Legacyquels Are Getting Old

Spoilers ahead for "The Matrix Revolutions," "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," "The Mandalorian," and "Spider-man: No Way Home."

I watched "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" recently, and I was struck by how it fits so perfectly into a pattern that other films from older franchises have fallen into lately.  I like the term "legacyquel" that Matt Singer used to describe "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," which reboots a franchise while soaking in the nostalgia for that franchise, via numerous callbacks, cameos, and references.  2021 was full of these, including "The Matrix Revolutions," "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," "Space Jam 2," "Halloween Kills," "Coming 2 America," "Candyman," and "Spider-man: No Way Home."  2022 already gave us another "Scream," and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and coming up is "Top Gun: Maverick."

I'm still sorting out my feelings about "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" - it's not a bad movie, but it's also not a good one.  The first hour with McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard digging up their deceased grandpa Egon's old ghostbusting equipment and having themselves a new adventure is fun.  It's an Amblin film more than anything else, up until it decides to replay the third act of the original "Ghostbusters," capped off with an awkward reunion of the original cast.  The fact that Harold Ramis was dead couldn't save him from having to participate, via CGI doppelganger.  Watching a very tired-looking Bill Murray snark at Gozer the Gozerian, all I could think was that this was at least twenty years too late for the "Ghostbusters 3" that the fans wanted.  Audiences seemed receptive to the film anyway, but I couldn't get past that shameless tearjerker finale that overshadowed everything else.

The list of films and series that have elicited similar responses from me keeps getting longer.  I thought that Luke Skywalker's appearance at the end of the last season of "The Mandalorian" bothered me so much because the effects technology wasn't good enough to get across Uncanny Valley, but the truth is really that his presence was a huge distraction and deus ex machina that disrupted the rest of that show.  The "Star Wars" franchise has been a terrible repeat offender here, especially J.J. Abrams' contributions, which just stacked callbacks upon callbacks while neglecting its major characters and storylines.  "Bill & Ted Face the Music" had some good ideas, but watching Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter trade surfer bro shtick in their fifties often felt more depressing than funny.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton finally reunited for "Terminator: Dark Fate," and got to be properly badass for about two scenes apiece before it sunk in that neither of them were in the physical shape to be in this kind of movie anymore.  

Maybe it's because I'm getting old, but watching these older actors return to the genre franchises of my childhood has rarely paid off as well as the filmmakers think it will, because so many of the projects are just so badly conceived.  They claim to want to give the fans what they want, but usually give the fans what they wanted when they were kids - and often far, far too late.  At this point I don't feel any excitement for another "Indiana Jones" film because the last time Harrison Ford put on the fedora, he was already pretty creaky, and Spielberg was clearly out of ideas.  The few I have liked, including "Blade Runner 2049" and "Creed," have taken pains to keep their older actors in more age-appropriate roles and lean on thematic connections instead of recreating elements of the original films.  An interesting recent case has been "The Matrix Resurrections," which was self-aware about its status as a legacyquel to the extent that this became a part of the plot.  I think it did better than most, doubling down on the romantic relationship between the leads, and deemphasizing the bullet ballet that the original "Matrix" was known for.  Neo never even fires a gun in any of the action scenes.                 

A new variation, as embodied by "Spider-man: No Way Home" is the legacyquel crossover.  Those franchises that have seen multiple reboots can now pull their cameos and callbacks from multiple versions of any given set of characters, resulting in three different Spider-men teaming up to face foes from all of their respective universes and timelines.  It's still technically a legacyquel, because Tom Holland's Peter Parker finally experiences the level of tragedy that has largely driven the other versions of the character.  However, the emphasis is definitely on the crossover, and the fun of having Holland, Tobey Maguire, and Andrew Garfield getting to interact and play off of each other for an hour of screentime.  Maguire, fortunately, isn't too old to get back in the suit, and it helps that Disney and Sony were able to corral so many supporting players to take part.  A lot of its success was also due to good timing and unusual circumstances that will be hard to duplicate.

Legacyquels tend to make money, so we'll be seeing plenty of them for the foreseeable future. Filmmakers' attentions have been shifting to newer material, and "The Matrix Resurrections" and "No Way Home" seem to be signaling that we'll be seeing more variations on the concept.  I've remarked before that legacyquels aren't new - I've found a few from as early as the '80s - but I hope to see fewer of them going forward.  We're currently being deluged with so much nostalgia that I'm starting to become averse to any familiar property making a reappearance.  Some are a good time, but mostly they've just been reminding me, over and over, of the merciless passage of time and how none of us are getting any younger.    

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