Looking forward to the sequel: Does the potential of a sequel justify a substandard product?

[mjharper]

This is something I've noticed a bit recently. When Gozilla came out, a number of people suggested that it was worth seeing just so that we get a better sequel. And I hear the same things now about Watch_Dogs: it's an okay game, and we should support it so that Ubisoft improves on it next time around.

I'm really not sure I buy this. So Gozilla was 90 minutes of missed opportunities and boring cast with 30 minutes of awesome tacked on at the end. Where is the guarantee that the sequel will be better? What evidence is there that the next movie will have 30 minutes of dull and 90 minutes of incredible? If we support this movie in its current form, doesn't that send the message that we liked that form?

The same with Watch_Dogs. Everyone but the most rabid fanboy will agree that Ubisoft pulled some nonsense in the run up to release, and that however good the game is, it doesn't live up to its promises. Yet instead of a warning about pre-release hype, some people insist that the next game in the series will deliver on the potential that we were told would be in the first game.

Isn't it strange that disappointment in a product leads some people to become hyped for a sequel? Is it some kind of displaced cognitive dissonance? Instead of insisting, against all evidence, that the product is not up to snuff, you concede that point, and then project those wishes onto a product which does not exist and thus cannot refute them.

Or am I missing something?

 

[Flutterguy]

I seen Godzilla, and I'm not looking forward to a sequel. I am happy it was such a blockbuster hit though, since that makes another kaiju movie of Pacific Rim quality a greater possibility.

A lot of my freinds are of the mindset that if they spent money or time on something they have to consider it worthwhile. They'll say something like "Oh well Movie 43 wasn't meant to be a 'haha' comedy, there's a lot going on in the subtext" or "Why play that new MMO, I always just go back to WoW anyways". It's to the point where the slightest criticism of their choices is an entire overhaul of their life. Movie 43 sucked, you wasted 12$, stop defending it... oh wait did you have a question or something? >_>

 

[fezgod]

I don't think I've ever met somebody who watched a movie or played a videogame that they suspected would be mediocre just to get a sequel. If there are people like that, I'm going to hold them responsible for every single shitty franchise that has ever existed. When you spend money, you are already inspiring the creators (or more accurately their financial backers) to create another sequel. There's no point in spending more money in the hopes that the creators will do better the second time.

I don't think there's ever been a movie or videogame where the first entry was shitty but the sequel was good. Sequels can be better than the original, but that's only when the original was strong in the first place. Better to let a franchise crash and burn than throw money at it.

For the record I did enjoy Godzilla but I feel like a sequel is unnecessary since the 2nd movie will probably be more of the same.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

No, it never does. And I too was exactly thinking about Godzilla, or the RoboCop reboot for that matter. Crap adaptations looking forward to cashing in on another, better sequel.

 

[Vault101]

if the seauqal is better...yes

that is to day if installment 1 is so bad that you wont lose anything by skipping it then no...but if its half decent the seaquels reeeeaaly good then great! I'm of the veiw that if somethings half decent and definetly going to get better you might as well...enjoy season 1 of TNG for what it is

but then if its one averge thing followed by another average thing then youve just got too average things...and thats just average

on the slip side I think the lack of seauqel where theres clearly meant to be one devaules the original so

if Alien had no seaquel that would have been cool

if the original Mass Effect had no seauqel that wouldn't have been cool

 

[Tahaneira]

If it has the potential to be better than it was, I look forward to a sequel.

If the sequel doesn't improve anything (or makes it worse) then it's wasted its chance.

 

[Bertylicious]

I think it comes down to the idealogical integrity of the original effort. If we believe that's sound then we can hope that the technical weaknesses will be addressed in the future iteration.

There's also the denial aspect; that the horrible piece of crap we endured wasn't a total waste of time.

 

[sXeth]

Well there's the optimistic side of:
Hey some good stuffs in here, maybe they'll refine it and improve.

The pessimistic side is:
They'll see their bucket of cash and just churn out the same thing without improvement, or marginal tweaks at best.

Lets do examples!
-Super Mario Bros 3 certainly improved on Super Mario 1.
-Assassin's Creed 2 improved on Assassin's Creed 1, though it also added some amount of unnecessary elements that continue to persist in the series (and had a massively weak 3rd act.) Then they kind of slogged for multiple games, with the aforementioned elements really helping to drag 3 down.
-Most people seem pretty attached to Half Life 2 being an improvement (Personally I thought it lost all the atmosphere that made the first one (or well, most of it, the end was terrible) decent)
-Call of Duty improved, to a point. Then it started really not doing much of interest with its gameplay, and the story has devolved into an afterthought with occasional tech demos.
-WWE games over the last decade have just became a festering semi-animate corpse of reused everything with occasional repaints and roster switches (Sports games in general, I'm told, but that was the main ones I played).
-Baldur's Gate?
-Neverwinter Nights 2 did better with its singleplayer story (eventually anyway), but kind of murdered the potential community by making the toolset much less user-friendly and more technical.
-Warcraft 2 is prettymuch definitively better then Warcraft. 3's a tossup depending how much you enjoyed ships, and how much you liked the many many many Starcraft elements it borrowed)