REVIEW: ‘Paranormal Activity 2′
OK, time for a little mental exercise.
Imagine if you will if, instead of getting “The Empire Strikes Back” as the sequel to “Star Wars”, we got something a little different. Instead of ice planets and swamp planets and asteroid fields and a climactic light saber duel, we got a bit of a prequel. In this prequel, we meet Luke’s brother, also a farm boy on a different planet. He comes to own a couple of droids who have secret plans to a new Imperial space station. He needs to get off the planet and return the plans to a member of a royal family, so he hooks up with a former Jedi and a roguish smuggler. They leave the planet, only to be captured on this space station. Later they rescue the member of the royal family, escape from the space station and later destroy it using the secret plans they were trying to return. The movie ends with Princess Leia’s ship being attacked by a Star Destroyer.
While I understand that one of the tricks of making a good sequel is to use some of the same elements that made the original successful, at some point you have to expand the world, give it depth, a life of its own and not just rehashing it.