween will ignore all the sequels in the franchise, trimming the fat and returning the series to its widely-praised roots.
In an interview with StereoGum, Halloween creator John Carpenter had this to say about the upcoming movie:
"It’s almost an alternative reality. It picks up after the first one and it pretends that none of the other [sequels] were made. It’s gonna be fun. There’s a really talented director and it was well-written. I’m impressed."
The original Halloween is the best in the series by a country mile. In it, Michael Myers was an unstoppable force of nature, but the excessive sequels have demystified him and diluted his effectiveness as a scary baddie.
What 2018's Halloween needs to do is avoid the ridiculous elements of the sequels (cults, Michael's apparent invincibility), reign in the messy relationship between Laurie Strode and Michael, and just try to be a damn good standalone slasher flick.
By wiping the slate clean and attempting to build on the first movie's brilliant simplicity, it's already got the best possible start.