Prepare yourself for the attack of the colons. A week ago, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones came to a cinema near you, and in 2014 you can look forward to Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 300: Rise of an Empire, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Nativity 3: Dude, Where's My Donkey?, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The Hobbit: There and Back Again – all of them episodes in ongoing franchises, and all of them with a colon in the middle of the title.
If that weren't dizzying enough, there are three more films released in January alone that use a colon, but which aren't part of a series. Rest assured, if you see Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Exposed: Beyond Burlesque or August: Osage County, you don't have to worry that you've missed Mandela: Short Walk To Captivity, Exposed: Burlesque, or August: Osage Town. But the other films listed above are all either sequels, prequels or, in the case of X-Men: Days of Future Past, a time-hopping hybrid of a sequel and a sequel to a prequel. And, Nativity 3 aside, none of them has a plain old number to denote where it stands in the series, let alone a mighty Roman numeral, as favoured by Rocky and Superman. Hollywood blockbusters are undergoing colonic irrigation, you might say. But the current policy of giving films both a title and a subtitle isn't just a question of fashion. What the colons signify is that studios are more fixated on sequels than ever. These days, lucrative franchises are never laid to rest.
If that weren't dizzying enough, there are three more films released in January alone that use a colon, but which aren't part of a series. Rest assured, if you see Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Exposed: Beyond Burlesque or August: Osage County, you don't have to worry that you've missed Mandela: Short Walk To Captivity, Exposed: Burlesque, or August: Osage Town. But the other films listed above are all either sequels, prequels or, in the case of X-Men: Days of Future Past, a time-hopping hybrid of a sequel and a sequel to a prequel. And, Nativity 3 aside, none of them has a plain old number to denote where it stands in the series, let alone a mighty Roman numeral, as favoured by Rocky and Superman. Hollywood blockbusters are undergoing colonic irrigation, you might say. But the current policy of giving films both a title and a subtitle isn't just a question of fashion. What the colons signify is that studios are more fixated on sequels than ever. These days, lucrative franchises are never laid to rest.
Besides, the colonic, non-numeric approach makes matters simpler in all sorts of ways. If you're not sure whether your film is the fourth chapter of a continuing narrative, or the opening episode of a new one, why not dispense with numbers and call it Terminator Salvation or X-Men: First Class? If you can't decide whether your film is a sequel to its iffy predecessor or a starting-from-scratch relaunch, fudge the issue by calling it Punisher: War Zone or Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Crucially, if you've got a recognisable name on one side of the colon and a dramatic subtitle on the other, you've got the holy grail of movie marketing: a property that sounds both comfortingly familiar and thrillingly novel.
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