Kyle Roe
Staff Writer
The seventh installment to the Fast and Furious saga, aptly named Furious 7, was released in the U.S. on April 3, earning a whopping $67.3 million in its first weekend and setting all-time opening day records in 15 countries. Clearly, it has become acceptable to follow up one exciting blockbuster with several sequels in the pursuit of squeezing as much money from your audience’s pockets as you can, while praying they don’t tire of you and switch to NASCAR. The real question is, why isn’t every movie cashing in on the unstoppable never-ending-sequels money train?
Here are 5 movies with lazy directors who stopped way too soon for comfort.
The Shining
Stanley Kubrick really stopped when he was ahead with this one. Jack Torrance’s soul was already drawn back to the hotel once, seeing as he was the manager in a past life, so why wouldn’t he stop coming back for 6 or 7 more movies? He could be revived with a different occupation every time, each with a different reason to visit the hotel. These could include a door-to-door salesman, a Mormon on a bike, a blood drive organizer, Bear Grylls, an aspiring marijuana farmer, and the leader of a post-apocalyptic biker gang. All concluding with a quasi-schizophrenic breakdown followed by a murderous rampage ending in Torrance’s death, EXCEPT for the last movie when he finally kills all his friends. Now that’s worth the 15-year wait.
Inglorious Basterds
World War II might be over, but the spirit of remorseless violence against your country’s enemies never gets old. Neither does changing history to milk that righteous “fuck yeah” moment from the justified, cathartic murder of a horrible dictator. Only instead of Hitler, it’s Kim Il Sung in the Korean War, thrown into an angry mob of his starving subjects; Saddam Hussein in the Iraq War, suffocating as his palace fills with mustard gas; and Richard Nixon in the Vietnam War, killed in a car accident with a truck carrying a shipment of coffins. All the while, Aldo Raine and his men are plotting each leader’s demise behind the scenes, and collecting plenty of enemy scalps in the process. The series culminates with a documentary examining Raine’s war criminal past as he lives the last of his days in a retirement home, scalping the tops off and carving Nazi signs into various types of melons.
March of the Penguins
A documentary chronicling the yearly march of penguins from the ocean to their mating grounds, travelling from Antarctica to…Antarctica. So much wasted sequel potential. If the camera crew had just filmed them a little longer they could have captured the penguins’ breathtaking migration to (and takeover of) the other six continents in the 7-part series Uprising of the Penguins. The films would narrate the penguins’ entire journey, from riding humpback whales to the southern tips of Chile and South Africa to infiltrating world governments as elected officials, secret agents, and White House groundskeepers. After a few generations, there are more penguins in positions of power than humans, and they use their newly acquired militaries to force the migration of every living person to Antarctica, essentially switching places with us. All the films are narrated by Morgan Freeman, who just sat there and watched the entire thing happen. Thanks man.
The Notebook
I never actually saw this movie. Honestly, as long as every sequel culminates with Ryan Gosling making out with some girl in the rain, people will cough up the $20 to see it every time. If only teardrops were worth cold, hard, cash.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Why stop after just a day? Why not go for Ferris Bueller’s Week Off, where he runs off with his friends in a stolen Lamborghini to Las Vegas. This leads into Ferris Bueller’s 36 Hours Off, where he escapes from the prison he was sent to for stealing the Lamborghini, culminating in his arrest at the Mexican border. It precedes the next sequel, Ferris Bueller’s 15 Years Off, perfectly. The subsequent movies portray the struggles of post-prison life, ending in a depiction of Bueller’s eventual long term unemployment, titled Ferris Bueller’s Never Ending Day Off. Stay in school kids.
You forgot Shrek and all its bajillion movies. #neverforget
Comments are closed.