5 of the Most Unnecessary Prequels
While it can occasionally be fun to dive into the origin story of your favorite superhero or see the Muppets as little babies or whatever, a prequel is by definition an unnecessary story. Unlike sequels, which can just keep depicting gripping adventures forever, a prequel takes place before anything interesting happens, otherwise they’d have started the original earlier. That’s especially true for…
Elphie
Following the release of the Wicked movie, the author of the book it’s based on, Gregory Maguire, published Elphie, which tells the story of “prickly young Elphaba” as she’s “shaped and molded by the behaviors” of her parents, “suffers ordinary childhood jealousies” of her siblings, “first encounters the mistreatment of the Animal populations of Oz” and “thrashes through her first bruising attempts at friendship.” Sounds a lot like… Wicked. Which is already a prequel. How far is this gonna go? Elphaba in the womb? Will she defy episiotomy?
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Did anyone come away from the Harry Potter series demanding to know more about the guy who wrote the care of magical creatures textbook? The prequel series eventually shifted its focus to the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, but it was canceled before they could fight their legendary duel or do anything else interesting. They didn’t even make them kiss.
Hannibal Rising
You know a story is going to be great when the author is essentially forced at legal gunpoint to write it. Hannibal Rising only happened because producer Dino De Laurentiis demanded another Lecter-related payday and told Thomas Harris he’d do it with or without him after Harris expressed reluctance, probably because the worst thing you can do to a character like Hannibal the Cannibal is explain him. Indeed, it turned out nobody wanted the brilliant psychopath to have a sad backstory.
Halloween
You’d think if anyone understood that a villain is scarier the less you know about them, it would be Rob Zombie, but that didn’t stop him from delving into Michael Myers’ troubled childhood in his 2007 Halloween reboot. Even worse, it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, except turning his mask into a pathological obsession instead of, you know, a disguise.
Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace
Of course, the least necessary prequels were the prequels. In addition to portraying one of history’s biggest bad guys as a mildly annoying child and then a really annoying young adult, it cemented George Lucas’s legacy as a man who can’t resist fixing what ain’t broke. It’s honestly surprising more franchises don’t take that route. Patrick Bateman as a young disco fan, anyone?
