News > TW FEATURE: More Movie Sequels for TV Shows, Please
January 18, 2008
So, I'm watching Bender's Big Score for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago and by the time it was over I had only one thought: this was Futurama's very own Serenity. In the same way that Serenity upped the ante for the canceled TV series Firefly, so too did Bender's Big Score act as a bigger, louder, more epic installment in the Futurama series. There's just something about being able to spend hours upon hours hanging out with characters during their less important adventures, until finally experiencing an epic, big-budget movie with more consequence and scope than television shows are really ever allowed to have.
When done correctly, great TV shows can make for even better cinema (I haven't seen The Simpsons Movie, so don't hold me accountable for it). The ideal movie sequel to a TV show wraps up some plot lines from the show in a big, unforgettable way (Serenity and the Reavers, Star Trek and Khan), plops the protagonists we've come to know and love in peril unlike anything they've yet experienced (South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut), and does shocking, consequential, more-or-less permanent things to them (the crew deaths in Serenity, Spock's death in Khan).
Once an audience has spent a season or so getting to care about TV characters, every single death or plot turn has that much more meaning. Unlike most films, where we only have about a half hour to understand and care about our protagonists until the shit starts going down, a Firefly fan can turn on Serenity with an ingrained love for the entire crew. When one of those characters dies, it's tough not to take the death personally considering the sheer amount of time you've spent with them. Having never seen a single episode of Firefly, one could almost shrug off Wash's death in the film's final scenes. Having known him through 15 episodes of quality television, however, the experienced Firefly fan will be positively crushed by his demise.
Character familiarization also increases emotion in good times as well as bad, in comedies as well as dramas. While not particularly serious, the moment in South Park: BLaC where Cartman uses his malfunctioning V-Chip to electrocute Saddam Hussein to death ("Blood-drenched frozen tampon popsicle!") never failed to elicit cheers from fans of the show when I saw it in theatres; you've spent enough time around the characters that they become your friends -- and who wouldn't want to see their friend use profanity to kill someone?
Nearly every good movie sequel to a TV show has moments like these: when Hermes organizes Earth's defense forces for a final attack on the Death Stars in Futurama (made amply more badass once the show's theme song starts playing), when Captain Kirk gives Spock's eulogy in Wrath of Khan...when these films are at their best they can adequately entertain virgins to their respective franchises, but act as quasi-religious experiences for longtime fans. Why can't we have more of that? Hell, how great would it be to finally have all of Lost's questions answered in one explosive, big-screen wrap-up to the series? Granted, asking for all of Lost's questions to be answered period is asking a lot in and of itself, but you know what I mean.
Going into a movie theater and reconnecting with the characters I grew to appreciate on television increases the scope and emotional impact of the film's events roughly a tenfold. And even when you're not on a big screen (Bender's Big Score was straight-to-DVD), the bigger budgets, grandiose plots and the expanded running times they demand feels juuuust different enough to be epic and spectacular and badass, while still intimate and familiar.
