How To Name Your Sequel II: Not Just Roman Numerals Anymore
Remember when movie companies just put Roman numerals at the end of titles when they made sequels? Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV. Well, not any more.
This summer, we've had X-Men: Days of Future Past, with no mention that it's either the sixth or seventh X-men movie, depending on how you're counting. Also 22 Jump Street, the across-the-street-follow-up to 21 Jump Street. And Begin Again (which ought to be a sequel, but isn't).
Do you suppose they stopped numbering sequels so we wouldn't do the math? Totting up time spent — dollars spent — watching the same plot play out with variations. Five Die Hards, seven Planets of Apes, nine Elm Street Nightmares, a dozen Star Treks going boldly where pretty much everybody's gone by now.
It makes sense a studio might want to downplay that. Make things at least sound fresh. As with what I've come to think of as the "Harry Potter and the ..." movies, where book titles get our hero from pre-teen to young adult. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, up until the last couple, when they settle for Deathly Hallows, Part One and Part Two. Guess they figured that's catchier than Harry Potter and the Male Pattern Baldness.
Sometimes just using numbers for titles makes sense, as with Steven Soderberg's Oceans trilogy about an ever-expanding gang of 11, then 12, then 13 con artists staging ever-more-elaborate casino heists.
But if you're not going to go with numbers, sequel titling does have some informal rules. For an action picture, you want to up the ante each time. Die Hard, Die Harder, Die Hard with a Vengeance. Or the Bourne Identity, rising to Supremacy, and then to Ultimatum, and then Simulacrum, or whatever that last one was without Matt Damon.
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