10 Movie Prequels We Want To See

Image via Complex Original

By the looks of its first trailer and subsequent commercials, The Thing (opening in theaters tomorrow) seems like nothing more than an obvious remake of director John Carpenter’s sci-fi/horror masterpiece of the same title. The original, starring a badass Kurt Russell as one of several men fighting against an alien presence that emulates human hosts, was itself a loose remake of the 1951 classic The Thing From Another World, though Carpenter’s film honors the original novella, John W. Campbell Jr.’s Who Goes There? more closely than it does Howard Hawks’ '51 flick. But all of that is to say that the proposition of yet another Thing rehash is enough to shatter the hearts of any monster movie purist.

Thankfully, though, the new version, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton (Warrior), is in fact a prequel, portraying the events that led up to Carpenter’s opening shot of the dog fleeing from the Antarctic research facility as the Norwegian helicopter’s sniper fires bullets at the pooch. And, surprisingly, it’s one of Hollywood’s better re-visitation ideas in a long time, a slick way of introducing unaware modern-day audiences to Carpenter’s gem and, possibly, giving the science fiction genre a new fan-pleaser.

As alien lovers will see this weekend, however, The Thing ignores the 1982 film’s impeccable use of practical effects and spoils the fun with distracting CGI—it’s not an awful movie, but it’s unquestionably a missed opportunity. On the positive side, though, it did inspire us to think about other before-the-original cinematic possibilities that we’d gladly buy tickets for, a.k.a. The 10 Movie Prequels We Want To See.

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Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

10. The story of One-Eyed Willie, The Goonies (1985)

In the almighty ’80s baby classic The Goonies, One-Eyed Willie’s treasure is the Holy Grail. Pre-teen Mikey Walsh (Sean Astin) becomes obsessed with the local legend of Willie’s loot after he finds a map in his parents’ attic; Mikey’s adventures with his ragtag group of nerdy friends lead him to Willie’s ship’s underground grave, where the now-skeletal pirate’s diamonds, rubies, and other pieces of booty are waiting to be taken.

Anyone who had half an imagination while growing up as a Goonies fan knows the story of One-Eyed Willie, also respectfully acknowledged as the “First Goonie” by Mikey. But we don’t know much about the old pirate’s death, or even how he lived. Was he a ruthless swashbuckler? A wench-banging lothario? A One-Eyed Willie “biopic” would, at the very least, fill in some blanks.

9. The first years of contact with the “prawns,” District 9 (2009)

Alien invasion movies typically have insidious agendas. Tapping into the natural fear of the unknown, science fiction filmmakers constantly regurgitate the same concept over and over again: The extra-terrestrials show up on Earth, blow shit up, and then try to eradicate all of mankind. In 2009, though, first-time writer-director, and South Africa native, Neill Blomkamp used an Apartheid allegory to present a new breed of space invaders, ones that are actually the victims, not the assailants.

District 9, the Academy Award-nominated and low-budget hit, kicked off 28 years after the aliens had landed in Johannesburg, showing how the South African government threw all of the “prawns” into an enclosed camp. Oppressed and mistreated, the aliens eventually lash out against evil soldiers, and Blomkamp’s sure-handed action sequences and vibrant energy give District 9’s violent final act some real punch.

Yet we’re still fascinated with the idea of peaceful aliens suffering at the hands of cruel, unwelcoming humans, and what that’d say about the human condition. A prequel set in 1982 depicting the prawns’ arrival and the first days of corralling them all into the camps could be the anti-alien-invasion movie that Hollywood seems too afraid to make.

8. The war on Cybertron, Transformers (2007)

This past summer’s Transformers: Dark Of The Moon followed the old horror movie formula of upping the ante from previous films, ending with a nearly hour-long action extravaganza set in a desolate Chicago. Crammed with the series’ best effects and tightest CGI robot fight choreography, the third Transformers installment’s finale did what the preceding 90 minutes failed to do: It put the bland characters (played by uninterested actors) off the side and concentrated on pure spectacle.

Which, really, should have been the approach for the entire franchise. We’re appreciative that Michael Bay introduced us to both Megan Fox and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, but ushering in the stardom of one Shia LaBeouf is something we could’ve done without. Besides, the only reason people go to see the Transformers movies is for the cool FX.

Bay and LaBeouf have both stated that Dark Of The Moon was their “last” time with the Autobots and the Decepticons (most likely a crock of shit), but you know Hollywood isn’t ready to stop counting the box office dollars. So why not avoid casting calls altogether and take the story back to the pre-LaBeouf era, when Optimus Prime and his squad battled it out with Megatron’s team on Cybertron? It’s not like Sam Witwicky was in any of the cartoons we all loved as kids.

7. The first 27 days of the infection, 28 Days Later… (2002)

The superiority of director Danny Boyle’s lo-fi zombie flick 28 Days Later… should be understood at this point. One of the best horror films of the 10 ten years, Boyle’s intimate heart-stopper opens with a brief prologue in which animal rights activists free an infected chimp from its cage and unintentionally launch a viral epidemic that turns nearly all of England’s population into mad, enraged, lightning-fast ghouls.

Immediately following the prologue, 28 Days Later… picks up four weeks into the horror; what transpires from there is constantly visceral and emotional, but also somewhat disappointingly light on actual zombies. And when we do see the “infected,” Boyle’s kinetic edits and camerawork offer mostly glimpses of the new-age zombies. Just imagine how insane an entire film’s worth of infected attacks, uncontrollable mayhem, and citizen desperation would be—it’d be a lot like the relentlessly brutal opening scene of the sequel, 28 Weeks Later, only a solid 90 minutes longer.

6. The early days of Manhattan’s imprisonment, Escape From New York (1981)

Whether you’re a legitimate New Yorker or you’ve only visited the Big Apple a few times, it’s a scenario that shouldn’t require much explanation to drive home the craziness: You walk out of some Manhattan high-rise building and into a crowded street packed with business-suited workers, college students, and other walkers. Suddenly, helicopters land in the middle of the street and tanks barrel through taxi cabs and regular cars. Shots are fired into the air as military men shout through bullhorns that no one can leave the city, because it’s officially being closed off from the rest of the world—a city-wide prison that’s sanctioned by the government.

Bloody riots would be the least of your problems. That, more or less, is what presumably happens before John Carpenter’s nihilistic, dystopian action flick Escape From New York begins. Manhattan has been reframed as a massive jail, meant to prevent any further crime in the not-so-distant future. We’d probably lose Kurt Russell’s deservedly iconic Snake Plissken, but the idea of a pre-lockdown take on Carpenter’s seedy “City That Never Sleeps” sounds like material ripe with tragic drama.

5. The vile life of Emeric Belasco, The Legend Of Hell House (1973)

The most demonic straight-horror novel in his bibliography, game-changing genre author Richard Matheson’s 1971 book Hell House is a haunted residence story with a plentiful amount of sadistic bite. The British film adaptation, released two years after the novel debuted, follows the plot closely: a doctor working in parapsychology, his wife, and two mediums pack their bags and settle into the supposedly ghost-filled home of the late Emeric Belasco.

Belasco, as Matheson writes the character, inherited millions of dollars from his deceased parents and used the cash to throw lavish, upscale parties; starting off innocently enough, Belasco’s shindigs gradually became more and more sinister, lasting for months at a time and inviting guests to indulge in sadism, cannibalism, orgies, copious amounts of drugs, and casual homicide. Sure puts those frat parties with the fat chicks stripping for no good reason to shame.

As The Legend Of Hell House displays, Matheson attributes the crib’s ghastly occurrences (such as a possessed cat trying to rip one of the mediums apart) to Belasco’s undying spiritual malevolence. But nothing that Hell House shows is nearly half as sick and twisted as what’s dictated about Belasco’s life via expository dialogue. Tell us an Emeric Belasco movie doesn’t sound one that’d be tough to un-see. Call it Salo 2.0.

4. The story of the Elizabeth Dane ship, The Fog (1980)

Like any memorable ghost story, John Carpenter’s underrated The Fog, one of his best horror films, comes equipped with vengeful spirits. In this case, though, the vengeance is totally justified—it’s not some scorned lover bullshit.

The homicidal specters at the center of The Fog are a crew of lepers who were killed in 1880 aboard their pirate ship, the Elizabeth Dane, which housed large amounts of money. As the fictional history goes, the Dane’s men were manipulated into fatally crashing by the residents of Antonio Bay, the town in which the ship’s captain hoped to start his own leper colony. One hundred years after the hands-off murders, Antonio Bay gets engulfed by a thick fog harboring the Dane’s long deceased but now angrily undead riders.

The tale of the Elizabeth Dane comes during The Fog’s first scene, a campfire on a beach where an old seaman scares a group of bundled-up kids to death by menacingly delivering the historical account. The sequence is creepy enough relegated to actor John Houseman’s fine acting as the storyteller, but something tells us that the Elizabeth Dane is just what the pirate movie genre needs. As long as they keep Captain Jack Sparrow’s tired ass away from the set at all times.

3. Norman Bates’ days with “Mother,” Psycho (1960)

It’s rarely wise to unmask the boogeyman. Consider the recent Platinum Dunes revisions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—by giving Leatherface a sympathetic back-story, the filmmakers neutered one of horror’s greatest killers, making him weirdly vulnerable. Norman Bates, however, isn’t really a boogeyman; as he’s captured in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (an adaptation of Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel), Bates is a lonely psychotic with serious mommy issues, a character description that in and of itself is partially endearing. Until the sexy blonde gets hacked up inside one of the Bates Motel’s showers, the forceful signifier that the seemingly innocent Norman has much darker hobbies than simple taxidermy.

And it doesn’t get much darker than being a schizophrenic whose second personality is that of the mother he killed and now has stashed in the basement, seated on a rocking chair in all of her skeletal hideousness. The problem is, we learn about Norman’s awful childhood through the words of a psychiatrist when it’d be far more interesting to see the toxic mother/son dynamic for ourselves. Growing up as a single mama, Norma Bates waged emotional warfare on her little boy’s mind, telling him that sex is evil and coddling him so much that he freaks out when she begins spending time with a new lover; eventually, Norman kills them both.

Not exactly something you’d ever see on ABC Family, the Norman/Norma Bates story has the makings of a vicious, domestic horror movie—an extended look inside Carrie White’s house, but from a male perspective.

2. Quint’s nightmarish USS Indianapolis Experience, Jaws (1975)

There’s composer John Williams’ iconic score, and there’s the flesh-craving shark itself. And there’s also Steven Spielberg’s intelligent direction, concealing more than he actually shows for the majority of the film. But, when it comes down to it, the most memorable aspect of Jaws might very well be Quint’s (Robert Shaw) extended monologue on the boat, the one in which is recounts the horrifying USS Indianapolis incident, the cause of his hatred for sharks.

Placing the character into a real-life and oddly overlooked event, screenwriters Peter Benchley (also the original book’s author) and Carl Gottlieb provided the colorfully gruff Quint with the mother of all back-stories, and, fortunately, Spielberg was smart enough to let Shaw’s acting tell the tale, instead of distracting with a flashback sequence.

The story is both harrowing and chilling. As Quint tells it, he was serving in World War II and traveling aboard the Indianapolis, a U.S. Navy ship that was torpedoed by the Japanese in July 1945; once the ship sunk, nearly 900 soldiers braved the open water, floating around and trying to survive through hunger, fatigue, and, worst of all, the circle of sharks that engulfed them and ripped into many of the soldiers, one by one.

If 2003’s Open Water scared you, a Jaws prequel centered on young Quint’s USS Indianapolis days would most likely cause heart palpitations.

1. How Colonel Kurtz became a Cambodian demigod, Apocalypse Now (1979)

Francis Ford Coppola’s visceral and hellishly dark Vietnam War flick Apocalypse Now is inarguably a great film, and debatably a masterpiece. Based on Joseph Conrad’s classic novella Hearts Of Darkness, Coppola’s gruelingly intense picture follows a U.S. Captain (Martin Sheen) who’s assigned the job of traveling deep into Cambodian jungles to kill one Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), an American fighter who’s gone insane amidst the jungle’s primitive residents. Kurtz is treated like their new god, ruling the land from a high-perched nest and walking through crowds of bowing natives at any given time.

It comes as no surprise that Brando, working with Coppola during his prime, is mesmerizing as the deranged yet calmly soothing Kurtz, but his performance is limited strictly to Apocalypse Now’s final act. The filmmakers would need to hit a grand slam with the casting, but, if there’s an actor working today worthy enough to resurrect Kurtz, a film presenting the colonel’s initial entrance into the jungle and revealing how he swayed the tribesmen (and women) to kneel before him has the potential for devastating excellence. Our casting suggestion: a shaved-bald Philip Seymour Hoffman. End of story.