Movie budgets and ticket prices continue to go up, and the studios have all realized how to increase their chances of a good return on investment: make sequels. Remakes and sequels dominate the box office weekend after weekend.

From the studio perspective, it makes perfect sense. The success of a movie means that the next installments essentially have the previous film as advertising and a rallying point to call back its audience for another go around.

The enormous wave of sequels over the past decade has become a large part of what Hollywood is known for today. Critics say it’s a lack of originality, while studio heads laugh as they roll in the cash. Ten out of the last 13 years, the top grossing film of each year has been a sequel. Sequels have become a bigger part of each year’s top grossing films.

 

 

Just think of the rest of the big movies coming out this year: “Jurassic World,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Ted 2,” “Magic Mike XXL,” “Spectre,” “Vacation,” “Insidious: Chapter 3,” “Sinister 2” and more. From a moviegoer’s perspective, this is mostly a bad thing. Sequels are almost always just shells of their predecessors, like every “Hobbit” movie, “300: Rise of an Empire,” “Dumb and Dumber To” — you get it.

Most of the time, these sequels do not come from a narrative need but a financial want, and therefore the story is naturally less intriguing. However, every one in a few sequels is worth its $14 ticket.

This weekend, two sequels debuted on the big screen: “Pitch Perfect 2” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

“Pitch Perfect 2”
Directed by Elizabeth Banks
Sequel to Pitch Perfect (2012)

This film is medi-acca.

The best part of the original is that you were not expecting it to be anything more than a teenage girl popcorn flick, and it was surprisingly funny and entertaining. The problem with the sequel is that it hits the same comedic and narrative points as the first without adding anything of its own. The vulgar humor is hilarious but no longer as surprising as it was in the first.

Unfortunately, you can guess the entire story without even watching the trailer. The Bella girls are seniors and have one final opponent to beat, and they have to pull together after tension threatens to tear the group apart. Yawn. Luckily, the singing remains impressive and the cameos from the Green Bay Packers, Snoop Dogg, Keegan-Michael Key and David Cross add some credibility.

The first film exceeded expectations in that it reached a much larger audience than expected. The sequel’s problem is the same problem that most other sequels have: the studio plays it safe. They know they will have the return audience from the original, and its popularity will bring even more people to see it. Therefore: no reason to make it anything different from the first.

“Mad Max: Fury Road”
Directed by George Miller
Sequel to/Reboot of the 1970s/1980s Mad Max series

What a lovely film. It currently has a 98 percent on rottentomatoes.com.

As unfortunate as the sequel state is in Hollywood, there is hope in the form of movies like “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Max (Tom Hardy) and Furiosa (Charlize Theron) lead a group of scantily-clad bombshells out of their oppression as wives to the boil-ridden Immortan Joe, played by Hugh Keays-Byrne. The vehicular battles and explosions (many of which were not CGI) combined with the deep orange landscape made for a strikingly original and creative visual story.

The most surprising aspect of this film is that it’s not really about Max at all, but rather about the women able to escape control and bring about the downfall of a tyrant. The narrative kind of fits in with the rest of the series, but this film can definitely stand on its own. Check out how different the trailers are for the original film and this one, which is the fourth in the series.

The combination of post-apocalyptic primitivism and industrial machinery makes Fury Road an action film unmatched in its style. There is hope for other sequels if they can learn from the originality of this movie.

Kyle Stevens is a sophomore advertising major. You can email him at ksteve03@syr.edu or reach him on Twitter at @kstevs_.

Published on May 17, 2015 at 6:00 pm