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James Mottram

After the success of John Krasinski-directed horror A Quiet Place and its 2020 sequel, the next step is not forwards but back, it seems.
Directed by Michael Sarnoski, this week’s A Quiet Place: Day One, as the title suggests, spirits viewers back to the moment those horrifying, sound-sensitive alien creatures first invaded the planet.
A prequel to A Quiet Place? Well, on paper it sounds like a good idea. Why not fill in those gaps and explain what happened on that first day?
With a cast including Joseph Quinn and Djimon Hounsou, the plot will see events unfold in New York, which is not exactly the quietest place on Earth. You can imagine the carnage those alien beasties are going to cause.


So far, so Hollywood. Prequels have become increasingly prevalent these past years, as the studios look to mine franchises any which way they can.
From live-action films like Wonka, giving us the evolution of Roald Dahl’s chocolatier, to animations, like Minions: The Rise of Gru, a look at the early years of the villain from the Despicable Me series, the origin story is all the rage.
Except that it is not. Last month saw the surprise box-office failure of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, George Miller’s kinetic prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.
That film, itself a sequel-of-sorts to the original trilogy that Miller directed between 1979 and 1985, introduced audiences to one-armed warrior Furiosa, a captive of the Citadel’s corpulent leader Immortan Joe.
Furiosa dares to unpack her story over several chapters and 15 years, revealing everything from how she lost that arm to how she ended up at The Citadel.

Despite largely glowing reviews, the film took a disappointing US$58.9 million on its opening weekend across the globe. The chances of it coming close to the US$379 million that Fury Road made seem remote, a fact that sent shock waves through Hollywood.
Quite why Furiosa stalled is anyone’s guess. A Mad Max story without Max? The fact that Anya Taylor-Joy took over the role once occupied by Charlize Theron? That the film spreads over a decade and a half, not Fury Road’s three days and two nights?
Or is it simply that audiences are rejecting origin stories, unmoved by the narrative comforts that these prequels offer?

Furiosa’s failure is hardly isolated. The Ron Howard-directed Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) cast Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo, the character originally played by Harrison Ford.
As competent as Ehrenreich was, audiences stayed away, unable to buy another actor playing the cocksure pilot of the Millennium Falcon. Loyalty to the original stars goes a long way.
Likewise, the Fantastic Beasts series has not mustered the same enthusiasm as the Harry Potter films, which follow chronologically.

Of course, there are certain factors for this, not least that JK Rowling’s Potter books have a rabid fan base; despite Rowling’s involvement in the creation of the Fantastic Beasts scripts, these prequels had no book equivalent to excite the fan base.
While sequels have their own issues, often failing to live up to the original, at least they hold the promise of something new. Prequels by their very nature are an exercise in joining the dots.
Most famously, there were George Lucas’ much-maligned prequels to his original Star Wars films, beginning with 1999’s The Phantom Menace, which set out to depict how young Anakin Skywalker became the villainous Darth Vader.
Lucas’ prequels had many issues, from an overload of visual effects to the annoying presence of the Gungan court jester that was the CG character Jar-Jar Binks. But surely its biggest failing was inherent in its very nature; we all know that little Anakin turns to the Dark Side. So where is the surprise there?
Watching him don that famous mask offered a momentary thrill, but it was nothing compared to learning he was Luke Skywalker’s father in the original Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back.

Another problem with prequels is a temptation to over-explore mythology. Take The Book of Boba Fett, the Star Wars television series that continued the story of everyone’s favourite bounty hunter. One of the most mysterious characters in the Lucas-created universe, the last time Fett was seen, he was being swallowed by the Sarlacc in 1983’s Return of the Jedi.
That this desert creature digests its victims over a thousand years was always a notion to fire one’s imagination. But episode one of the television show revealed that no sooner had he been eaten than he blasted his way out.
The same happened with Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, a film that set out to explain the origins of the acid-for-blood extraterrestrial at the heart of Scott’s own chilling 1979 sci-fi/horror Alien. But surely it is far more terrifying not knowing where these creatures come from?
A little bit of mystery goes a long way, something Hollywood has clearly forgotten in its scattershot attempt to mine every last bit of IP available.
Intriguingly, Scott seems to have learned from the lacklustre response to Prometheus and its 2017 sequel Alien: Covenant. This August sees Uruguayan director Fede Álvarez deliver Alien: Romulus, a film set between Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens.
Without Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley as the main character, the film promises to keep its freshness by introducing a new set of characters.
Of course, there are (rare) exceptions that prove the rule when it comes to prequels.


Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II is both prequel and sequel to 1972’s The Godfather, fleshing out the early years of Don Vito Corleone (played by Robert De Niro) from his time in Sicily to his arrival in New York.
Effectively operating like an extended series of flashbacks, the fact it was less than half the film meant there were still plenty of surprises in store.
Should it roll before the cameras, Michael Mann’s novel Heat 2 promises the same wraparound structure.
Inspired by his 1995 Chicago crime epic Heat, the book took the approach of continuing the story of the hunt for Chris Shiherlis, the one surviving bank robber from the original movie, while also winding the narrative back to 1988 and an earlier job pulled by Shiherlis and Neil McCauley, the character played by De Niro in the 1995 film.
Again, Heat 2 offers the promise of something new alongside the intrigue of seeing familiar characters in an earlier setting. But it is rare that Hollywood is able to pull off this balancing act, feeding the modern audience’s ever-growing thirst for nostalgia with material that does not feel redundant.

Whether A Quiet Place: Day One manages it remains to be seen, but it will have its work cut out convincing us that the past is better than the future.
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Joseph Quinn as Eric and Lupita Nyong’o as Samira in a still from A Quiet Place: Day One. Photo: Gareth Gatrell/Paramount Pictures

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Some prequels work, others such as recent Mad Max and Star Wars films flop. The best ones wind the narrative back while adding something new


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