I know I’m behind the times, but I just watched Taken 2, saw they were planning a third one, and had a few thoughts about the movie industry. (I also had the secondary thought of how I hadn’t posted in a week and this would make a good filler piece… so enjoy the fluff).
My real thoughts on Taken were as follows:
1) It wasn’t as good as the first one, but also wasn’t as bad as people claimed. This tends to happen to me a lot with sequels. I almost never hate them as much as everyone else, with the exception of The Dark Knight Rises because fuck you for completely diverging from the comic book and making Bane such a joke. I get so irrationally angry about that movie that every time I see it on tv (which is a lot these days) I yell at my boyfriend to just keep moving and no one will get hurt.
2) My second thought about Taken 2 was that it felt like a good way to end the series. You had two better-than-average movies. Leave it at that…. But no, we can’t because we have to make everything into a trilogy these days. Now, usually what happens is the first movie is great, the second one is terrible, and the third one picks back up to be on par (or close to) what the first one brought us. There’s another possibility though, and I’ve seen it a lot more recently than before. Lately what I’m seeing is movies start off great, so execs decide they should turn this into a trilogy and make buckets of cash off it. The second movie will probably be almost as good as the first, but rarely ends up being the masterpiece the original was. The exception that immediately comes to mind is The Dark Knight, because not only were the story and action excellent, but Heath Ledger gave a better performance than anyone could have possibly imagined coming from a superhero movie. The third movie in a trilogy, however, is rarely memorable as anything other than a waste of time. I think Taken is going to follow this formula. The first one was great, and the second one was pretty good, but the third one will most likely end up taking a great concept and making it feel old and used up.
Who knows, maybe I’m wrong. I honestly wasn’t sure how they would make a sequel to Taken work, but I think they did a fair job. I just don’t see how they continue from here without boring us. Hopefully they say “challenge excepted” and it turns out to be a great film, instead of a waste of time.