While the now rechristened Blondie (Eastwood) is less “good” than he is just chaotic neutral, he makes for one charismatic pony in this horse race to buried treasure. In which case, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is his greatest ride. ![]() However, the titles A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965) certainly suggest there is a continuity of spirit and perhaps character in Eastwood’s laconic hombre as he tries on different nicknames for every adventure. You could view these as three separate narratives about slightly different desperados, each with a penchant for cigars and ponchos. ![]() While many fans have speculated Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” archetype is the same character across all three of director Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” films, there is no actual evidence. We confess this one is a bit of a stretch. The series was rarely more thrilling than when Bond found himself on his knees inside a cramped car on the Orient Express, with Shaw pointing a gun at his head. Conversely, From Russia with Love is a taut Cold War thriller in which Bond matches wits with a corrupt Russian agent (Robert Shaw), and frankly comes up short. Five minutes of him fighting a tarantula, less so. Bond’s introduction at a casino where he tells Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson), “The name’s Bond, James Bond” is the stuff of legend. The original Bond movie is every bit a classic, introducing us to many of the things we love (or hate) about the Bond character: his swagger, his sense of refinement, half his quotable lines, and that curious habit of stumbling upon beautiful women on a beach while they’re wearing a two-piece. Even under those auspices, however, there is no denying From Russia with Love-as well as many other Bond movies, including the following year’s Goldfinger (1964)-surpass Dr. From Russia with Love (1963)Īn argument could be made that the long-running James Bond movie franchise is not so much a series of sequels as it is agent 007 having the same adventure again and again. Now he can articulate his loneliness while sharing a cigar with a blind man… before being abandoned again. But what truly elevates this is Karloff’s Monster developing a poet’s soul. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) are a pair of dudes who want to play house without any women other than the baby girl they give birth to in “the Bride” (Elsa Lanchester), a creature with the elegance of a swan, and the hissing temperament to match. He took the opportunity to craft a true auteur’s piece, as well as the first horror-comedy.Įqual parts camp and chills, Bride of Frankenstein has a wicked sensibility that borders on blasphemous. The impression they left was so immense, in fact, Whale had cold feet about doing a sequel until Universal Pictures offered him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with it. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)ĭirector James Whale (along with makeup artist Jack Pierce and actor Boris Karloff) created one of the greatest monsters of the silver screen in Frankenstein (1931). So sequels, as it turns out, can have artistic merit beyond being “the same thing, but different.” In fact, more than a few have surpassed what their predecessors accomplished. Hell, two of them were nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. And many of them were received as enthusiastically by critics as moviegoers. Nine of the 10 highest grossing movies of last year were sequels (and the 10th was another Batman reboot). In the 21st century, this all seems quaint. ![]() ![]() Even then, folks in the industry couldn’t stop snickering afterward when Sylvester Stallone announced there was yet another chapter in the life of Rocky Balboa to be told. A case might even be made that the first sequel to truly legitimize the endeavor was The Godfather, Part II in 1974. By their nature, sequels are derivative, and there have been many filmmakers who were all too happy to embrace sameness while filling their working hours before and after lunch. And yet, while sequels have been around forever, they’ve generally been seen as lesser-than until recently.
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