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Are any prequels good?


DEF

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So I've just watched my 203 film this year (keeping a list) and it wasn't a good particularly good one.

Cold Prey 3 is the final installment of a up until this point, quite good Norwegian slasher film trilogy. Unfortunately this is pretty dull and badly edited compared to the previous two.

Perhaps worst of all it's a prequel, which got me thinking are there any actually good prequels? I mean sequels get a lot of stick but I'm fucked if I can think of a great prequel.

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5 minutes ago, DEF said:

So I've just watched my 203 film this year (keeping a list) and it wasn't a good particularly good one.

Cold Prey 3 is the final installment of a up until this point, quite good Norwegian slasher film trilogy. Unfortunately this is pretty dull and badly edited compared to the previous two.

Perhaps worst of all it's a prequel, which got me thinking are there any actually good prequels? I mean sequels get a lot of stick but I'm fucked if I can think of a great prequel.

I can't think of any truly good horror prequels, and I think that's possibly because prequels have a tendency to be attempts to rationalise the originals, and that tends to ruin the horror aspect of them.

As to other genres, I'm sure there are, but at the moment the only ones that come to mind (and I apologise in advance) are X-Men: First Class and Rogue One. I haven't seen of the Planet Of The Apes prequels, so couldn't say, although IIRC they were quite well received.

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Ahh see you have me at the Apes prequels. They are genuinely excellent. They completely escaped my mind. The X-Men prequels did occur to me but they are only sort of prequels imo. Rogue One's a pretty good shout to.

Edited by DEF
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25 minutes ago, DEF said:

So I've just watched my 203 film this year (keeping a list) and it wasn't a good particularly good one.

Cold Prey 3 is the final installment of a up until this point, quite good Norwegian slasher film trilogy. Unfortunately this is pretty dull and badly edited compared to the previous two.

Perhaps worst of all it's a prequel, which got me thinking are there any actually good prequels? I mean sequels get a lot of stick but I'm fucked if I can think of a great prequel.

The Phantom Menace FTW

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17 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

As to other genres, I'm sure there are, but at the moment the only ones that come to mind (and I apologise in advance) are X-Men: First Class and Rogue One. I haven't seen of the Planet Of The Apes prequels, so couldn't say, although IIRC they were quite well received.

Young Sherlock Holmes is a whole heap of 80s fun - utter nonsense of course, but a charming little action adventure film with a gorgeous soundtrack.

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9 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Young Sherlock Holmes is a whole heap of 80s fun - utter nonsense of course, but a charming little action adventure film with a gorgeous soundtrack.

Good shout. Wouldn't have considered it a prequel to a film franchise myself but certainly to the character it's cracker.

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4 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

The Godfather Part 2? Temple of Doom. Fast & Furious 4, 5 and 6 were prequels to Tokyo Drift

Godfather Part 2's not exactly a prequel, though. Otherwise any film with flashbacks would be considered one, no?

I didn't know Temple of Doom was a prequel to Raiders. If so, good shout.

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9 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

The Godfather Part 2? Temple of Doom. Fast & Furious 4, 5 and 6 were prequels to Tokyo Drift

Temple of Doom is a good shout if so, cos it's ace. But I had no idea it was set before Raiders. What am I missing, how would you know?

The Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift prequals might be the very best prequals ever  now you mention it, purely for putting glitter on a turd. I mean I like Drift for what it is but what it is is a pretty crappy sequel. 4,5 & 6 make so much more important than it has any right to be.

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Just now, Chest Rockwell said:

Ditto question on temple of doom. I want to know how I managed to miss that having seen those films a million times!

It’s set 1 year prior to Raiders. Date flashes up at the start. I didn’t find out until early teens

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7 minutes ago, DEF said:

Temple of Doom is a good shout if so, cos it's ace. But I had no idea it was set before Raiders. What am I missing, how would you know?

The Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift prequals might be the very best prequals ever  now you mention it, purely for putting glitter on a turd. I mean I like Drift for what it is but what it is is a pretty crappy sequel. 4,5 & 6 make so much more important than it has any right to be.

 

3 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Ditto question on temple of doom. I want to know how I managed to miss that having seen those films a million times!

Just checked the Wiki - turns out Spielberg deliberately made it a prequel because he wanted to have different villains to the Nazis, so set it in colonial India.

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Imagine making a film now, setting it in colonial India, and making the Indian people the villains.

Is a film properly a prequel if it does nothing to set up the films set after it? As the posts above have shown, watching Temple of Doom has no bearing on how you perceive Raiders. Nothing Indy does in Temple makes you look at what he does in Raiders any differently. The opening setpiece of Last Crusade is, I'd argue, the only true prequel in the Indy films as it informs the character you've seen in the other instalments.

I know it's splitting hairs going 'it's a film set before the other films with one of the same characters, but it's not really a prequel', especially as I can't think of any other examples. 

Edited by HarmonicGenerator
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