Dear Hollywood, Please Stop Making Origin Story Prequels, Love Matthew

Escape from New York

Dear Hollywood,

It’s Matthew here. I know that you don’t know me very well, but I felt compelled to reach out. You see, I just heard that [Joel Silver and Studio Canal are trying to do an origin story for Snake Plisken](http://www.deadline.com/2013/03/joel-silver-studio-canal-to-reboot-john-carpenters-escape-from-new-york/) and I want to ask you to not let this happen.

It’s been a tough time these last few years. From the outside it certainly seems like everyone down there is having trouble coming up with exciting new ideas. There have been more films based on existing material every year for the past several. That’s sequels, remakes and reboots, and the dreaded origin story.

No, for the record, I don’t think this is inherently a bad thing. There are lots of reasons why it’s a good thing. Writers and audiences like to revisit characters or stories. Studios like properties they can bet big on. Stories may have more chapters that can be told. Stories can be updated to reflect more current sensibilities. The list goes on.

However, _origin story prequels almost always suck_. Why you ask? I’ll tell you.

Take Snake Plisken. He’s a fucking badass and that’s all I need to know. He has an eye patch. You know what I don’t really need to know? How he ended up with said eyepatch. Furthermore, when you do a prequel and show me exactly how he ended up with that eyepatch? It’s either going to be not as cool as what I might have imagined, not be shocking because we knew it was coming, or you’ll try to make it _so cool_ that it’ll end up being annoying.

You know what would be cool? Just do another Snake Plisken movie in the series and in the course of that movie have someone ask him how he lost his eye. Or have him face a new bad guy and when Snake meets him and someone asks “wait, do you know him?” Snake can say _”he owes me an eye”_. That’s a movie I’d watch, even if you recast Snake.

The point is that there is some value to the mystery of it all. I don’t need to know that Snake lost his eye by using it to stop an arrow that was aimed at an orphan baby or see him fight the wars that made him lose his faith in pretty much everything. He’s already a fully formed character with a boat load of flaws so work on developing that, don’t just show us where all those flaws came from. That’s boring compared to the idea of him growing out of some of those flaws.

So if Joel Silver wants to make a new trilogy of Snake Plisken films? I say go right ahead. Just don’t make them prequels. I’m sure they’ll make money, but there is already so much to explore in that world. Have him go back to New York. Have him fight the oppressive government. Hell, you could even just rip off _Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome_ and have him fighting some bad guy in a post apocalyptic wasteland town (he destroyed the world’s technology, remember?) and post apocalyptic movies are big business these days! I’d watch that!

Take _Star Wars_ as an example, George Lucas made a trilogy of prequels and you know what? They are middling at best because we already know everything we needed to know about those characters. Seeing how Annakin Skywalker became Darth Vader didn’t make him more evil and it didn’t really do a very good job of making him more sympathetic, it just made him seem like an unwitting pawn. A _pawn_. And you don’t want to make Snake Plisken into a pawn.

To be fair, it is true you could end up with a great film. _X-Men: First Class_ is one of the best films in the X-Men franchise and it is an origin story prequel. However you’re more likely to end up with something like _X-Men Origins: Wolverine_, _Prometheus_, or _The Phantom Menace_.

Your new movie might be pretty to look at but at the end of the day you’ll have spent so much time trying to shoehorn in references to what’s already been established that the story will suffer and the film will be OK at best. Worse yet, you might end up with something like _Battlestar Galactica: The Plan_, which was utterly pointless.

And if you insist on doing a prequel please do something for me: just don’t do an outright origin story, just tell a new story with the same character. It worked for Indiana Jones after all.

So that’s me Hollywood, asking you to take a step back and have a think about what you’ve been doing lately. I love you and I want you to succeed and make a brilliant movie and that requires having a new thought about the character not just making a story that fits all the history that we already know.

Love,

Matthew

Awesome: Halle Berry to Return as Storm in “X-Men: Days of Future Past”

Storm

[Deadline reporting](http://www.deadline.com/2013/03/halle-berry-to-return-as-storm-in-bryan-singers-x-men/):

> Deadline has confirmed the actress will reprise her role as Storm in 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past.

Granted, they don’t have any other details, but I personally hope they have as many of the actors back as possible so they can merge all the timelines and maybe set out on continuity and go from there.

What, it could happen.

Awesome Daily – X-Men, JJ Abrams and Jurassic Park – 27th Jan 2012

### Kitty Pryde, Iceman and Rogue all back for X-Men: Days of Future Past

Bryan Singer announced Saturday via the twitters that Ellen Page, Shawn Ashmore and Anna Paquin will all be returning to the franchise in the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past film:

This is going to be interesting. Days of Future Past is a crazy time travel story which is how we have the _First Class_ cast and the _X1_, _X2_ and _Last Stand_ casts all together. I’m looking forward to seeing how they tie the 60s versions of the characters together with the present versions of the characters if only because of the few very subtle things that made me consider them to be different time lines. – _Matt_

### Star Trek fan talks about JJ Abrams taking the job directing Star Wars

Jordan Hoffman at Badass Digest:

> Know this: I love Star Wars. Star Trek is a key
> part of my life, but the other, lesser franchise
> is still a great deal of fun. You wanna grab beers
> and yap about IG-88 or Midi-chlorian counts or the
> lesser known works of the Mon Calamari Ballet
> Company? I’m down. But the thing is that Star Wars,
> at least for people in my age group, was something
> that was accepted – it was never not cool. Star Trek
> only became cool very, very recently. And J.J. Abrams,
> for better or worse, had something to do with that.
>
> The basic gist, as Mashable quoted me, is this: I feel
> like J.J. Abrams took me out to the prom but left
> with the hotter girl.

The whole thing is definitely worth a read. He’s more upset than I am, but it does mirror my feelings on the situation pretty well.

[[link](http://badassdigest.com/2013/01/26/why-im-butt-hurt-about-j.j.-abrams)]- _Matt_

### Jurassic Park 3D Blu-Ray gets a release date

Jurassic Park is coming to theatres in 3D in April, and then it’s coming to 3D Blu-Ray. Mark April 23rd on your calendars if you want to pick it up.

If you don’t care about 3D you can get all three movies on regular blu-ray on the 26th of March.

[source: [The Verge](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/27/3921848/jurassic-park-3d-blu-ray-release-april)] – _Matt_