Thrice (or how I justify seeing horrible movie sequels)

Here is my original post about movie sequels. Enjoy!

Thrice

I enjoy Love movies. I love being entertained for a couple of hours by gripping realistic tales, amazing fantasy or uber techie sci-fi. I use movies to be thrilled, to laugh, and sometimes to cry or sometimes all three.

I began to notice a trend in movies the more I watched them: Sequels are a dime a dozen. If you make one good a movie, it means you need to make a sequel...or two. I would want to watch the sequels to know what happened to my favorite..or least favorite character. I began to realize if I watched every sequel to every movie I saw, I would do nothing but watch movies all day. If I were one Mr. Greg Belavia, well that's who I would be. Greg loves movies more than anyone I know. In fact, I think he IS a movie. That's another Tale for another day.

As I was saying, I needed to come up with some guidelines as far as what sequels I would watch. I'll explain my process and then post the rules. That way, you can come along on the journey to discover the rules of Trilogies! ...or Just kill some time.

My thought process goes like this:

I see the first part either in the theaters, at a party or through Netflix. I enjoy the first part and say to myself "that wasn't bad, I wonder if they'll continue this and make a series of films." I flesh out my ideas of where the story could go, day dreaming about it for some time.

A second part comes out. I say to myself "I would like to see that. I wonder if it will be better than the original. (note to self: most of the time, it's not.) I might or might not see it at this point in the theaters. This is largely due to interest or lack thereof in anyone else I know wanting to pay 10 bucks to see it. If I can't find one other person to go, I'll just wait for it to come out on DVD. Usually, as I'm waiting for the DVD to come out, I begin to hear rumors of a possible third movie. I say to myself "if I see the second, I'll see the third."

When the second movie finally arrives on DVD, I give myself until the third one is out in theaters before I've broken the trilogy cycle. I usually have at least six months to watch it. After watching the second, I'm usually left feeling like my dreams for the movie project have been dashed; thrown upon the rocks of horrible scripting and poorly trained actors. I feel dejected, and downtrodden. At this point, I feel like the director/writer have made this movie deliberately to make me feel some sort of connection to the movie, as if they want me to write them and say "hey dumbelina! what did you do to my movie? you destroyed it by killing off Bob! 'What about Bob' isn't 'What about Bob' without Bob! I can't believe you did that!"

After a few hours of cooling down, I begin to scour the Internets again to see if there's any word on when the third part will be done. I usually find myself only a few short months away from release. It's here I begin to plot. If I read pre-reviews, and it looks like the movie won't be half bad, I'll begin the PR push of a lifetime. My wife is usually the lead test subject in my attempt to rally the troops for a full on theater viewing, but considering the last trilogies I watched were outside her rules of movie-watching, I usually lose.

I then try to spin the campaign from "let's go see this amazing ending to a great story" to "Let's go watch this trainwreck and laugh at it the entire time!" Suffice to say, I usually don't see the third in the theaters, but I think there may be an exception to this rule on the horizon. If all of my campaigning fails, I'll usually just end up renting it on netflix. Sadly, as with the last one linked, I felt as though the series let me down again...but with the Trilogy rule completed, I can sever ties with the movie series knowing I did my best. I did all that I could for it, but sometimes, it's just never enough...

So without further ado, here are "Mark's Rules for watching Sequels: Trilogy Edition"

1. I must see the first part before seeing any other part.


2. I must "want" to see the second part in the theaters.


3. I must see the second part before the third part hits theaters.


4. I must see the third part if the above rules are met.

There you have it; my rules on how I see Trilogies. The rules could be applied to a movie dynasty or two, but generally if I see three I'm going to see all of them. I mean come on, who didn't watch all the Rocky movies?