Not Wicked Smaht

Your average movie-goer probably doesn't know who the Weinstein brothers are but there is little doubt they know their work. Back in the 1970s Harvey and Bob Weinstein started an independent movie distribution company to get smaller and foreign films out to the masses. The named it Miramax and ended up working on little films like "Pulp Fiction", "Clerks" and "The Crying Game". It was a testament to quality over quantity and Miramax showed a talent for getting its films Oscar nominations if not wins. Before too long the company was making a lot of money, which caught the attention of the major motion picture studios and in 1993 they were bought by Disney. The Weinstein brothers still had control of the company and kept pumping out hits like the "Scary Movie" franchises and "Good Will Hunting". But, as so often happens in situations like these eventually the Weinsteins got tired of no longer having final say regarding the movies they decided to distribute (Disney did not want to be involved with Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11") and left the company they had founded - going back to their roots producing smaller movies like "Transamerica" under their new company name of The Weinstein Company (not the most creative, but it got the point across). As you would expect when a company which was founded as a passion project get turned over to a corporation which has no sentimentality towards it, Miramax slowly started going downhill and Disney sold it off to foreign investors in 2010.

Around this time you may be wondering why I just made you sit through that history lesson. It's because last week the Weinstein Company announced it had reached a deal with Miramax to go into their vast catalog and start producing some sequels based on the movies they had previously made, starting with "Shakespeare in Love" and proposed television series based off "Good Will Hunting" and "Rounders". I guess the Weinsteins fail to see the irony here. The entire reason they left Miramax in the first place was because Disney had come in and started worrying more about making a buck than producing a good movie. Now the Weinsteins are now using a similar "money-over-all" mentality because there is no way anyone who genuinely cared about the legacy of a movie such as "Good Will Hunting" would green-light a sequel. (I am less worried about "Shakespeare In Love" because I didn't see the first one and won't see any sequels.) I admit, there have been a few ok sequels to great movies but very few which you would say are on the same level as the original. I'm thinking of movies such as the second "Godfather", "Star Wars" and "Rocky" films. In thinking about it, that is pretty close to the entire list right there. That's three movies... in the history of cinema. Far more often the second movie does nothing but make us view the original film in a lesser light because it starts to appear to be a fluke rather than the carefully-crafted work it actually was. They may make some money but that really shouldn't be the only standard.

Still, if given the choice I would rather have one crappy sequel than come to resent a movie I used to like over 13 drawn-out episodes of a television show. While the rate of getting a good movie out of a TV show is around 60%, going the other way and basing a TV series off a movie almost never works. The problem starts right away when the actors we have come to identify as those characters are often not available, which totally kills any interest the audience may have had before the pilot even airs. I doubt Matt Damon would want to be in a "Good Will Hunting" show and even then he is probably too old. (I mean, no one wants to see a guy in his 40s still fighting his issues. At some point it tips from inspiring to depressing.) Additionally there is the issue of language. I mean, every great line from "Good Will Hunting" has an expletive in it. The experience of watching it is ruined when it is on basic cable, so how good would it be if it were on some network? Even if it were on HBO they would probably still find a way to make it not work. I also wonder if the time has passed everyone by. I mean, "Rounders" came out in 1998. During the poker craze a few years ago everyone lamented how that movie was before its time but poker is back to being in the fringes of public consciousness, so how much outcry can there really be for it? Hearing this news I can't help but think of how bad the "Napoleon Dynamite" cartoon was. Sure, it probably would have been that bad regardless of when it aired but that movie came out in 2004 and the cartoon came along in 2012. If eight years is too big of a gap to bridge how is 16 going to be any better?

I'm going to be honest with you here - my problems with this announcement are based almost entirely off the fact that three of the movies they want to go back and try and squeeze a few more dollars out of ("Swingers", "Rounders" and "Good Will Hunting") are three of my favorite movies of all-time and I thought enough time had passed since they had first been released that this wouldn't be an issue. Clearly, I was wrong. If they had made this same announcement regarding almost any other movies I would not be writing this today but they had to pick those movies to lead their announcement. They were just about perfect for the time in which they came out and one of the most admirable thing about all three is that they never threw a sequel together just to try and make a few extra dollars. Sometimes a story can be told in two hours and everyone walks away happy, with no need to know what happened in the future. That's how I feel about "Swingers". I mean, at this point I am almost antagonized by Vince Vaughn's choice in movies so the idea of him going back to play Double Down Trent in 2014 is just too much. (Although it could be argued that every character Vince Vaughn plays is some version of Double Down Trent.) Even worse, the Weinsteins have to know this because they already went through this when they made "Clerks II" which was universally reviled. All of this adds up to the fact that the Weinsteins should focus more on trying to recapture the old magic of finding the next classic movie rather than sit back on their laurels and churn out something we have all seen before. Because I have to say, at this moment, I would rather had Disney back in charge.