Arriving Pre-Spoiled: Why Prequels Suck

BSG spinoff Caprica launches next Friday , but as good as its gap installment may be ( And they are ) , we ’re still distressed . Why ? Because it ’s a prequel , and if science fiction has taught us one thing , it ’s that prequels generally suck .

It ’s well-heeled to designate to the Star Wars prequels as an example of the integral failure of prequels , but instead , I ’m going to push you in the direction of something much more recent : Last summertime ’s X - Men Origins : Wolverine . For those of you who see that movie – even those who relish it – you ’ll cognise already that something was missing : Anything resembling dramatic tenseness . Despite all the activity and the Liev Schreiber chewing scene , there was never really a moment where anyone in the interview would ’ve worry about the consequence , because we ’d all seen Wolverine in the three X - Men movies already and he unquestionably seemed alive there * .

The existent problem with prequels is that , in almost every instance , they ’re never really stories in their own right hand . They ’re “ How did we get to the detail we start at in the story you already know about , ” whether it ’s in the form of character backstory , societal / cultural / technological account or whatever , and that immediately robs them of any veridical manner of surprise us with their issue without fall back to gimmicky edition on “ A hour angle ! Things were n’t the way you mean they were before ! Everything you know is wrong ! ” ( which is , you know , plaguy ) . And when you know how a history ends , that story has to be tell extremely well to hold your attention ( Of course , knowing the closing can , every now and then , be the point ; the three Star Wars prequels were pretty much pre - sold on the idea of “ How does this cute little annoying male child become Darth Vader ? ” and there was something in that glide slope … but , again , at that spot it becomes all about the execution , which is where – Hayden Christensen hates sand ? – Episodes 1 and 2 precipitate down . Although I have to accept enjoying the third one ) .

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There ’s a agency of catch around this , mind you , and it ’s the route that Caprica seems to be taking : fundamentally telling a fresh story only tangentally connected to the original story . Caprica have no Battlestars , post - revelatory dangerous undertaking of the subsister of the human raceway and no robotic badguys attempt to kill us all off . Yes , it ’s involved with the ( an ? ) inception of the cylons in one sentiency , but the serial publication , the storey , is – from what we ’ve visualise – so disconnected from Battlestar Galactica in so many ways that it feels like something novel . Which is dear for Caprica the show , but beg the question , Why not just make it its own show , garbled to any exist mythology at all ? Is the stigmatisation advantage that big ?

( And to everyone presently shouting “ YES ! ” at their screen , I get it on . I just like it was n’t so , is all . )

Prequels are almost always afterthoughts , no matter how many time their creators may pretend that there ’s always been a monolithic plan that we never cognise about and it ’s all plan really ; they ’re attention deficit disorder - ons produce to work success or cover storytelling asses or fulfill someone ’s OCD desire to explain everything . Sure , there have been the occasional good ones ( Last year ’s The Surrogates : Flesh and Bone being a fine example ) , but do n’t permit that perturb you from the simple fact : Prequels in the main suck up .

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