The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Of Prequels

The Bad Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Okay, so maybe "the worst" would be a more fitting section header for George Lucas' legendary stink bomb. Not since Ed Wood has someone tried so hard and ended up making something so bad. George Lucas is famous for creating the seemingly impossible, but I still don't think anyone could believe it when The Phantom Menace managed to offend every Kool-Aid drinking Star Wars fanboy in a single effort. It was a demoralizing effort on par with your girlfriend pulling a, "We need to talk," moments before you propose. On the rare occasion someone will attempt to make a case for how the prequel trilogy is at least as good or, God forbid, better than the original trilogy - to those people I have only ever needed one statement to end the discussion: Jar Jar Binks. Everything bad about Phantom Menace is contained within the bumbling Gungan; Lucas' obsession/over-reliance on CGI, bland (and racist in Jar Jar's case) caricatures who substitute for real character development, and uninspired storytelling. George Lucas wrote and directed Episode I, II, and III into the ground. He did the story for the eternally disappointing Crystal Skull, and he is working on another. He has become a wrecking ball intent on destroying his own legacy. et's hope he doesn't bring down too many other filmmakers' movies along the way. X-Men Origins: Wolverine On the plus side, this movie helped bring us X-Men: First Class. On the negative side, that's the only positive. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an X-Men movie who completely forgot how to be an X-Men movie. It's an emotionless action vehicle for Hugh Jackman with a story scraped off the bottom of the bargain bin. The X-Men series is the polar opposite of those things. When you make a prequel you have to maintain the heart of the series, and X-Men has always been a character drama with a story steeped in social commentary. The Wolverine prequel took the prequel's carte blanche too far. It striped away everything about the series until the only thing remaining was a set of adamantium claws. Then they piled on the schlock until it was big and loud and dumb enough to sell tickets anyways. Fortunately producers knew they needed to up their game for any further installment and sought out acclaimed director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler) to helm the sequel and right the proverbial ship, but, sadly, he dropped out of the project recently. Now James Mangold, of 3:10 to Yuma fame, is on board and sporting a script from the writer of The Usual Suspects. While Mangold is no Aronofsky, both still seem like a conscious shift in the right direction for the upcoming sequel to the prequel - to be titled The Wolverine. So here's wishing their efforts well, hoping an updated version of this column in a couple years will find Hugh chumming it up with Harrison and Clint in the "good" section. Hannibal Rising One of the more popular driving forces behind a reboot is being able to flesh out a complex character's history. Sometimes this reasoning goes horribly wrong. Hannibal Rising is proof. Characters like Hannibal Lecter or The Joker are compelling in great part because of their murky history. When you go about clearing up the picture you get a portrait of something grotesque like, oh say, a young Hannibal Lecter unearthing his taste for kidneys for a couple hours. Gaspard Ulliel is downright dreadful from start to finish as the younger version of Anthony Hopkins' revered character. His Lecter is a lifeless rock who never gives us an inclination of the refinement the older incarnation exudes. When the two best traits of your original (Hopkins' interplay with Jodie Foster and the enigmatic nature of the Lecter character) become the two worst traits of your prequel (Gaspard's miscasting and Lecter's less than endearing past) you know your concept is bad.