5 Crazy Ways Movies Went Back On Their Own Messages
Lately, it seems that Hollywood has been devouring our collective nostalgia the way Pac-Man eats tiny pixelated dots. Which is fine, honestly. We're all for ignoring the pre-apocalyptic precipice that is modern existence by escaping into an infinite number of mediocre Terminator movies. But some of these newfangled reboots, sequels, prequels, preboots, requels, etc. have the gall to go directly against key aspects of the originals. Like how ...
Solo: Han Funded The Rebellion, Apparently
Han Solo's new cinematic origin story gave us a lot of answers to questions no one had, such as where he got his gun and his last name. Thankfully, the film stopped short of adding a scene wherein Han's life is saved by a vest salesman or he contracts some kind of smirk virus. While these moments may irritate fans, nothing compares to the way Solo completely negates Han's character arc in the original Star Wars. When we first met Han, he was just a random petty criminal who wanted nothing to do with the Rebellion. He was only in it for the space bucks.
After taking off with his reward money and disappointing his new friends, Han triumphantly returns in the end, blasting Darth Vader so that Luke is free to murder the Death Star. What a surprising change of heart! What a great character arc! Except, it seems ... it wasn't?
Solo revolves around Han and his pals trying to get their hands on a load of coaxium -- super-valuable fuel that no one's ever mentioned before, presumably due to some kind of Force magic. After finally getting 60 million credits' worth of unobtani- sorry, coaxium, Han promptly hands it over to ... a scrappy band of teenagers? They inform Han that his generosity will be used to (sigh) fund a "rebellion."
This pretty much torpedoes everything great about Han's arc in the first Star Wars. His journey from bar-dwelling scoundrel to noble hero is completely undercut if eschewing financial reward for the greater good has been his jam for years.
Even weirder is the idea that the random criminal Luke and Obi-Wan hitched a ride with actually helped kick-start the entire Rebellion. Who cares if he comes back to save Luke? He's already a goddamn hero -- he basically paid for the X-Wing Luke and all his buddies are flying. There should already be monuments to his greatness in Rebel bases. They should sing songs honoring his selflessness.
And unless they're planning on a sequel in which it's revealed that doing the Kessel Run causes severe brain damage (which they may in fact have been working on before Solo 's failure scuttled so many plans), Han totally knows all of this. You'd think that when Leia calls him a "mercenary" who doesn't care about "anything," he could point out that without him, they'd be fighting the Empire with pointy sticks and bad language.
Related: 5 Movies That Preach Grand Messages (They Totally Ignore)
Halloween 2018 Negates The Original's Iconic Ending
Because the series continued in an endless parade of sequels and remakes that sometimes featured Busta Rhymes, it's easy to forget how perfect the ending of the first Halloween is. The ambiguous conclusion finds Dr. Loomis, the world's worst mental health professional, gunning down his patient Michael Myers, who then falls out a window. But then ... Michael disappears. Or just rolled underneath a pile of leaves. Still, it's quite spooky.
The movie ends with little resolution. Loomis failed, Laurie Strode is still freaking out, and a montage of houses is creepily underscored with Michael breathing heavily, as if he's abandoned random murder sprees for obscene phone calls.
That chilling ending doesn't even feel like it's teeing up a sequel. Instead, it imparts the audience with a palpable sense of unease as they walk out of the theater. Michael Myers is still out there somewhere! As we've mentioned, the new Halloween film ignores every single sequel, acting as a direct continuation of the original. But for some reason, the movie opens with Michael incarcerated in a mental health facility -- one in which they play human chess with the patients, it looks like.
If you were to watch these two movies in succession, this would seem kind of odd. One minute Michael is free to stalk the streets of Haddonfield, the next he's locked up and being interviewed by the world's wealthiest podcasters. We learn that Michael was promptly arrested after he was shot by Dr. Loomis. So after the haunting ending of the original, Michael was simply cuffed and shoved into a squad car?
At least we didn't have to see that ... except we very nearly did. Director David Gordon Green almost began the new movie by refilming the original ending, but from another "perspective" which would include Michael being arrested. Which totally ruins the ambiguity. It'd be like if they made a Blade Runner sequel that began with Harrison Ford popping AA batteries as suppositories. Plus, it would actually make more sense for the reboot if Michael was never caught. In the 2018 Halloween, Laurie is a gun-toting survivalist fueled by her PTSD, which would be further justified if Michael Myers was still out there somewhere.
Related: 5 Movies That Sent The Opposite Of Their Intended Message
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Turns John Hammond Into A Goddamn Moron
Jurassic World brought back the Jurassic Park franchise to focus on how cool a real-life, operational dinosaur theme park would be. In retrospect, that's kind of like if an Indiana Jones sequel wanted audiences to think that an Ark of the Covenant world tour would be a nifty idea. So how to keep working with this simple premise? Well, at the risk of prompting the moviegoing public to question whether Jurassic World is some kind of elaborate Scientology allegory, the sequel is all about a volcano.
Early on in the movie, we learn that Isla Nublar, site of the original Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, has an active volcano that's about to erupt and kill all the dinosaurs.
Now, Jurassic Park founder John Hammond had his shortcomings. He didn't totally think through the ethics of his project, and routinely antagonized the lone I.T. guy standing between him and a full-on dino smorgasbord. But being a complete idiot didn't seem to be part of his character. Would someone who continually bragged about sparing "no expense" build an elaborate, expensive theme park next to something that might explode and kill everyone at any moment? Now, some of you nerds may point to the fact that the original novel specifically mentioned volcanic activity on Isla Nublar, but it wasn't an active volcano. In fact, author Michael Crichton based this element on the real-life Isla del Coco, which has an extinct volcano.
And all this is especially dumb because in The Lost World, we learn that Hammond bought two islands, Island Nublar and Isla Sorna, or Site B, which was where the animals were raised. So say you're John Hammond, and you buy two islands. Given the choice, wouldn't you put your soon-to-be-family-filled multi-billion-dollar theme park on the island without the active volcano?
The eruption inFallen Kingdomhappens a mere 25 years after the completion of the original Jurassic Park. To put things in perspective, that would be like if Disneyland had been completely incinerated in 1980 -- which, to be fair, would have spared us fromCaptain E.O.
Related: 5 Movie Adaptations That Completely Missed The Point
Christopher Robin: Winnie The Pooh Is Literally Alive
Beloved by children and anyone who's ever gotten stuck in a doorway after a heavy meal, Winnie the Pooh returned to the big screen with Christopher Robin, part of Disney's ongoing quest to turn their classic animated tales into depressing live-action dramas. The story finds Pooh going full Ted, visiting an adult Christopher Robin in London. Despite the fact that Pooh and his friends were always supposed to be, you know, toys, and only "alive" in a child's imagination. But here they're some kind of living things, existing and thinking independently of Christopher Robin. Pooh's disturbing presence even causes a passerby to walk into a pole in disbelief.
Christopher Robin then chastises Pooh for talking in public, arguing that he has to keep his sentience secret ... for some reason that's never fully explained.
So these toys weren't just the objects of a child's playtime, but were brought to life somehow? Bizarrely, the adult Christopher Robin doesn't even seem curious as to how his old stuffed animals are living, breathing beings. The original stories were pointedly about the wonder of imagination and how childhood should be treasured because it eventually stops. The final Pooh story finds Christopher Robin leaving his toys -- and his childhood -- behind.
The thesis of this movie is basically the opposite of the books. Childhood should last forever, because ... magic? Hence Christopher Robin can pop back to the Hundred Acre Wood to chill out with Tigger and Eeyore whenever the hell he wants. It also makes the fact that Christopher Robin left behind his toys in the first place kind of terrible -- they're all intelligent beings who have been abandoned in the woods like actual garbage.
Related: 15 Times Characters Missed The Point Their Shows Were Making
The Predator Craps In The Face Of The Original Story
Writer/director Shane Black took the reins of the latest Predator movie, seemingly because he had a minor role in the original. Which is kind of like if the guy who played Wedge made The Force Awakens, or if that robot from Rocky IV directed Creed II, but let's roll with it.
While Black is behind some of the best action movies of all time, he made some baffling choices on The Predator. For one thing, it totally changes what the Predator is. Up until this point, the aliens have always been a race of hunters. In the first movie, the titular creature takes on Schwarzenegger and his testosterone-dripping crew purely for sport. And they've been doing this for a long time. In Predator 2, Danny Glover finds an old-timey pistol from 1715 on a Predator's spaceship.
"Here, take this. It's been in my pocket for 300 years, and I'm starting to think I won't find a use for it."
Yup, Predators have been hunting humans for hundreds of years! They even made a comic showing how they ended up with this particular antique.
Because over-complicating classic backstories usually works out for the best, the new movie takes the simple premise of an alien hunting humans and crams it full of elaborate sci-fi wackiness. It seems the aliens weren't coming to Earth solely to hunt humans. They were coming to steal our DNA and add it to their own. The movie even rejiggers core elements of the franchise to fit this twist. For instance, remember how the Predator rips out people's spines as trophies? It turns out that business was all to "collect DNA."
Most insanely, it seems like Black made all of these changes for purely grammatical reasons. Characters repeatedly point out that if the alien hunts for sport and not food, he's not technically a Predator. One even quips: "he's more like ... I don't know, the Bass Fisherman." So the movie contrives an elaborate mythology which contradicts thepreexistingmythology so that the aliens are properly predators in the technical sense of the term. But this only raises further questions! Like ... why would they need to keep coming back for DNA over the course of hundreds of years?
The ending of the movie also thematically contradicts the original. In the 1987 Predator, guns and bombs pointedly don't work against the alien. Schwarzenegger has to tap into his primal humanity to take him down. To defeat evil, we have to become more human. In the new movie, our heroes win by stealing the Predator's fancy gizmos and using them against him; not just his laser gun, but also his cloaking device. They essentially win by becoming less human, which is the complete goddamn opposite of the original. It's kind of like if they rebooted Die Hard with John McClane learning that he should be more of a dick to his wife on Christmas.
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