The Trilogy Principle

This is the third blog. The second one got a bit long, but a writer I trust told me, "It doesn't matter if you're not in the mood to write-- write. Writing will put you in the mood."

You know what puts me in the mood to write? Physical labor.

NOT GEEK

What? Last week was fine. We need more scary movies. "Paranormal Activity 2" is destined to suck, though. Accountants remain stupid.

GEEK

Speaking of that, the worst movies I've ever seen are Short Circuit 2, Problem Child 2, Blair Witch 2... I didn't see Speed 2, but I have it on good authority that's pretty awful as well. Human stories are just built to be told in three acts. Shakespeare went with 5, but he had a lot of time to fill; no one in his audience was in a rush to get home and tweet about how good/bad the play was. Three acts, in and out, bam bam bam. Star Wars. Matrix. Back to the Future. Um... the Godfather. And let's say Alien. Good thing there were only three Alien movies, yep yep. And only three Superman movies. SHUT UP.

A good sequel isn't "What's next?" it's "What else?"

The greatest sequel of all-time, The Godfather Part II (with apologies to the New Testament) did not simply say, "Well the first movie was from A to B, so this next movie is B to C." No. Fuck that. Mario Puzo was a goddamn genius of 20th century literature, and yanked the rug out from under us before we even noticed there was a rug. "Bite me," he laughed. "The first movie? Fooled you. THAT was B to C. The Godfather Part II shall be A to D. DID I JUST BLOW YA MIND???"

Yes.

Which is why that's the only exception; every other example of a Part 2 just feels tacked on; we dealt with the aftermath of the ending of the first move... that gets talked about in the first ten minutes. Then it's 90 minutes of who-gives-a-crap. Which is why you'd need a third movie to tie everything together-- three-act structure.

Lord of the Damn Rings.

Friday the 13th.

No seriously, hear me out. I've never bothered to write this down, but you can actually seriously annoy someone at a cocktail party with this:

Friday the 13th isn't mindless rambling sequels into infinity. IT'S THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

Okay, not really. Sort of. LOTR was one story ("The Hobbit"), followed by a trilogy that used the first book as a jumping off point, but told its own story within that universe. It's not that different from Greek literature (Tolkien was a professor, if THE MAN is to be believed), where you'd have three serious dramas and then one light-hearted comedy, just to give everyone something to laugh about. Which is not to say "The Hobbit" was a comedy, but it sure did have a lot of singing and dancing. And dragon-incinerations. But I digress.

Friday the 13th - This is a standalone story. The killer is Jason's mother (spoiler alert!). At the end of the movie she dies; the final shot of the movie may or may not be a dream sequence in which her drowned son, Jason, jumps out of the lake and kills our heroine. Credits.

Friday the 13th 2-4 -- TRILOGY. Jason is some kind of freak of nature who goes around murdering teenagers for violating core conservative principles (see previous blog). You even see his face once or twice, under the hockey mask... he looks sort of like a Garbage Pail Kid crossed with Sloth from The Goonies. He even laughs like some 8-year-old. In one of the movies, one of the kids finds Jason's room, a shrine to his dead mother. At the end of part 4, Jason dies. No, not ha-ha, wink wink, maybe a sequel... but he DIES. He's fucking dead. The end. Game over.

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning -- Spoiler alert! That's not Jason. It's some copycat douchebag. Despite the plot still being the same, this remains the Halloween III of the series. Let us never speak of it again. Standalone movie. Copycat gets killed, and we presume buried in an unmarked grave, under an Arby's.

Friday the 13th 6-8 -- ZOMBIE TRILOGY. Part 6 (the most technically well-made film of the entire series) opens with our hero from part 4, all grown up (and played by a different actor) checking Jason's grave to make sure he's really dead. LIGHTNING STRIKE. Jason is now no longer an idiot manchild, he is now ZOMBIE JASON, as is evidenced when he rises from the grave and kills Horshack. I am not making this up. He dies once, he dies twice, he goes to Manhattan, he melts in toxic waste. The end. He's fucking dead. Game over.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday -- In theory this is a sequel to part VIII, just because it was released next chronologically, but they make zero effort to explain how Jason got from toxic waste to back at the lake killin' folk. I don't mean, they give a lame excuse, I mean THEY NEVER EVEN MENTION IT. Jason is just there, like girl scouts in the fall. How'd he get there? We don't know. Just ACCEPT IT, BITCHES. He is Jason, your own personal lord and savior, and MAN ARE HIS STANDARDS HIGH.

So that's a standalone movie, with the film that takes place both immediately before and after not linked to it in any way, other than a hockey-mask, some obscure legend of some dude named Jason, and maybe a Crystal Lake, if you feel like mentioning it. Then comes "Jason X" in which Jason is mysteriously alive AGAIN (despite being forever definitively killed at the end of JGTH), and then goes to THE FUTURE. I can't even be bothered to wiki that one, but sufficed to say, the movie doesn't end with Jason 2.0 being sent back to the past. And yet, "Freddy vs. Jason" is back in the present. WHAT THE FUCK EVER, HOLLYWOOD. It's this kind of lack of attention to detail that got us from "Batman" to "Batman & Robin" in 3 easy steps. And Tim Burton from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" to "Planet of the Apes."

So post Jason in Manhattan, how many standalone films is that? THREE. That's THREE movies of essentially well-funded fan-fiction (seriously. the writer of Jason X named characters after his friends from Diablo Online. Google that shit). One standalone. One trilogy. Another standalone. One different yet upgraded trilogy. Then a trilogy of standalones.

Even Freddy got in on that action, with part 1 being a great standalone, part 2 being a really gay standalone (I do not mean that in a disrespectful way, I mean it in a "this movie is about a young man's homosexuality" way, and the lead actor agrees with me), and part 3-5 actually were a trilogy of their own, containing their own continuity and even keeping some characters in common alone the way. Freddy's Dead was just a standalone to wrap it up; Jason Goes to Hell same story. Pity no one ever sent Freddy into the future... but then Wes Craven came back and made "New Nightmare," which is not only the single most underrated movie on his resume, but it completes the second trilogy. Three movies of fanfiction once again, but one of them was actually written by the creator of the damned character. And when we can cast them onto the trash heap of history; it's time for Chucky vs. Leprechaun, bitches.

See? Everything's a three-part structure. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish up my screenplay for Speed 3: Anti-Lock Brakes.