What's in a name? The Art of naming Sequels

It’s often been commented that Hollywood likes to make movies with a ready-made audience. More and more movies nowadays use characters and stories from comics, books, and TV shows or are sequels to earlier movies. Which means that without needing to spend a single dollar on Marketing campaigns, the studios are already guaranteed a certain audience, no matter how good or bad the movie actually is.

I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie recently, and it got me thinking about brand recognition – chiefly about a trend that has developed over the last few years in the naming of movie sequels.

It struck me that they don’t call it ‘Sherlock Holmes 2’, but ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’. I can see why – it seems wrong to call it SH2, when there are so many other big screen versions of Sherlock Holmes in existence (well, going back a few years, anyway). To call this movie  Sherlock Holmes 2 would be a bit like calling The Quantum of Solace ‘James Bond II’.

Mr Robert Downey Jr engaging in an ill-timed staring competition

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is part of a very modern trend, where a sequel is given its own title, rather than a number. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that nowadays studios seem to go to great lengths to avoid putting a number after a movie title.

Back in the 1980s it was completely the reverse. Granted, sequels often had alternative titles, such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day. But most movies from those days didn’t bother. Gremlins 2 wasn’t called Gremlins go to Manhattan (sounds like a Muppet movie?). Jaws 2 wasn’t called Jaws: Return to Amity. In those days, having a number after the title was reassuring, indicating that you were just getting a bigger bolder brasher version of essentially the same movie you’d enjoyed first time round.

Short Circuit 2: Death of a Franchise?

Of course, we do still have those types of movies. The one that springs most to mind is the Saw franchise. I’d imagine they call it Saw 8 (or whatever) for the same reasons – to reassure the audience that it’s the same as all the others, but bigger and ‘better’ (in the case of Saw, read more gruesome and blood curdling).

So why the change? Well, would you really want to go to see a movie called Pirates of the Caribbean 4? Wouldn’t you rather see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides?

Using a title implies the movie stands more on its own merits. I’d also imagine it’s a good strategy for ensuring a franchise doesn’t stop dead in its tracks if one of the sequels is rubbish.  I mean, Die Hard 7 would be a hard sell if Die Hard 6 turned out to be a stinker.

Using a movie title rather than a number is also imperative if there is any chance of building up a lasting franchise. It handily avoids the judgements we instinctively make with numbers (anything with a 2 after it = excellent to average, anything with a 3+ after it = average, poor or end of franchise).

The bottom line? Sequels avoid numbers nowadays because it means the studios can make more of them, and spin out the cash cow for longer.

One final complication to the sequels rule we haven’t covered – there’s the ‘Part 1’, ‘Part 2’, ‘Part 3’ trend. eg The Godfather, Back to the Future etc.

Generally the ‘Parts’ approach is more difficult to pull off because you need a story that sustains interest over two or three movies. I’d imagine the Studio Execs also avoid it because having a ‘Part 2’ implicitly limits the number of sequels you can do. I mean, if you wouldn’t see Pirates of the Caribbean 5, I’d imagine you definitely wouldn’t see Pirates of the Caribbean Part 5 (‘How come this wasn't all sewn up in Parts 1 to 4??’)

Back to the Future before it was Part 1

So, what’s this got to do with How Stories work?  Well, in the spirit of the subject, you’ll have to wait until my next blog entry to find out. I haven’t decided if my follow-up will have a Title, number or Part – but any ideas welcome.