The Year of Living Safely

If you think the titles and characters in the full-page movie ads this year look familiar, you’re getting the right idea. Whether out of caution, laziness, lack of imagination or an acute marketing strategy relying on all three, Hollywood is betting as never before that audiences want to see sequels, prequels and remakes of things they’ve seen before. An economic theory worthy of Galbraith or Greenspan, the Law of Sequels is not new to the studios. But the profit margins discovered in recent years by the accountants now in charge of production have elevated its influence to new heights.

Before “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” a sequel was regarded as a conservative investment, a way to make, maybe, half again as much money as the first film. The original stars often shunned them and were replaced by cheaper talent. Way ancient history, dude. Now some sequels are costing more and earning more than the originals, and the stars are shunning none of that.

There also is a whole new category called Franchise-From-the-Get-Go: a bankable story with characters that can be projected ahead in time like commodities futures to yield three, four, five or more related films. Columbia, the studio releasing “Men in Black II” and “Stuart Little 2,” among other sequels this summer, is introducing such a vehicle in “Spider-Man,” the Marvel Comics adaptation described gleefully by a studio spokeswoman as “hopefully starting a franchise.”

Already before us loom new installments of “Harry Potter,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Halloween” and “Blade.” Will we one day see “Rush Hour 7” or “Charlie’s Angels X: The Girls Go Through the Change”?

“Why are franchises made?” asks Brett Ratner, who directed the hits “Rush Hour” and “Rush Hour 2.” “They can be $2- to $3-billion businesses. Whenever a studio has a chance at something like that, they’re going to go for it.”

That’s why we’re in for a spate of continuing adventures, never-ending sagas, the return and return and return again of the Mummy and lots of Roman numerals. Escaping the dangers and dreads of the real world inside the theater, we can be comforted by the feeling that we’ve been here before. “Why did [ratings for] ‘Friends’ go back up after 9/11?” asks New Line marketing executive Russell Schwartz. We think we know. As Austin Powers might say, “It’s deja view, baby!”

Herewith, 10 rules to guide you through this year’s top sequels, prequels and remakes:

1 Don’t Be Confused by the Title.

Unless you have followed a franchise from its inception and know the difference between a prequel, a sequel and an unofficial spinoff, you may need a manual to understand the precise context of some new films. This is often not helped by the title. Members of the tribe of Lucas know that “Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones,” coming in May, is a prequel, not a sequel--and not the second of the “Star Wars” films but the fifth, taking place in cosmic time two installments before the original 1977 movie that introduced Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

“Jason X” is the 10th film in the “Friday the 13th” high school horror series about a supernatural serial killer that began in 1980 and has continued beyond two attempts to end it: “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” (1984) and “Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday” (1993). This year the filmmakers are sending Jason into outer space, but somehow we suspect he’ll find his way back.

Then there’s the Ice Cube serial comedy “Friday After Next” (due at Thanksgiving) that follows the earlier “Friday” and “Next Friday” and involves a ghetto Santa Claus who steals presents rather than delivers them. If there’s a fourth installment, they might want to consider the title, “Thank God It’s Not Friday.”

2 Like Gaul, the Life of Frodo Is Divided Into Three Parts.

Millions have marched to the box office already to see “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” but that was just the opening segment of director Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s prose saga set in Middle-earth. Two more are on the way. (“The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” arrives at Christmas.) The studio adamantly points out that the next two are not sequels but sequential installments, all filmed at once (over three years) and parsed out in manageable cinematic episodes. “We know that some people are going to call it ‘Lord of the Rings 2,’ but not us,” a spokesman says. “We look at it not as a sequel but as the middle book of the trilogy. ‘The Two Towers’ will be highlighted [in the ads] to give the film its own identity.” Besides the grosses.

3 Don’t Be Distracted by Current Events.

Robert Altman observed recently that Hollywood has given terrorists inspiration through its models of entertaining conflagration and mayhem. But that’s hardly reason enough for Paramount to be done with Tom Clancy’s serial CIA superman Jack Ryan, who in May will battle a terrorist plot to blow up the Super Bowl with a nuclear bomb in “The Sum of All Fears.” In what sounds like a homage to the first Super Bowl as Apocalypse film, 1977’s “Black Sunday,” this one is directed by Phil Alden Robinson, that nice man who wrote “Field of Dreams.” Maybe audience members should be asked to show passport IDs.

4 Beware the Hannibal Lecter Prequel That Looks Like a Remake.

Before “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Hannibal,” there was “Manhunter,” Michael Mann’s loose 1986 adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novel “Red Dragon.” It unveiled the flesh-eating serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the odious Dollarhyde. Now comes “Red Dragon,” directed by “Rush Hour’s” Brett Ratner, which revisits the original book and carries the tag line, “How It All Began!” Yet Ratner insists, “This movie is not a remake of ‘Manhunter,’ ” which he believes is so different from the book that they had to change the title. Promising more insight into the origins and mythology of Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning personification of evil, Ratner vows to complete the Lecter trilogy and has also cast Edward Norton and Ralph Fiennes. “This will bring closure to the character,” the director says. “After this, there will never be another Hannibal Lecter movie.” Didn’t someone once say that about Jason?

5 Ignore the Critics.

As if anyone at Warner Bros. needed to be reminded, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” will roll out on schedule with the new fall line of SUVs, oblivious to the drubbing that “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” took as it broke box-office records. Daniel Radcliffe, as Harry, will enter his second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and start hearing voices in the walls that tell him his mission in life is to vaporize Kenneth Turan. Not really. If you are annoyed by issues brought up by critics (plot holes, sentimentality, sadism, artlessness), you might miss the sequels “Blade II,” “Halloween: Resurrection,” “Shanghai Knights,” “Mrs. Claus: Santa Claus 2” and John McTiernan’s remake of “Rollerball.”

6 Don’t Forget There Was a James Bond Before There Was an Austin Powers.

Some thought James Bond had become a self-parody of macho savoir-faire long before Mike Meyers created his fractured alter ego in “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” and “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” But MGM, Bond’s studio, evidently is not in on the joke. The studio cried copyright infringement over the third title of the New Line series, which we must call for the time being, “The Movie Previously Known as Goldmember,” due in July. Michael Caine joins the cast as Austin’s dad, a clever bit of self-referentiality acknowledging Caine’s history in ‘60s British spy flicks. “We’re doing a lot with the father-son thing,” says director Jay Roach. “We’re trying to connect all three films with this one.” Roach says he and Meyers are fans of the early Bond films and view their work as “a loving sendup.”

In November, “Bond 20” with Pierce Brosnan will remind the world what all that shtick is about.

7 It’s OK to Realize That Will Smith Is Not Muhammad Ali. The former Prince of Bel-Air won such acclaim for the verisimilitude of his recent performance as America’s greatest prizefighter, it’s easy (or tempting) to forget that five years ago he helped turn the science-fiction/action comedy “Men in Black” into a high return on investment, playing an NYPD detective recruited by special agent Tommy Lee Jones to fight intergalactic terrorists plotting to blow up the planet. Come July 3, he and Jones bring back their “cool suits and big guns” act in “Men in Black II,” whose tag line is, “Same Planet. New Scum.” Same director, Barry Sonnenfeld. Not the same marketing challenge. “It’s no longer an unbranded property,” says producer Walter Parkes.

8 Remember, Spock Left the Spacecraft in 1991 but Billy Crystal Is Still a Shrink to the Mob and There’s a New Mouse in Town.

Depending on who’s counting, “Star Trek: Nemesis” (due at Christmas) is the 10th feature film about the Starship Enterprise and the third with the new generation of characters, led by Patrick Stewart as a British and less emotional captain than William Shatner was in the 23rd century.

Billy Crystal does not make an appearance in the new “Star Trek” movie but he will be back with Robert DeNiro in “Analyze That,” a sequel to “Analyze This,” the Harold Ramis comedy about a Manhattan psychiatrist who counsels a Mafioso. In the animated film “Stuart Little 2,” the 6-inch hero with the voice of Michael J. Fox is on a quest to rescue a new girlfriend ( Melanie Griffith) from a villain (James Woods). Fox is a mouse, the other two are birds.

9 Even if It’s Not a Sequel, You Can Pretend It Is.

Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh has said that “Full Frontal,” starring David Duchovny and Julia Roberts and depicting seven people in Los Angeles who have little in common, is not a sequel to his career-making “sex, lies & videotape.” But Miramax, with its hand on the pulse of public taste, isn’t so sure it wants to relinquish the idea altogether, timing its Aug. 2 release to mark the 13th anniversary of the earlier film’s opening. The plots apparently are unrelated, but the studio says that they are “related in spirit.” Soderbergh says, “If I were to make ‘sex, lies & videotape’ today, it would look like ‘Full Frontal.’ ” This could be the ultimate proof of the power of sequels in the marketplace: The temptation to ascribe history to a movie strictly for business purposes.

10 Look for the Mummy’s Cousin and John Malkovich. In what is technically a prequel spinoff of a sequel, “The Scorpion King” enlarges a character introduced in last year’s “The Mummy Returns.” In that film, the Scorpion King was a reanimation of someone who had been asleep for 5,000 years until awakened by treasure hunters in Egypt in the 1920s. The prequel takes us back to his origins in the biblical city of Gomorrah, where an evil ruler is wiping out all of the nomadic peoples of the desert. World Wrestling Federation’s The Rock, cast as a heroic hired assassin, comes to their rescue. “It’s a cousin [to ‘Mummy’], certainly,” says producer Kevin Misher. “We felt there was a character that had been created that had its own story. I think the hope is that it spawns its own franchise.”

Different story, different actor, but the Patricia Highsmith character of Thomas Ripley, played by Matt Damon in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” returns in “Ripley’s Game.” This time the movie stars John Malkovich as Ripley. Not a franchise yet, but it’s only March.