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I'm one of those people who watches my favorite movies over and over. I also listen to all the commentaries on DVDs and watch all the extras. And all last week I was in the mood to watch The Omen--so you can imagine my distress when I went to my shelf on Sunday and discovered I had somehow LOST MY COPY! I have no idea how I did it.
The Omen was an important movie in my life. Even though I was far too young to see it when it came out it loomed large in my imagination. Probably it was because I knew it featured an all-powerful kid who gave malevolent death glares and I very much aspired to be one of those as a child. (I succeeded only well enough to occasionally get yelled at to "get that awful look off my face.") The Omen was especially intriguing for my not understanding the title, which I pronounced with a short "o" so that it sounded like "The Almond" without the final d.
The many sequels to the movie can't match the first one--not just because they lack Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner and Billie Whitelaw all perfectly cast in their roles (not to mention Harvey Stephens as Damien whose only tiny flaw is delivering his few lines in a cockney accent), but because I think they fell victim to a common problem in sequels: trying to re-create the original by focusing on the wrong thing.
The guiding principle in The Omen is that while you're pretty sure Damien Thorne really is the anti-Christ, the director always left open the possibility that he wasn't. It's quite possible that nothing in the movie is the work of the devil, and that anyone who believes otherwise is either a nutcase or, in the case of the rock-solid Robert Thorne (what else could he be when he's played by Gregory Peck?), worn down by grief and stress. The kid himself, director Richard Donner points out, "never declares" for either side officially.
The need to leave open the possibility for coincidence meant a lot of unlikely but not impossible accidents--sure you don't expect somebody you know to be beheaded by a random piece of flying glass in the street, especially shortly after somebody else you know got skewered by a falling lightning rod, but it could happen!
The trouble is, you can only really sustain the "what is he?" question for one movie. By the first sequel we've all admitted he's the devil. What we really needed was a new thing to fear now that we knew that. He needed to live up to his potential in the first movie, and he doesn’t. Instead we just get more bizarre accidents which are now blatantly the work of Damien or his off-screen Demonic Dad. Damien becomes like any other serial killer in a franchise, like Michael Myers from Halloween or Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. The only "suspense" comes from what creative way he'll kill someone next--Hunting dog attack? Thin ice? Elevator turned guillotine? Falling piano?
It’s a whole lot of death for what in the end is no purpose at all. When Damien died and got to hell, he probably faced a lot of lectures about how he spent his life on earth. ("God's kid started off in a manger and look at all the things he did—how come my kid had to be the slacker?") The franchise drags out the story without ever moving forward, so that Damien really isn’t any closer to taking over the world at 32 as he was at five.
But still, he was great when he was five.
The Omen was an important movie in my life. Even though I was far too young to see it when it came out it loomed large in my imagination. Probably it was because I knew it featured an all-powerful kid who gave malevolent death glares and I very much aspired to be one of those as a child. (I succeeded only well enough to occasionally get yelled at to "get that awful look off my face.") The Omen was especially intriguing for my not understanding the title, which I pronounced with a short "o" so that it sounded like "The Almond" without the final d.
The many sequels to the movie can't match the first one--not just because they lack Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner and Billie Whitelaw all perfectly cast in their roles (not to mention Harvey Stephens as Damien whose only tiny flaw is delivering his few lines in a cockney accent), but because I think they fell victim to a common problem in sequels: trying to re-create the original by focusing on the wrong thing.
The guiding principle in The Omen is that while you're pretty sure Damien Thorne really is the anti-Christ, the director always left open the possibility that he wasn't. It's quite possible that nothing in the movie is the work of the devil, and that anyone who believes otherwise is either a nutcase or, in the case of the rock-solid Robert Thorne (what else could he be when he's played by Gregory Peck?), worn down by grief and stress. The kid himself, director Richard Donner points out, "never declares" for either side officially.
The need to leave open the possibility for coincidence meant a lot of unlikely but not impossible accidents--sure you don't expect somebody you know to be beheaded by a random piece of flying glass in the street, especially shortly after somebody else you know got skewered by a falling lightning rod, but it could happen!
The trouble is, you can only really sustain the "what is he?" question for one movie. By the first sequel we've all admitted he's the devil. What we really needed was a new thing to fear now that we knew that. He needed to live up to his potential in the first movie, and he doesn’t. Instead we just get more bizarre accidents which are now blatantly the work of Damien or his off-screen Demonic Dad. Damien becomes like any other serial killer in a franchise, like Michael Myers from Halloween or Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. The only "suspense" comes from what creative way he'll kill someone next--Hunting dog attack? Thin ice? Elevator turned guillotine? Falling piano?
It’s a whole lot of death for what in the end is no purpose at all. When Damien died and got to hell, he probably faced a lot of lectures about how he spent his life on earth. ("God's kid started off in a manger and look at all the things he did—how come my kid had to be the slacker?") The franchise drags out the story without ever moving forward, so that Damien really isn’t any closer to taking over the world at 32 as he was at five.
But still, he was great when he was five.
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That is almost never done now. Everything is given to us. No one ever has to interpret anything or come to a decision on their own. Even the news has slant, just in case we don't have the brain cells to properly condemn bad events.
I don't mind sequels, if they are created with a stand-alone ethic. I really hate sequels that just rehash everything that occurred in the last film. Most are like that, because the makers really just want easy money not a good product.
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I also agree on stand-alone sequels, because they're not always bad. Actually one series I would say really works that way are the Planet of the Apes movies because each one really has a different idea. None of them just re-hash the one before.
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