The hidden hate of Sex in Liam Fucking Neeson's "Taken"

Taken

So I just sat down at long last and watched “Taken”, and I noticed some pretty interesting things amongst the smashing and crunching and rending and cracking, not least of which is an amazingly right-wing and violent terror of sex. More on that shortly.

In case, like me, you've kept away from this movie for reasons that you've long forgotten, the plot goes something like this :

Liam Fucking Neeson is an ex-indeterminate-soldier type, awesome at everything except being a dad and a husband. His wife and daughter are living with the creep from 24 who sacrificed himself in Season Four I think, and redeemed pretty much every bad thing he ever did in that one moment while his son cried and finally accepted him. That was totally the best bit in 24. I shit you not, I cried like a baby when that guy died.

Anyhoo, his daughter is seventeen and Liam Fucking Neeson is an overbearing and slightly creepily obsessed ex-I'm-not-sure what possibly an army man or something guy. He has a past, and as a result of this past we never ever hear about, he has lost his wife and daughter to a sickeningly rich business man.

Against his will, his daughter flies off to Paris ( we know this because we get a shot of the Eiffel Tower at one point, which is in Paris ) and promptly gets kidnapped while on the phone to Liam Fucking Neeson, by nasty Albanian folks. Liam Fucking Neeson totally told her this would happen, and he was totally right. Liam Fucking Neeson is awesome. For some reason one of the kidnappers goes to talk to Liam Fucking Neeson on the telephone and Liam Fucking Neeson then gives THAT SPEECH!!!!!

Liam Fucking Neeson goes to Paris ( we know this because that's where his daughter is so we don't need to ever see the Eiffel Tower again, not even in a backdrop – disappointingly, having been offered the Eiffel Tower so early on, no one ever sky dives off it, and nothing explodes at it's base, and no aliens destroy it as a show of their power. Totally lame. ) He runs around killing everyone of an indeterminately ethnic nature he can find, discovers she has been sold to some arab sex trade or something, kills more people, this time swarthy Arab types, and gets his daughter back after jumping on a boat from a bridge. Through her trauma of being drugged up and sexually abused ( albeit in tasteful, almost artistical clothing ) she has learned to love her father and believe him when he tells her the world is a fucking horrible place and she needs to stay chaste for ever. Then Holly Valance gives her musical lessons, mercifully hidden by the end credits.

That's basically it. This film is obviously genuinely terrible yet bizarrely a massive guilty pleasure, mostly down to the close-quarter skull crushing violence, and with thanks in no small part to Liam Fucking NEESON!!!! More on him anon.

Now, a lot of critics of this movie ( and by the way, there's not as many as you might expect given how awful it really is, again pretty much down I would suggest to Liam Fucking Neeson!!!! ) have slammed it for it's racist depictions of Liam Fucking Neeson's enemies. And to a degree it's true, the Albanian and Arab sex-trade is made to seem quite horrible by this movie, which I think is pretty xenophobic of it.

But given that they cast a big oul Irish lug in the lead, I don't know if I can get on board this racist thing. They needed swarthy villains who could believably be involved in the sex-trade. I've never met an Albanian but I just BET you they're all in on it. As to those ugly Arabs! They just wear far too much make up as far as this film is concerned, and who am I to argue when Liam Fucking Neeson is involved?

The thing is it probably is quite racist, or xenophobic, to cast these nationalities as baddies but whether you like it or not, you're quick to accept and believe it and the film gets it out of the way quick smart, without ever really touching too deeply on their ethnicity. It's not like halfway through THAT SPEECH he stops, looks directly at the camera and states “I will find you, I WILL kill you. Because you are ugly sweaty fat arabs and your ideals are diamtricaly opposed to mine which makes you evil, you sandy-skin colured arab bastards, with your darkly penetrating yet slitted eyes and did I mention the colour of your sweaty fat arab skin? You arab bastards.”

So that's progress from Birth of a Nation right there.

So I don't know if it can really be called racist, and to be honest I don't care. What interests me about this movie is it's horror at the act of sexual intercourse.

This film is basically about a right wing man who is unwilling to let his daughter lose her virginity and will go about stopping it happen in THE most violent way possible. One could read this movie as a fever dream from the point of view of a terrified and ineffectual father who has to let his daughter go to the prom, knowing that there'll be sweaty hormonal boys lusting over her. In his head he becomes the angel of death, protecting the virtue of his only daughter by shooting a bunch of teenaged boys in the face and snapping their necks after they're dead. Best not to though. It's a violent action movie that hates women and sex, and that's enough to be getting on with for now.

So at the start of the movie she basically lies to him about where she's going. She says she's staying with her friend's cousins in Paris, but in reality this is just the launch pad, and she is essentially travelling around Europe as a groupie for U2 ( because honestly, that's what EVERY seventeen year old American girl wants out of life ).

She has good reason to lie, as her father is very obviously psychotic, and is most assuredly not going to let her go away to Paris ( the city of love anyone? ) and risk her losing her virginity! One interesting moment, just before the plot kicks in, reveals everything you need to know about her relationship with her father – she's terrified of him. Having tried unsuccessfully to phone her all day, he finally gets through. He angrilly castigates her for not phoning him the second she landed, even though we all know by the time we get off a plane and into an airport all we want to do is get to the hotel and collapse into a drunken stupor, so who has time to make stupid, unreasonably demanded phone calls? One can only assume that he is picturing his daughter reverse-cowgirling a french man's baguette, and this is getting him all angry.

But then, having to relay to him that though she thought the cousins were going to be in the house, they are in fact in Spain, she is physically shook, shaking and close to hysterical tears. She is terrified of having to give him this information, even though it is literally meaningless; one has to question why. I wonder if he used to beat his wife and that's why she left. I wonder if he has a few sexual skeletons in his closet and that's why he hates it so much.

This film interestingly depicts sex as pretty much being the worst choice a person can make, and the sort of thing that ugly rich folks will pay VAST quantities of money to partake in, drawing a correlation between sex and the evils of money. Liam Fucking Neeson is the paragon of virtue, living his life single, without sex, and completely zen. He has no female friends. His male friends sit around with him, drinking beer, and never once discussing women's sexy bits ( unless when one of them is discussing “that night in Beirut” he's actually referring to a prostitute they all slept with, maybe doing a DVDA with her or something ). His slutty ex-wife ( Xena Onatopp Warrior Princess herself folks ) on the other hand, is now married to a millionaire and probably doing it every night. She certainly has no qualms about her daughter heading off to France and “discovering the world” for herself, accompanied of course with her friend, the slutty blonde cheerleader type who will obviously be getting her into all kinds of sexy hijinks! Come to think of it, that's the movie I would have preferred to see but you take what you get I guess.

Liam Fucking Neeson knows that sex is the ruiner of all things however, and will not willfully allow his virginal daughter to go somewhere where she will be taken advantage of. He will kill to stop it happening.

Her friend, of course – the aforementioned slutty bimbo blonde – has other plans, and very pointedly tells her that she has to lose her virginity asap; she has even been flirtily arranging dates for them both with a cute Frenchy they just met, and who this evil blondy friend has already undressed and fucked with her eyes. So it's sloppy seconds for Liam Fucking Neeson's daughter I guess.

Unbeknownst to her, but knownst to the audience, this cute Frenchy is actually an Albanian sex-trade spotter. He waits at airports, and when he spots a sexy slutty blonde and her over-excited virginal friend, he finds out where they live and then tells the sex-trade kidnappers. They then swoop in and drug the girls and sell them off for rich men to fuck. Clever stuff. Sometimes I wish I was rich.

While I'm on the subject of the cute Frenchy – everyone always goes on about the exploitation of good looking women in movies ( this film is essentially about that very subject ), but what about this guy? As far as I can tell this guy is just the spotter, he chats the girls up, gets their addresses and passes them on; after that, he has no more contact with the girls, doesn't abuse his powers as a sex-trade insider, and it even hints at the fact that he hates what he's doing. This guy just needed money to put him through college and someone said to him, I know a guy who can help. And now here he is, stalking the airport for sexy womens. Yet this guy is the one person in the entire movie who gets the absolute WORST death – repeatedly pummelled in the gut and head, face-smashed, kicked and chased, then just when he thinks he's got away, a big truck literally fucks him to death. Did he deserve this? Shit, the fat swarthy arab at the end who actually intends to rape Liam Fucking Neeson's daughter, just gets shot in the head. And he holds a knife to her throat and everything. No one mourns the cute Frenchy. He was just being exploited for his good looks. And now see what happened? Death by truck-fuck. Poor bastard. Double standards.

Although the fact that by the end of the film Liam Fucking Neeson doesn't torture the one man who was going to rape his daughter does show that he is beginning to accept that she is turning into a woman and will at some point have to be afforded the opportunity to make up her own mind about sex. Progress. And people say his character lacks an arc!

So the plot basically follows Liam Fucking Neeson as he travels around France kicking derriere and extracting information from swarthy immigrants by shoving nails into their knees and then electrocuting them and stuff. See what I mean about his closet? He's got no problem violently penetrating people, but no one else is allowed to do it!

All the way through, he finds grimy sex-dens, where drugged up women are forced into having sex with lines of extras. By the way is this how they pay their extras in France? Better than the ooro we're paid here, that's for damn sure!

Eventually he comes upon – no, let me rephrase that given what we now know about him and his closet – eventually he finds the blonde slutty cheerleader friend who was kidnapped with his daughter and who, spoiler alert, is DEAD!!!!!! Tied to a bed, and DEAD!!!!! Half naked, and DEAD!!!!

“See?” this movie is telling us. She had sex. She was a slut. And now she's just a dead posable fuck doll left to rot alone with her mouth still open so that she can be used in much the same manner as a Bree Olson doll might be if one was inclined. Interesting side note, she's completely forgotten by the end of the movie and as far as I can tell, no one ever goes to tell her parents that their little slutty daughter got what was coming to her. Ce La vie.

Now, with every mention of sex, or the possibility that his daughter might be sold to someone for sex, Liam Fucking Neeson gets increasingly and visibly more put out and violent.

I'm not saying he doesn't have cause, I don't know about you, but I'm not convinced being a part of the sex trade is all that good and if you're being forced into it by horrible Albanians that can only make it worse.

But STILL. When all's said and done, sex is not the worst thing that can happen to a person, forced or otherwise. Get off your high horses right now Lone Rangers, I'm not acting as an apologist for rape, I'm just stating a fact – sex is better than death. Generally.

Now, it's an odd standard of the horror, and in particular slasher movie that sex equals death. It's something that has informed horror movies since the fifties ( where it was insiduously placed at a generally subconscious level so that kids did the work themselves and equated the two ( obviously that didn't work too well )) but it was really John Carpenter's miserably awful Halloween that truly opened the floodgates by making – much as the blonde cheerleader in “Taken” does – a pointed decision to reference it's lead character's virginity, in this case as an almost religious virtue. This virginity is what ultimately protects the two seventeen year old protagonists in “Halloween” and in “Taken”, as all the other characters who have either JUST had sex, or had sex in the past, are roundly judged and summarily executed. Generally in a very phallic manner.

In “Halloween” of course it's the penetrating kitchen knife. In “Taken” there are so many guns fired off in so many faces it almost becomes a form of gay porn. Not to mention the knee-nails. And don't get me started on the amount of men in “Taken” who's testicles are pummelled.

All this, just to stop a virgin being deflowered.

So what does all this say about this particular movie?

Well, “Taken” to me is a movie about a right-wing male mindset, and particularly its attitude to sex. In that mindset, young girls must never have sex. Sex destroys innocence, and purity. Women who do not stay faithful – even AFTER divorce – to their husbands must be proven wrong and punished, this shown in the many moments in which the technically liberal wife is shown breaking down and crying ineffectually in front of the stoic-faced right-wing male who is going to make this all okay again. Of course, if the liberal mother had not allowed the seventeen year old virgin to go on holiday in the first place, this would never have happened. She will have to live with this, while Liam Fucking Neeson will live with the fact that he got his daughter home, still chaste, in one piece.

Liam Fucking Neeson of course knew this was going to happen. Initially reluctant to let his daughter fly off, he is talked into it by his liberal ex-wife. It's important to note here how many times this ex-wife motif has been used in action movies. It's everywhere, usually as a way of showing just how difficult a person the main male protagonist is to live with. His redemption, usually, is to go through a physical hell, find peace and return to his wife. In this instance, since she's married to a hoity toity rich man, her only purpose in this movie is to prove the right-wing male mindset correct. As they don't end up together at the end, it's hard to know where Liam Fucking Neeson's redemption lies. As a result, it's obvious that it is she who has learned the lesson and will have to come crawling back to him. 

His fear of sex saved his daughter. Her liberal attitude towards it nearly got her daughter raped.

The whole movie is a metaphor for the fear of sex. Everywhere Liam Fucking Neeson goes, dirty, filthy sex is on sale, usually run by nefarious foreigners with no scruples. This is the world his daughter is going to be made a part of. The world of SEX!!!! Awful, terrible sex. Liam Fucking Neeson was worried his daughter would sleep with the wrong man and lose her purity. This is his worst nightmare brought to life.

Now, of course – the sex trade is a horrible thing. And that would be fine if this film was in fact even remotely interested in talking about the sex-trade, or the awful things the often kidnapped women have to go through as part of it. But here it's only a plot-mechanic, and it's pretty much the worst thing the right-wing mindset can imagine – someone becoming involved with the sex-trade. Obviously there are far worse, far more insidious, and far more horrible people and things out there to become involved with, but the right-wing male mindset fears sex and so this is the worst thing it can possibly invisege.

So it's not just an action movie, it's actually a film about a father obsessively protecting his daughter's virginity, and a film in which sex is awful and must be punished. And I must admit I found that kind of an interestingly dark undercurrent throughout.

So what's left to say? Well, one last thing - let's just look at the title for a second. “Taken.” Why choose that title above all others? Well, when someone loses their virginity, or has sex, they often refer to it as being “taken.” Her virtue has been taken. Her purity. It's a word that invokes sometimes quite violent sexual imagery. Don't believe me? Type the word "taken" into a search engine image search. See how many sexual images are brought up.

It's a continuation of the fear of sex theme. It's not that his daughter has been kidnapped, but that throughout the movie he is terrified that she has been “Taken”. Probably by a sweaty foreigner.

But luckily for her, she was a virgin. And this protected her. Although every other sex-slave in this movie appears to have been broken in and at its extremity, died, it seems she was caught in time. No one deflowered her. Her purity is intact.

Sex equals death, even if only at a remove. Liam Fucking Nesson killed a LOT of men in this movie to protect his daughter's virtue.

So a couple of other things about the movie. It's pretty awful. It's a film that, had it been directed by someone like Paul Greengrass, could have really felt alive. Or if directed by Brian De Palma, could have been much slicker, and worked the sleazy sex-trade angle in better. Instead it was directed by some French idiot who thought it would be worthwhile taking pot-shots at rich people. Because, you know, fuck the rich.

Liam Fucking Neeson is obviously awesome throughout, never hamming it up, always believable. He is given some risible things to say and do but he commits so completely to it, it works.

Famke Janssen spends the entire movie apparently being punished for her career as sexy, tough women. She cries throughout, usually because she's to blame for everything. In fact, every woman in this movie is there to be sneered at, leered at, and in one case shot in the arm with her children sleeping next door! No one likes women in this movie, especially when they've had sex!

One thing really sticks in my graw about this movie though. He gives this big speech, right? How he's going to find and kill the people who have done this. It's electrifying, and you're thinking, man I can't wait for him to follow through on that one! He's going to totally destroy the ass of this guy when he finds him! Not sexually, probably, unless that's in a deleted scene.

Then not even halfway through the movie, he finds this guy and shoots him, and that's it. Closure.

WHAT A GYP!!!! What a completely rookie screenwriting mistake! That's not how you do it, screenwriters! You give that speech at the beginning, and then you wait until the VERY END of the movie!!!!!! They meet, Liam Fucking Neeson realises who it is, and at last he can get some satisfaction. They fight, he nearly dies, then he realises his promise – now that he has found him, he WILL kill him. And he does. And he quips something deadly like, “I told you” or something.

The end.

Freeze frame with him holding the severed head of his greatest foe, or I guess giving his rescued daughter a hug. But not THIS!!!

What a complete waste.

But then, it's fitting for a film so limp and terrified of sex that it builds itself up and then blows it's wadd too early.

Dom

Sequels, Cancer, Branding, and Bears!

Sequels and Follow-ups

So I'm intending in the next few weeks, as an exercise in reviewing, to watch and talk about a whole bunch of sequels, mostly from my own DVD collection. 

At their very best, sequels develop characters, themes, and styles we the audience love. By our nature we become attached to repetition and recognition, yet find ourselves bored by too much. Sequels play into our desire for more of the same, but different.

At their worst, they are manipulatively lazy money-spinners, crassly designed to cash-in on human nature.

I'm interested in what makes sequels work, why some fail and why some are the most derided movies in existence. Likened, in some cases of extremity, to the destructive growth of Cancer cells.

I have precedence. Stick with me.

Late last year I decided to write and stage a follow-up to my black comedy “Papa Bear Baby Bear.” I had staged that play in February of the same year with my fledgling drama group, Taming of the Crew.

In talks at the time, and then in promoting the piece itself, I decided to jokingly refer to it as a follow-up, and never a sequel. Part of the joke was that I was too snobby to refer to it as a sequel, a joke I tried to compound by adding it into the text of the play itself.

But of course it was a sequel, a sequel that, like “Weekend at Bernie's 2” was probably entirely unwarranted by anyone other than me. So why did I pursue this idea when I could have done anything else? I refer you to the many sequels, and follow-ups that have occurred before mine.

Not good enough, hah. Fair enough.

An equal measure curiosity, practicality, marketing nous, and genuine desire on my behalf to return to a character I created, and had a fondness for, were the driving forces behind “Baby Bear Papa Bear.”

It had been a joke between the cast members during rehearsals of the first play. The purpose of the original piece had been to gently satirise the odd-couple, bromance type stories that had become a genre unto themselves; place a naive, young but intelligent character with a genuinely obnoxious, unlikeable prick of a man and somehow get them to the point where they had respect for each other. This has always been the crux of the odd-couple and buddy buddy type stories, but the basis as a rule of these films and plays ( through audience-pleasing necessity ) was to make the characters dislikable to each other, but crucially, not to the audience.

I wanted to subvert that, I wanted to place the audience – through the Baby Bear character – in a room with a genuinely unnerving, dislikable character. I wanted the audience to fear for Baby Bear, rather than want to see the two men as friends at the end. And then wind the men up to a point where, despite themselves they ended up caring for each other. Cake. And eating it.

We had joked that these characters were stuck with each other now. For eternity.

As to practicality and marketing – there was a certain amount of goodwill floating around us after we pulled off Papa Bear, from audiences, friends, cast, and the Arts Centre. I figured if we were to capitalise on this, now was the time.

What I did not want to do was lazily re-tread the old paths. A common complaint when it comes to sequels is the bigger, louder, exactly the same formula that ruins everything from Ghostbusters 2 to Godfather 3.

The original piece had been around for five years, had been read by several people, seen by several more, had had it's day in court. I wanted to take these characters and subvert them once again, so that the quieter, younger character was forced into situations that made him loud, made him obnoxious, to show the effect being around someone like this “alpha-male” could have on someone. I wanted to develop them, not just continue in the same vein or make a BIGGER play.

But I couldn't find a hook, something that I could use to start the ball rolling on a new story. I had to have the same characters, show them as having developed somehow, but keep them in the same low-rent circumstances. I came up with an idea – that Baby Bear was excited about organising a surprise birthday party for Papa Bear, who hated surprise parties. Yes, it was trite and sitcommy but it was an idea that wouldn't leave me even as I kept it at arm's length. It just seemed funny to me.

Then my mother was diagnosed with lung Cancer and things took a strange twist. I went through an odd period of observing how I, and people around me, took to the news. It is part of humanity that we tend to try and avoid the diseased. This stretches, often, as far as grief. Survival instincts kick in, and we slowly back away from anything that could affect our own survival. I accept this, and although almost everyone that I told was pretty god damned cool about it, I still sensed their understandable if sometimes subconscious desire to get the fuck away and quick.

And how did I deal with the news? Inhumanly, I think. When I got off the phone, I was definitely shaking. I probably went a little white, probably had a little tremor in the voice. I didn't cry, because what good would that do? In truth, I didn't emote much in one way or the other and still haven't. Am I in shock? Still? Nah. I was making a practical stock-take, who I would have to tell, talk to, and let down. What I had to do. Money and cost. How I could avoid too much responsibility in dealing with it.

I think I exploited the situation to go for a pint that night. It certainly wasn't the last time I exploited the news to my benefit.

When the dust of the first few days and friends told cleared, it became obvious what “Baby Bear, Papa Bear” needed to be about.

Bear with me folks, this may not be of any interest to you, unless you're a writer or a family member. My family member, not just a family member in general. But it is important to the topic I'm about to cover in the next few days and weeks, that is sequels. Who does them? Why? How much thought goes into them? Does it matter to the audience? Why are there so many unsuccessful or disappointing ones out there? And is there a formula, a criteria that works?

See, “Papa Bear, Baby Bear” was quietly about dangerous father figures, and the passing of violence through generations of men. Perhaps a rather obvious title then but I have always been self-reflexive in my writing. So although most people who saw the play have an understandable tendency to remember the word-count of “cunts” that cropped up throughout, what I was quietly exploring was father to son violence and casual misogyny; to that end the over-use of “cunt” made sense to me. It's not important to me if anyone picked up on that. It was just an important theme for me to explore and hang some vile jokes on.

So "Baby Bear, Papa Bear" had to be about mothers. I had already unconsciously set this up with the surprise birthday aspect of the play, but now it was abundantly clear – it had to be about mothers, and Papa Bear's mother had to have Cancer.

I could then explore how a man, a verbally violent and still not entirely likeable man, would deal with something like this. How would he approach it? Would he keep it quiet, would he try to ignore it, would he use the job as a way of pretending it wasn't happening?

The subverting of the title became a cute way of easily sequelising it but it could be more – by emphasising the "Baby" aspect first, right at the very beginning, it would subconsciously hint to the audience what the play was exploring.

And so "Baby Bear, Papa Bear" was written in a two-week flurry. It came quickly because, like most writers, I had already written it in my head and simply needed to pour it onto the page. I added a new character to the fold, a man who could act as antagonist to our main duo, and more interestingly to me, as a new brother to the already existing ones. If I could create him as someone that the audience liked, even as he demonstrated similar traits to his “brother” Papa Bear, I could create a situation where a family-style jealousy could occur. Mummy's favourite, the confident, good-looking, clever one.

The whole piece hinged on a very darkly funny set-piece I had in mind; as much as Baby Bear did not want Papa Bear to know about the surprise birthday party, Papa Bear had no intention of letting on to his work-mate that his mother had been diagnosed with Cancer. 

This had to come out at a point late in the play, that blindsided both Baby Bear and the audience. In his shock – and an anger fuelled by Papa Bear's reaction to the surprise party - he would question Papa Bear, somewhat selfishly, as to why he hadn't told him. This would build into an angry exchange that would result in blows if the rest of the cast – unknowing – didn't come in singing Happy Birthday. Which they did.

That tickled me on so many levels. Because the one thing you tend not to do when it comes to Cancer is laugh. And I needed to do that. To laugh at it, to laugh at my own reactions, and to laugh at others too. There was anger within, I channelled my anger into several aspects of it. But I did not want the Cancer element to overwhelm the balance of the play, I didn't want it to be the antagonist. I didn't want to write a movie of the week.

I wanted it to be a funny, if sometimes black, comedy where one of the characters was dealing with a terminal illness in their family, without making that the point of the piece. Rather, I wanted the point to be how men deal with things beyond their normal daily scope. It seemed right to hang this trope on my pre-existing characters of Papa Bear and Baby Bear.

So I set about and completed writing and ultimately staging a sequel, a follow-up.

I set a criteria for creating the follow-up, basing it on what I understood as a failure in other sequels, pitfalls I didn't want to stumble into :

The audience should not need to see the first one to see this

The characters have to develop, even if that is only apparent to me and the few who had seen the first

If I am to reference the first play, it has to be as a natural part of the play, ie referencing it in the same way the characters reference other events that may have happened to them

There has to be a reason for it to exist, other than as a sequel or follow-up

The story and situations have to be entirely new

I must not follow the formula of the first – in this case opening monologue, slow drift toward violence, friends at the end

No Tiesto

Expand the universe but no Matrixing or Hobbiting

Develop the emotions – the first was black but only on the surface. This has to delve a little deeper, get the emotions flowing.

So did this criteria help make a successful sequel?

Yes and no. I was very careful to write it so that audiences did not have to have seen “Papa Bear...” but I very quickly realised that there was a certain responsibility you have to your existing audience. So I laced in a few in-jokes and references that I was happy would be noticed by some, and ignored by others. It felt right to treat any existing audience in this manner, to reward them for returning – to thank them for returning. I didn't over-egg it. But there was a dance sequence in there, and Pepper Spray was mentioned.

This tied in, too, with the development of the characters. I wanted them to be recognisable as the same people, but a year had passed in the story. Kris, the actor playing Baby Bear, had made the smart decision to quietly work in some of my mannerisms as Papa Bear into his portrayal, indicating that we had been working together for a while now. This built on his character as being a little more bolshy, as written, just a little more confident and less naive. He changed his body language, and the rhythm of his speech accordingly; he developed his character in a way that the writing had barely hinted at.

By adding a new character, I could allow new relationships to develop and more importantly to me, I could show the audience new character-responses that naturally developed them for the audience.

This allowed me to skip over the formula following aspect of a sequel. I had my characters and my setting. All I had to do was put them into a fresh circumstance, stand back and watch them boil. There were elements of the original narrative I tried to work in – the character's spurious and odd monologuing, the gentle drift from small-talk to violence, the dance-sequence. But I think the tone was different, perhaps more adult than “adult” this time around.

As to reasons for its existence, well I think ultimately I am as guilty as any other sequel-maker of trying to capitalise on existing characters, brand-names, and on actor-willingness to return. I recognised that, since people had enjoyed the first one, they may come back for a second. I figured we could, at the very least, get a returning audience as our starting point and build from there.

Artistically it allowed me to explore new themes, to create an arc for existing characters, and to practice an element of subversion – what became apparent to me was, if we were relying on a pre-existing audience then we could subvert their expectations.

This in fact became an obsession for me at the writing and directing stage – to allow our pre-existing audience to believe we were going in one direction, and then to pull the rug completely out from under them. It became tremendously important to lull the audience into a sense of security, an idea that they knew what was coming, and then tear into them.

To this end we tried to apply misdirection with our promotional videos. We tried to appeal to our pre-existing audience while attracting a new one, showing them little snippets of inconsequential dialogue and in particular riffing on our Tiesto Dance sequence.

All the while we were doing this we knew that if they came, they would get something new, something in some ways far darker than they expected, and hopefully, ultimately uplifting.

The gasp when, fifty minutes into a seventy-five minute piece, we introduced Cancer into the mix was palpable, and wonderful. And the wash of relief that came with their laughter as they caught up with us during that sequence, and when the cast came out singing Happy Birthday, made it worth the effort.

So what did I learn, and what do I expect to learn? 

It's easy to call sequel-makers cynical. We are. I wonder though, if that's the whole story. Yes it's easy to rely on branding to make money but it still takes time, thought, and effort to do anything artistic, especially in theatre and in film, sequel or otherwise.

What I discovered though was it's not as easy as you think you try and capitalise on that imagery and it certainly doesn't make drawing an audience in any easier. I had a stake in this one so I wanted to make it work. I thought very hard about how to do it.

It's easy to be cynical as a viewer because we are being manipulated with recognisable imagery to make a return from us. It's true that more and more sequels are lazy cash-ins, relying on familiarity over originality to make their money. This is true of a lot of so-called original movies too, however, so why does it feel so contemptuous when it's applied to a sequel? Have we been conditioned to feel this way?

To comparing the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and their attendant promotions to Cancer?

This is what will be underlying as I go into my own sequel research in the coming weeks. I'll be watching obscure franchise sequels such as Trancers 2, Critters 4, and Tremors 3, as well as bigger budget affairs such as Bad Boys 2, Aliens and Empire Strikes Back.

What I'm interested in, having created my own “franchise” is the difference between the lazy retreads, and the heart-felt knock-offs, and why some pieces work while others fail. Is it always the passion-project sequels that work while the retreads crash and burn?

Most of all, in a time where almost everything has become franchisable, what does it mean to the audience?

I endeavour to start very, very soon.

Keep your eyes peeled!

Dom

There's a new guy in town - Blog-Tart - The Trailer!

It was a time of great uncertainty. A time of black despair. Not depair because of black. That would be racist. Just despair of the blackest kind. Not black as in – the point is, there was despair and it required a downbeat prefix to make it seem even more despairier!

Into this darkness came the light. Not to be confused with the white. That too, would be racist.

He was a simple man. An everyman, like Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise. Not special in any way. Like Colin Farrell. Someone who represented you, the audience, like Michael Fassbender. Someone completely ordinary with whom you could identify. Like Scarlett Johnanssens lips and breasts and film choices.

Yet he would come to realise all by himself without a prophecy to guide him or nothing, that he was the chosen one, he who would bring balance back to the world by blogging about things that interested only him. And then posting them on Facebook, because he has no followers. Or friends.

And he was desperate for attention.

Having turned his beady double-third-eye of satire on a set of meaningless writing exercises, he was ready for a new challenge. Something banal that he could focus far too much energy on, and then trick people into reading because they had unrealistic expectations of his articles based on two particularly good and focussed pieces that acted as a two-in-twelve statistic of quality.

So he had done the writing exercises.

He had done the day of reckoning.

He had done the arts.

What next for this scion of society?

Well, you tell me!!!!!

I have a few ideas for articles and bits of research I want to do, just for the sake of it.

I'm starting off by watching all the sequels I have in my collection, and I'm going to explain the rules of this in the first article, starting next week, but basically what I want to do is review them and talk about canon, sequels, prequels and all things attached, from my own perspective.

I was sent an interesting little article about robots, which intrigued me enough to do an ickle bit of research on that subject, so I'm going to look into that, too.

I'm also starting my new play soon, which I will chart in painstaking, misery-developing detail as I tear my hair out trying to combat plotting difficulties, character enui, and a general feeling that no one else will ever want to see this shit.

I am ALSO thinking of doing a couple of vids to attach to these blogs, in relation to various articles. Mostly film review type dealios.

So that's all ahead of me. What I'd also like from anyone reading this, is a few things that might interest them from my perspective.

Anything you'd like to discuss with me, debate with me, throw at me, and more, then please do. I get off on inflicting misery, and having people inflict it upon me. I think they call it sado-masochism. Or Ireland syndrome.

I'll be starting my sequal articles by watching the House movies, a set of low-budget comedy horrors that started in the eighties and actually managed to make it into the nineties without anyone ever having seen them!

My parents are staying with me for the next two weeks so these articles will be done in between – and to stave off – the madness! I might even make them watch these movies for their elderly take on things I KNOW they'll hate!

See you real soon!

Dom