These Films Deserve Sequels

Some weeks ago this poster surfaced online: 

 

District 9, Neil Blomkamp’s directorial debut, tells of a Johannesburg taking on alien refugees, and government agent Vikus finding his loyalties tested when he’s infected with alien DNA. The film ended open, Vikus missing, as far as the authorities are concerned, and with the aliens moved to the titular District 10, sequel hinted. 

The poster above and the respective sequel are long overdue. In the meantime, Blomkamp has instead made a string of sci-fi bangers with iconic technology. His Oats Studios anthology on Netflix hints to a plethora of other cinematic ideas - electronic bugs, TV kitchen disasters and more sinister alien invasions. 

The hinting of a potential District 10 got me thinking: What other films are ripe for a sequel? What stories need continuing on the silver screen? I have a few suggestions… 

Fight Club

 

David Fincher’s cult 1999 adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s debut novel defined a generation of young, lost men thrust into adulthood without a clue what to do with their lives. ‘Beat each other up,’ seemed to be the author’s recommendation. 

Well, the book and movie both became cult hits eventually, and the book spawned 2 sequels, both in graphic novel form. Fight Club 2 picks up a few years later. Heavily medicated, the narrator has moved on from Tyler Durden, living quite a plain existence, until the enigmatic sidekick bribes a doctor and finds his way back into the narrator’s life. 

Would you cast the same 3 lead actors? I would.  

Midsommar

 

Ari Aster’s contemporary twist on rural Pagan horror (think Gen-Z Wicker Man in Scandinavia) ends with Dani (Florence Pugh) a sole survivor of a sinister massacre. 

The Swedish Island commune saw all her friends done away with one by one in bizarre and macabre fashion. But Sweden is still an ally of the States, and families are going to ask questions. Are authorities going to investigate? How long has this been going on? And where will Dani’s loyalties lie? Would it kill the horror to drag the island into the 21st century? Possibly. Could Aster pull it off? Probably. 

Predators

 

Okay, hear me out. Predators was not a great movie. It seemed to run out of ideas, despite the initial premise being a good one: the Predators visit contemporary Earth, scoop of a series of hardened warriors from far-flung corners – a US Special Ops vet, an African death squad soldier, a Yakuza enforcer etc – and drop them onto a game planet to hunt them down. 

The movie doesn’t seem to go anywhere, though: some get killed, others don’t. The wild plan to commandeer their ship and somehow fly it back to Earth never materialises. 

You’d think Hollywood would put together a sequel to this if they were going to touch the ailing Predator franchise, but instead they went with The Predator, Shane Black’s 2018 contemporary-set outing, a box office success but a critical dumpster-fire. Most hacks hated the story, branding it incomprehensible. I’m yet to see this. 

Back to Predators: IDF sniper Isabelle and American soldier Royce head into the jungle looking for transport. Then what? That premise actually sounds more interesting than what happened in the rest of the movie. 

With real-life current affairs, though, I can’t see that happening. Hollywood would probably want to, but the movie would be unquestionably boycotted. A good portion of the world does not want an Israeli Defence Force heroine. 

Maybe execs were right to green-light Prey, setting the next Predator film in 1700s native Appalachia. I’ve not caught this movie yet either. I think Hollywood could mine other historical time periods, dropping the intergalactic hunters into other conflicts: The Harrying of the North, with William the Conqueror seeing off the Vikings, World War II in perhaps Sudan, 1960s Vietnam etc. etc. Setting the films in the past gives us the opportunity to suggest an alternate explanation for how our history books turned out: a load of weedy Anglo-Saxons and Normans managed to see off massive, ripped Norse invaders. Were they helped by something they couldn’t see? Something with an invisibility shield? What if the Leonids meteor shower of 1833 was actually a tribe of descending Predators, hunting native Americans and European settlers alike? 

World history is punctuated with extreme violence. The stories are ripe for retelling with predators.  

Alien Resurrection 

Ft.Lt Ellen Ripley’s story arc ended in post-apocalyptic Paris (In the director’s cut at least) with her rag-tag gang of space raiders – those who survived the massacres of Alien Resurrection.

 

In 2005, Titan Books published Michael Jan Friedman’s Aliens: Original Sin, a continuation of the story, in which we’re reintroduced to Ripley, android Call, mercenary Johner and paraplegic mechanic Vriess. This time, inexplicably, they’re in New Zealand. They soon find themselves on an orbital station above Earth, intent on breaking out. They commandeer a shuttle in which they find a stowaway journalist, who smells a story. 

Could this film adaptation happen now that Sigourney Weaver – playing Ripley – and Ron Pearlman – Johner – are both 74? And Call actress Winona Ryder is 52 and busy with Netflix’s Stranger Things? I fear that boat – or starship – has sailed.  

The Rules of Attraction 

In 1998 Bret Easton Ellis published Glamorama, a 90s-set novel following Victor, a small character from his earlier novel The Rules of Attraction.

 

In this, the young man – now a successful model – is 2-timing his girlfriends and getting into fights with C-list celebs, all while trying to launch a nightclub. As this all comes to a head, he’s approached by an ominous, suited figure who offers him a cheque for $300,000 if he’ll go to Europe and find an old girlfriend who’s gone missing. 

Soon Victor is immersed in a world of models, fashion, terrorism and ice sculptures that are as cold as his co-conspirators. 

Ellis’ novels have had some success on the screen before: American Psycho became a cult classic, memed to death and idolised both ironically and unironically by Gen-Z. Rules of Attraction was a far better adaptation: much more faithful with more expert direction, and with a superior cast of ageing and fledgling stars. It’s a shame it isn’t as well-known. 

The rest of his screen adaptations are atrocious. Don’t bother with The Informers or The Canyons, for example. 

Glamorama could buck that trend with enough money behind it. It’s a novel as big as American Psycho, a generous serving of literature, but could be condensed to make an iconic movie, or kept at full length for an 8-part Netflix series, perhaps. 

Kip Pardue, who played Victor in Glamorama, is now 48, so way too old to reprise the role. There’s always emerging talent, though. Who was Ian Somerhalder before he was cast in The Rules of Attraction? Not particularly well-known. He went on to be cast as Damon Salvatore in The Vampire Diaries, and I say you can attribute that to his brilliantly cold performance in Rules.  

Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction

 

Bucking the trend here, but these two films deserve a prequel. Tarantino confirmed that, in his universe, Vic Vega of Reservoir dogs and Vincent Vega of Pulp Fiction are in fact brothers. 

A backstory of how these two got into the life of crime – one robbing diamond stores and the like, the other dabbling in cocaine and heroin, becoming a questionable enforcer for Marcellus Wallace’s crime empire - is ripe for investigation. 

Tarantino had plans to write it, set in Amsterdam, but abandoned it. Unfortunately, the only person who’s likely to write it is Quentin Tarantino himself, who has recently revealed himself to be a rabid Zionist, visiting IDF troops offering them ‘moral support’ while they murder children in Gaza. What a way to sully your reputation. 

Human Traffic

 

Justin Kerrigan’s 1999 cult clubbing movie springboarded the careers of Danny Dyer and John Simm. Together with three other struggling millennials, they manage – with some challenges - to get tickets to a Cardiff club night in which they all take pills, rave, go to an after party, do coke and ‘talk codshit’ - as Simm’s Jip puts it - about Star Wars. Some develop relationships, others don’t. 

20 years have passed since the movie came out. The club scene is largely over. Recently, in reality, I’ve been to a couple of 2000-era throwback nights featuring house music, singers and DJs from back in that period. 

What would work as a sequel: The 5 reconnect over Facebook, something that they rarely use, and mostly for one thing: a ‘Cardiff Clubbers’ private group for people who went to the clubs (featured and referenced in the first movie). An ageing promoter in the group decides to put on one last event, gathering together DJs and singers from back in the day. (I bet known singers like Steve Edwards – vocalist for Bob Sinclair’s World Hold On would be happy to cameo.) This time, they have to contend with reduced spinal fluid, drug dogs, smartphones, former sesh-heads who are now teetotal body-is-temple vegans, digital cameras, social media (and employers who might snoop on it) and friends’ partners. Some faces are missing: some are dead, some moved away, some just couldn’t face potentially relapsing and stayed home. 

Question is, what time period do you use for the soundtrack? Maybe 1995-2005 would work. The characters were, in the original, young enough to still have some clubbing days in front of them. So leeway on the years around when the original was set could give some variety.  

Scarface

 

Brian DePalma’s Scarface (1983) ends in a massacre. Cocaine kingpin Tony Montana, after his bloody rise from dishwasher to gang boss, is dead, so is his sister Gina, his best friend Manny, his close confidant Chichi, and probably all of his bodyguards. The only people we know to make it out alive are Tony’s mother, his wife Elvira (who walked away at the right moment) and Ales Sosa, Tony’s boss who ordered the hit. 

Also still living, to the best of our knowledge, is Matos Gutierrez, a Bolivian journalist who’d identified Sosa and his cohorts as the source operatives of America’s cocaine trade. Tony’s insistence that he doesn’t blow up the car, containing Gutierrez's wife and two children, allowed Gutierrez to go to the United Nations and spill the beans to them too. 

Hence, the assault on Montana mansion goes ahead. A handful of Bolivian goons are all that remains. 

Surely an onslaught like this would attract the attention of the FBI. Not to mention, the police would still be wondering what happened to their (corrupt) employee Mel Bernstein, and this would lead back to one person: Sosa. 

Sosa actor Paul Shenar died in 1989 and most of the surviving movie cast are in their 70s and 80s, so recasting would be somewhat necessary. Plus setting everything in the early 80s – or any time period after about 1890 – is expensive for Hollywood. 

There are a lot of loose ends to be investigated. In reality, numerous people were importing cocaine from South America to Florida in particular. There are 3 ‘Cocaine Cowboys’ documentaries that lift the lid on that life, available on different websites. They’re all well worth watching. Furthermore, cocaine wasn’t – and isn’t – the only drug being imported. As the 80s rolled on, more synthetic drugs like MDMA muscled in, which would have impacted on cocaine sales. Who were the players there? How did they interact? What happened as a result of the power vacuum caused by Tony’s demise? 

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Those are my 10 suggestions. What other big films were left open-ended, that deserve a follow-up?