Sometimes stories should stand alone. They are complete and satisfying. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean they’ll be left alone…especially if there’s money involved.
Some stories are meant for multiple parts – Harry Potter,
the original Star Wars trilogy, The Avengers, etc. Some stories are not, and these are usually
stories that wrapped everything up but made more money than expected, so
someone broke out a new story within that universe, and it ruined our happy
ending.
Take Taken, for example.
The first movie was never meant to be a franchise. It was a fun romp that Liam Neeson took part in
because he figured it would be his only chance to play an action hero. By the end of the movie, Brian had his
daughter back, the bad guys were dead, and the human trafficking ring had been
smashed. All was well, right?
Wrong.
Since Taken made a boatload more money than ever expected,
it spawned two sequels that undid the happy ending of the first. By the third, Brian’s wife was dead, and the
step-dad from the first was the new villain.
Even winning didn’t piece together Brian’s life again.
And that’s the problem with sequeling things out into
oblivion. We get invested in the
characters, and we want to see them happy, whether they’re real or not. Yet by continuing stories, we have to
introduce new conflict, and that new conflict almost invariably washes away the
happiness the characters found in the original.
There is little more frustrating than feeling closure over a story, only
to have it ripped apart because someone wanted a quick buck.
I promise that I won’t ever write a new story just to make
more money(as if I make much now). The
story will either be natural or it won’t happen. That said, some of you might not be happy
with the sequel to Akeldama, even if I planned it out long ago…
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