So, I was really racking my brain to think of what I should write for this weeks rant. Luckily, I saw an article over at CinemaBlend about Game of Thrones that sparked an idea. Recently, a lot of people have started speculating about when/if Game of Thrones will catch up with it's source material, A Song of Ice and Fire. With all of this speculation, people have thrown around the idea of making a mini-series to tide fans over by using the Dunk & Egg novellas. These novellas are technically prequels, but deal with completely different characters in the same realm, but at a prior date. Prequels are always rocky ground. It's one thing to make a prequel based off of source material (like this would be) but it's another thing to make a prequel just because something was popular. So, I guess my rant is going to be about that: why some prequels works and others just fucking blow.
One of my biggest issues with prequels is: is this story necessary? Will I be getting more insight into a character/plotline from the original that will actually develop the original story more? I think a movie that did this really well (please don't kill me for saying this) was Prometheus. No, I didn't think it was absolutely imperative that we get more information about the xenomorphs and where they came from, but it did give a great back story/origin story that I genuinely enjoyed. I also think the film benefits from all of the deleted scenes on the Blu-Ray (which is actually why I liked this movie.) If you haven't seen those, please do so. But that's neither here nor there. The fact that the film told a good original story that tied in with the franchise made it a success, as a prequel.
Sometimes prequels aren't necessary, but are made to satisfy fans of a series. A good example of this would be The Hobbit. No, I don't need to know how the ring came to be in Bilbo's possession or how Sauron came back into power, but it's nice stuff to learn for people of the Lord of the Rings series. That's because people of that series tend to enjoy the history aspect of the series. It's the same way with Game of Thrones. People don't just watch it for the characters, they watch it to learn about the foreign land and how it came to be what it is.
Now, sometimes you get awful prequels that just aren't necessary or good. I fondly refer to this as 'fluff' prequels. These can be original or not, but don't really explain anything important in regards to the original story. A great example of this is Oz: The Great and Powerful. This film (which is actually loosely based on the L. Frank Baum Oz series) doesn't give us any real insight into the land that we were shown in The Wizard of Oz or any of the main characters from the original. Yes, we see Glinda (who is exactly the same) and Oz (who is still a douche), but they are as static as they were in the original. And the origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West was so poorly done that I can't say that it was enough to warrant the creation of the film.
So, that's how I feel about prequels (I don't really know if I said anything really, but whatever.) I think that people shouldn't immediately get scared whenever they hear the word prequel, but should ask themselves if it is really needed to improve the original story.
Just as a tail end thing, here are a few movies I didn't get to mention that I thought were solid prequels: Rise of the Planet of the Apes, X-Men: First Class, and Red Dragon.
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