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Daniel E Fleuranvil
Professor McClurg
English Composition 1
4/2/17
The Fallacy about Sequels
Creators throughout all of history have brought characters built on previously explored
and well received concepts and ideas. In the modern day, critics have a plethora of ways of
judging the difference between high and low quality work, and it isn’t uncommon for some of
these ways to seemingly be based on uniqueness. For example, a popular Japanese animation
critic who goes by the name of “Digibro” the often criticizes A-1 Pictures (a Japanese animation
studio) for having characters of similar design with similar defining characteristics. Much like
these spiritual successors, official sequels and reboots are often viewed with disdain even before
they’re released. Regardless, they typically do well in terms of viewership, even in comparison
to the original work. If this is true, then how important is uniqueness within a story. I contest,
that the uniqueness of a story has little to no effect on how media is received.
To the casual viewer, the parameters of reviewing a series may solely rely on their
experience when building a public recommendation, but to the more academically interested
viewer, it should be imperative that they ensure there review addresses the films already
accumulated success. Once a piece of media becomes popular, it becomes apart of what is
currently topical. As such, allowing yourself and your readers/viewers to learn how they feel
about it first hand furthers their ability to articulate their feelings in regards to future and past
films. It would also be incredibly negligent to not mention the main motivation of the creation of
movies when discussing how much of a success you believed them to be. Last but not least, if the
similarities of cliches of media weren’t constantly used as a negatives, it would further the
conversation, critiques, and commentary of that genre. For example, watchers familiar with the
Romeo and Juliet balcony scene, could be drawn to the differences in shot compositions between
iterations, rather than that they are indeed in the same situation.
The depth that a person sees in an individual scene is largely up to the person, rather than
the creator of that scene. While an individual might see one thing, the majority of people might
see something vastly different. It is for that reason, that sample sizes of active are important, but
aren’t to be fully trusted. In general, polling from a dedicated websites invites more dedicated
users to answer, so they don’t necessarily reflect the rest of the population. This is especially true
when they can form communities of there own, and those can have unique biases based on how
often they see certain tropes. Though Rotten Tomato is made up of the most dedicated
moviegoers, has no in-site ability to form a community making it more consistent than most
other websites. The easiest metric for checking the popularity of a movie is by far their box
office numbers. Money eliminates the possibility of falsifying the information to unfairly
increase or decrease a movies score. Unfortunately, factors such as inflation, population, and
advertising all have an effect on how much a movie can make. It should be noted that viewership
of television series aren’t publicized like with movies. In the case of anime, budgets are nearly an
industry secret, with most references being to it being in vague scales. While both these
methodologies are flawed, they are the least subjective metrics to gouge a film's success.
While the quality of art is subjective, it isn’t uncommon for reviewers to establish a set of
rules or guidelines that they expect from a story for them to consider it good. Often times critics
will use simplistic and/or deterministic language to describe aspects of the story they disliked to
introduce the part of the ruleset that is relevant to their critique. One such example can be found
in Professor Akia review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where he called it “the most poorly
told story by a level movie production I’ve seen this year.” Part of the reason for Akia dislike of
the film was its pacing, but this was only empowered by what he opted to call “fan-service.” This
was in reference to the movies references of past iterations of the franchise. His critique went so
far as to say that this movie was just a remake of one of those movies but with more main
characters, meaning there was less time to tell a story. Regardless, this “remake” made almost 40
times the original when adjusted for inflation in the opening week. There rotten tomato score are
quite identical with Star Wars: The Force Awakens having a 92 and Star Wars: A New Hope
having a 93. The reason why uniqueness as an argument, specifically for the Star Wars: The
Force Awakens, doesn’t is how long the time period between these movies were. Nearly 40 years
passed between those 2 movies, so the many people of the new audience weren’t apart of the
original audience, meaning a bigger audience and more money.
The world that a story takes place in is possibly the most important background decision
that an author can make. The world defines what is believable within the confines of a story and
how characters are expected to interact with each other and the audience. For example, in a
world made up of talking animals, what are pets? If regular animals are used as pets, then who
decides which animals are fully sentient beings and which are only pets. The answers to these
kinds of questions are important for building a world and yet show that give unique and
prevalent answers to this question don’t seem to have a lead in their online ratings as supposed to
there online counterparts. For example, Peppa the Pig has tried to keep true to the rule that
“birds, reptiles, insects and fish would be portrayed as 'real' animals” and has kept a 6.6 on IMDb
while Camp Lazlo which has made no attempt of making a rule as kept a 6.4 (IMDb is not a
purely professional critic controlled website, but it has one of the largest users bases.) While
many shows have had an entirely anthropomorphic rosters of characters, most don’t have any
semblance of a rule (e.g. Mickey Mouse as his best friends Pluto and Goofy who are both dogs.)
Another example of how the particular uniqueness of a world doesn’t effect it’s rating are the
show The Asterisk War: The Academy City on the Water and Chivalry of a Failed Knight. Both
started airing on October 3, 2015, and both were sci-fi anime about high school kids in a school
approved battle-royal where the main character is sword toting male who is new to this, yet still
beats the flame sword wield princess in the first episode. The set ups for these world’s
similarities don’t end there, as they seem to follow each in story and characters nearly episode
for episode. They are both following this type of world's tropes that have been well established
for over a decade (It should be noted that anime typically releases on a seasonal calendar,
meaning that 4 separate showing will typically air on the same new anime time slots a year, and
there are no shortage of time slots.) Currently, The Asterisk Wars has a 6.9 on IMDb while
Chivalry of a Failed Knight has a 7.5. While the way a world is constructed matters, the
individuality of that world among others isn’t necessary to be successful.
From the treacherous second in command villain, to the unwavering dedication of the
main hero, we have all seen archetypes in one shape or form. An Archetype is defined by the
Oxford dictionary as “a very typical example of a certain person or thing.” Most, if not, all
characters are based off of pre-existing archetypes such as the brute or the love interest. This
allows for a “primitive mental image” to formed on this character, making them easier to
understand. Often times, it is said that a ‘good’ dynamic character branches out from there
archetype and blossoms in the story through the events that bring that character through their
own arc. The concept of dynamic characters as the protagonist is ignored nowhere more than in
shounen series such as Dragon Ball and Sword Art Online which, to be clear, are still heralded
by many to be on historic levels of greatness. A dynamic character is defined as “a literary or
dramatic character who undergoes an important inner change, as a change in personality or
attitude,” and this character is typically one of the main characters. Since Son Goku, the main
character of the Dragon Ball series, premier on television 30 years ago and Kazuto “Kirito”
Kirigaya, the main character of Sword Art Online, premiered 5 years ago, both these characters
have refused to follow their role as one of the dynamic character of there series. The closest thing
to a growth in these two have been their arbitrary power level’s growth. With a set up like this,
someone unaware of the genre might suggest that maybe they were unique in this venture, thus
that being the source of their success, but there quite literally dozens of this same breed being
made each year. Yet, On IMDB none of the canonical materials (there have been a multiplicity
of movies, cameos, and broadcasted shows in both series’s lifetimes which aren’t considered to
be apart of the narrative) for these 2 shows scores beneath a 7.9/10. What allows these shows to
accumulate so much popularity is the “primitive” and repetitive nature of these characters rather
than any concept surrounding uniques. Their simplicity allows for the viewers, specifically males
between 8 and 18, to project themselves onto the character easily. That concept is the defining
feature of the biggest market in anime for both global and internal sales/viewership(commonly
called “Shounen.”) These series clearly defied what has come to be expected of successful show
in making no attempt to make their characters seem more realistic, and yet, they still stand above
the crowd of things akin to them as some of the most popular anime ever.
When discussing any form of art, ensuring that the intent was to be understood as
subjective is incredibly helpful in making an appeal. If discussions about how non-unique a
particular part of a piece of media is, the media could be enriched from it. For example, sequels
seem to be an eternal force of dread for many moviegoers. Darren Franich even argued that “the
sequel is almost always worse than the original,” siting a graph composed of all rotten tomato
originals and sequels. The graph doesn’t include anything above the first sequel, and it also
doesn’t mention, that many of these movies outperform their predecessors on a monetary scale,
meaning people still go, regardless of how dreadful it seems to make them feel.
In the context of discussing different forms of art, disparagements originating from
unoriginality can be incredibly unhelpful. When reviewing a painting, the similarity of one piece
is largely brought as a negative. However, when a project becomes more complex, as is the case
with films and episodic programs, the similarities are seen as products of lazy writing or a lack of
creativity. Whle the tired feeling of avid watchers is understandable, the productions of these
pieces will not be slowed by approaching it with the same outlook. Rather than simply bashing a
show, the paralells could be used the highlight both the positive and negative attributes of either.
In the case of a successor being believed to be inherently worse, the intention of the successor’s
mirrored should be highlighted and decronstructed.
In conclusion, the individuality of a narrative isn’t as important as it would seem to be.
Even when a narrative is completely unoriginal, it still can do well in terms of revenue or even
ratings.While a world is essential to the plot, it doesn’t necessarily have to be separate from other
plots just like it to succeed. While time plays a big part in the success of a reboot or sequel, even
when released at literally the same time, uniqueness plays a small role. All in all, basing a
critique off of originality does little to further the discussion about the movie itself.
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