S. Darko
Screw it. Let's just do it in list form.
10 things to keep in mind when making a sequel
1. Don't start it off with a
Star Wars-style rolling scroll saying the previous movie – y'know, the one we liked - was "just the beginning." And don't use the cheapest font you can find, either.
2. Don't substitute smart dialogue for stilted and Deeply Symbolic And Thematic Clues. And don't leave your sense of humour at home either. I laughed exactly once in this: when one of the supposedly major "plot" advancements got brushed under the carpet, never to be seen again.
3. Try to figure out what kind of movie you're making. You want to make a psychological drama about Donnie's little sister dealing with his death (a decade later, so she can be hot and in her underwear in every scene)? Great! You want to make a supernatural philosophical thriller about the choices we make? Great! You want to deconstruct the road movie? Great! You want to make a horror movie about two hot girls in a weird redneck town? Great! It's all been done before, but great! Now,
make up your mind. Mixing different styles is fine. Shifting from one to another every 20 minutes with no pay-off is... well...
4. Remember how scary the little kid in
Ju-On was when he just popped up for a second here or there? Remember how not scary he was when he was practically the main character in
Ju-On 2? Yeah. The point is, if you have a great plot device that doesn't necessarily make sense when you think about it, don't overuse it.
5. And connected to that, you're making a sequel to
Donnie Darko. Not
Groundhog Day. What did that poor rewind button ever do to you?
6. If you're going to claim that the previous movie was "just the beginning", then continue the story. Do a new movie based on the previous one, but do your own movie. Don't just repeat the same basic storyline over again, throwing in a reference to the original every time the audience gets bored, using different characters who are
all time travelers. Or something. Donnie was nuts, what's your excuse?
7. You're following up a movie famed for its soundtrack. Great. And you deserve points for including Beth Orton, I guess (and I'll never be able to
not love Whale's "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe", as awful as it is). But you really don't need to use them in
exactly the same way as the original. That sad piano ballad over a rewind montage worked
once, and trust me, you really don't want to invite the audience to too many comparisons; you'll lose out every time.
8. Cast actual actors. Direct them. Point out to them that not everything they say is the most ominous, portentous, crucial line of dialogue of all time. We'll hate their pretentious asses, we won't think of them as anything but automatons who deliver clues, and we won't care what happens to them and what choices they make.
9. Have... y'know, a
protagonist. Have what the characters do matter. Have their interactions mean something. Resolve your plot lines. Jesus fucking Christ, this isn't quantum physics. Movies are more than just nice visuals and a decent soundtrack.
Donnie Darko may have been messy, but at least it had a narrative, a denoument, catharsis, all that. A lot of stuff happens in
S. Darko, but in the end, the director is so in love with the pay-off scene in the original and uses it so many times that the movie essentially ends up not having happened at all. Rarely has the phrase "can I have the last two hours back, please?" sounded so fitting.
10. Try to get this fundamental concept: people didn't like
Donnie Darko because it had weird sci-fi trappings and clues that may have required two viewings to get. People wanted to view it twice and figure out the clues
because they liked it. Maybe it made sense and maybe it didn't, but it had characters we cared about and emotional logic that made us want to believe in it. Ultimately,
Donnie Darko wasn't about time travel and talking rabbits, it was about this kid named Donnie Darko. I don't know what the hell
S. Darko is about, and I don't care. I'm pretty sure I know what the S stands for, though. As in "complete and utter."