Dec
14
Quadrilogies
Filed Under Movies
While I’m convinced that a film franchise burns itself out after the first sequel, most studios push for trilogies nowadays. Threequels tend to be the least warmly received of a film cycle because they’re usually scattershot affairs, done more out of financial obligation than creative inspiration. So what happens when a fourth film is tacked on to the end of a trilogy? A trilogy — regardless of its unevenness — at least appeals to a movie-goer’s sense of story structure; the overarching saga has a clear beginning, middle and end. A quadrilogy attaches an extended epilogue to the series, another episode that feels extraneous because it absolutely is. There’s no more story to tell. The fourth installment is simply the franchise spinning its wheels.
With “Spider-Man 4,” “Pirates of the Caribbean 4″ and “Scream 4″ on the horizon, I thought it’d be fun to look back at past quadrilogies and see if there’s a movie four that holds up, that justifies its existence. I realized while brainstorming this blog that there are more quadrilogies than you might think: “Indiana Jones,” “Die Hard,” “Rambo,” “Jaws,” “Alien,” “Lethal Weapon,” “The Terminator,” “Superman” and the Burton/Schumacher “Batman” films. I’d like to do a deep dive into each franchise, which will justify a separate blog for each and give me something to do in the long-term, always valuable when I feel like I’m out of ideas for blog topics. This entry will basically serve as a point-of-entry, a long-winded introduction into my ongoing dissection of the quadrilogy.
-Brad Lohan
Comments
Leave a Reply