Two be? More likely not two be.
Anyone who’s perused the movie listings lately can see that, when it comes to sequels, numerals have gone the way of the 2 Live Crew.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, studios were content to slap a “2” or “3” on a follow-up — or in the case of “Friday the 13th,” an 8 — but nowadays, a sequel is more often tagged with a descriptive phrase.
Case in point, “Thor: The Dark World.” Or the upcoming “The Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug,” “Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones” or “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”
Whoever invented the colon better be getting something on the back end.
So what happened? Are Americans really so bad at math (yes) that they’ve become numerophobic (no)?
Turns out, it’s mostly down to marketing.
“You want the branding of the previous film, while at the same time, you want to feel that it’s a bit original,” says Ashok Amritraj, chairman and CEO of Hyde Park Entertainment Group. “So you have a title that’s identifiable and you add a phrase at the end.”
The change has been driven by audience expectations. Savvier crowds don’t simply want to be told it’s “Thor 2.” That moniker sounds derivative and could leave them asking, “Why do I need to see this one when I saw the first one?”
A more dramatic or descriptive title conveys a bit more information. For the second “Ghost Rider” film, which Amritraj produced, there were talks about just putting a numeral on the end, and calling it a day. Instead, the team settled on the more ominous “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.”
“Audiences today like hearing a bit more specificity as far as what they’re going to see,” he says. “I just was on a marketing conversation, and we were talking about the fact that people only pay attention to a movie two to three days before it opens, and they want to know exactly what they will see.”
In that case, expect to see “Star Wars: We Really Hope You Like It, But Even If You Don’t and It’s Terrible Like the Prequels, We’ll Make Tons of Cash. Also, No Jar Jar,” coming in 2015.