I recently fell
deeply in love with the TV show This Is Us,
which had the most captivating first episode of anything I have ever
watched, featuring the best use of a cigarette in motion picture
history. Without spoilers, the whole series was leading up to a
moment that should definitely have happened in the last episode and
left me weeping like a toddler with a splinter. Instead, they filled
it with almosts, and then, while not technically leaving
it on a cliffhanger, they
left the ending unended and
my tissues unneeded (stop
it).
It's ok, he can come back from
this, I've seen him before
Despite
it having been my favourite TV series of the last few years (I
spent the whole series trying to work out where I'd seen one of the
actors before and then realised he just looks exactly like my friend
Mitch), I would
immediately veto a second
series for that shameless
display of desperation were
it up to me - although it has
already been commissioned through to the end of series three now.
I could see how the original script almost certainly played out, and
how it had been mercilessly hacked about by some studio bastard who
wanted to make sure they got viewers
for that
second series. I blame the 2002
petitions for Firefly
and Farscape
that led to them getting concluded (though
not well). Fanbases wanting
to know what happened are grounds for U-turns, and everybody wants to
be Family
Guy.
The best franchises
were all spawned from beautiful perfect little things that left you
wanting more without leaving unanswered questions. The biggest, most
famous franchise of all – Star Wars
– has wrapped itself up neatly on no less then four occasions now.
It is also responsible for the most gut-wrenching cliffhanger ever,
but the third movie was already guaranteed before they made it.
Of
course once Star Wars
became Episode IV: A New Hope,
it managed to generate demand for a prequel, before that was even a
thing (nobody ever called The
Silmarillion a prequel right?).
This had happened before I ever saw it, and I waited my entire young
life to see Episode I: The Phantom Menace,
which explains my lengthy state of denial about its shitness. I
cannot hold Lucasfilm
up as a bastion of non-bastardness for this alone.
It's ok Jar-Jar, not everybody hated you immediately
The Lord Of The
Rings would not have existed
were it not for fans of The Hobbit
clamouring for more Middle Earth based stories from J.R.R. Tolkien.
If he had submitted his 450,000 word sequel
that bore no more than a
passing resemblance to its
predecessor now, explaining
it wouldn't be ready for
another eighteen years, I don't think anyone would bite. Although
George R.R. Martin should really have considered finishing off his
whole story (or at least plotting it out fully) before publishing the
first part of the Song
of Ice and Fire (alright, Game
of Thrones)
epic twenty years ago. I was so disappointed by the last two books
that I probably won't read the rest of it if he ever gets round to
finishing it before he does
a Robert
Jordan.
It
isn't just Mr Martin who embarks on an epic journey and gets
completely lost in the middle though.
The Wheel of Time
saga takes enough material for a really great trilogy and spins it
out into fourteen
books that Robert Jordan died before finishing. I regret fighting my
way through the whole thing, (though
Brandon Sanderson pulled it
back masterfully by not adding endless new subplots)
but
mourn the single prequel novel that showed so much promise and will
never be developed into a much
better series.
Ironically,
the reverse of this is also dreadful. The really great thing about a
comic book series
is that it is a neverending
story (ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah,
ah-ah-ah). Peter Parker,
Clark Kent and I have
been friends for my whole life. The story keeps going, it comes to
natural pauses now and then, and sometimes has to repeat its origins
in flashback, but you can jump in wherever you like and enjoy it.
Whereas, for some reason, if
you want to make movies of it you have to reboot the whole thing
every few years. I have lost count of the number of onscreen
Spidermen I have fallen out of love with now, and nobody seems to
know how to put Superman (the only superhero that matters) onto film
anymore. I do, you remember that he is a big boy scout and stop
trying to make him all dark and conflicted – he isn't Batman,
that's the point, and
neither is Ben fucking Affleck. The Simpsons,
Family Guy, and
James Bond all manage to keep
running for decades without constant reboots (alright, so Bond kind
of reboots, but he doesn't keep continually being bitten by a spider,
discovering his powers and
crying over his dead uncle in
some kind of Morbius loop (high five if you got the joke)).
Why can't Spidey, Batty and Big
Blue?
Visual reference for excellent
pun above – you're welcome
I stopped buying
comic books again a few years ago for the same reason I stopped
buying them in the nineties: because of all the crossover storylines
forcing you to buy every single title out there to keep up. I've very
nearly stopped watching comic book movies now, for the same reason.
The last Spiderman movie I saw had Tobey Maguire in, and was proper
shit. I have no intention of sitting through something as dreadful as
Batman vs Superman ever again so the Justice League trailer I just
saw left me bereft of hope for my once favourite title.
Maybe it's my hatred
of the enforced open ending that has led to my trouble sticking to
one genre of music, one kind of writing or even just one overarching
theme on this blog. Maybe I'm like Charlton Heston insisting on the
Planet of the Apes being blown to hell at the end of the first sequel
in order to avoid having to be in the 5th – spoiler, it
didn't work. Sequels work though, and TV series can be spread out for
years, decades even, long fantasy epics can work (though only Stephen
King has succesfully pulled this off) but not everything has to
be a fucking franchise. One-off (or sometimes two) beautiful things
are rare and wonderful, and I thank Peter Kay that a few people still
recognise this.
Phoenix
Car Share Nights the Musical – coming to a screen near you the
second Peter Kay dies