Is "The Godfather: Part II," the perfect sequel?
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I need you to trust me one last time. Those words are spoken by Ethan Matthew Hunt, better known as Tom Cruise, at the end of the trailer for Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning. The movie, which hits screens next May, is the eighth, and you guessed it, final installment in Cruise's Mission Impossible series. The fourth, that's an order. The franchise first appeared on the movie screens back in 1996.

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And he has appeared to have died no less than three times, as he did in Mission Impossible 2. But Ethan Hunt is not the only spy who keeps returning to theaters. I admire your courage, Mr... Trench. Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr... Bond. Bond.

James Bond. These spies who keep showing up in your screens, they are just the tip of the iceberg. Hollywood loves sequels. Movie critics? Not so much. Just listen to famed critic Roger Ebert giving a big thumbs down to Highlander 2, The Quickening. Our next movie is one of those works that we'll provide in the years to come

But bad reviews clearly have not deterred studios from making them and moviegoers from shelling out the money to see them. Consider this. The sequel has been a mainstay of the movie business for generations, but how many of them are actually good? Coming up, we talk about the movie that many agree is the gold standard when it comes to sequels. ♪

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Some sequels are pretty good, but many believe the perfect sequel came out 50 years ago this month. Of course, we are talking about Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather 2. Not only considered the greatest sequel of all time, it's also considered one of the greatest movies of all time. So why does Godfather 2 work when so many other sequels fall short?

And be our producer, Mark Rivers, who some might say is obsessed with movies, has been thinking a lot about that. Hey, Mark. Hey, Scott. Good to be with you. This is like a tricky question to ask, but Mark, tell me why Godfather 2 is such a good movie. Yeah, you know, like at this point... Four hours later. At this point, I feel like trying to talk about that in brief is like trying to talk about like, why is a Beethoven symphony good, right? It's like, where do you start and where do you end up, right? But I think...

It just, it touches every aspect of you that you want art to touch, right? Like it, it thrills you, you know, it moves you, it transports you to another place. You know, it's wonderful evocation of like an early 20th century New York, right? It has all these rich historical and cultural resonances that, you know, legion of scholars have written essays on. But at the same time, when you're watching the movie and, you know, Al Pacino with Michael Corleone gives his brother Fredo that kiss of death.

Or the dissolution of his marriage with Kay in Play Go Dan King. You're watching those great scenes, you're just thinking, like, damn, that's just a good movie. It was an abortion. An abortion, Michael!

I feel like the thing that it does that maybe is a through line for good sequels is it takes, and the original Godfather is already so good and so complex, but it takes that world and just zooms out and zooms out and zooms out and you learn so much more. It expands upon the world. It deepens the world. I think one of the things that a lot of sequels do

or a lot of bad sequels, even a lot of decent sequels do, is they look at their movies kind of like products to kind of be recycled or even more cynically, kind of like a roller coaster to take again. Yeah. You know, because you liked it the first time, you'll obviously love it if you just take it again. And Coppola, who is not a product maker, but he's an artist, you know, I think he takes what was kind of subtext in the first Godfather about this kind of like metaphor for the kind of robberies

of the American dream and the kind of corruption of kind of the American capitalist system. He takes the subtext and he makes it text. He takes the kind of moral rot of Michael Corleone, his arc, and he takes that and he kind of externalizes it and expands it outward and gives it global, you know, like not just national, but global ramifications. And he turns it into this real epic of Americana. I enlisted in the Marines. Why did you come to us?

What do you mean? I mean, Pop had to pull a lot of strings to get you deferment. I didn't ask for it. I didn't ask for a deferment. I didn't want it. Come on, come on. I'm not going to lie. Come on. Come on, hey. Sonny. Punk. Sonny. Sonny. Go on. Sit. So much of the conversation in Hollywood these days is about IP, intellectual property, kind of remaking what you have already. Or that dreaded C word, content.

So right now, just in the past month, we have seen Gladiator 2, Moana 2, and a prequel to The Lion King, which is out today, Mufasa, The Lion King. In case you didn't know who I was talking about, you know, we got to add that. I think I know who. Lion King. Yeah, as opposed to the other Mufasa from Disney. Right, right, right. The criticism, the...

the line is just like everybody seems to have run out of ideas. Is that what's going on? Is it just people trying to make money based on stuff that you already have in your head already? It seems like a real increase in sequels. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. You know, you think back to the year of Barbenheimer, you know, last year, where the success of these two movies that were not sequels, these were original works from distinctive artists. And people thought, well,

Was there a success, a sign of, well, we want less sequels. We want more original ideas. And if we just from the box office, that was not the case. If you look at the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2024, only one of those movies is not a sequel. Could you guess what movie that is? Is that Wicked? It is indeed Wicked. Which is, of course. Defying Gravity and everything. But based on... But still based on a very popular... Based on something that's been out there for 20 years. Still based on a very popular Broadway show. So I think it's not that Hollywood has run out of ideas. I think that Hollywood is just...

It is not putting its weight behind those original ideas. Lightning round. I've got my list here. What are some of your favorite sequels? My picks of some of my favorite sequels are pretty, I think might be pretty expected, but The Bourne Supremacy, which turned 20 years old this year and kind of influenced the next, I think, 10 years of films from 2004 to 2014. If you look at the first movie, The Bourne Identity, you know, the central question of that movie was, who am I? Right. You know, this guy, this guy doesn't have no idea who he is. And all the journey's about finding out who this guy is. And

In the second movie, the question kind of veers from a kind of existential question to a moral question, where it's like, what have I done? And have the things that I've done, do that dictate whether I'm a good or bad person? And what do you want with me? Berlin. Have you forgotten what happened in Berlin? You killed two people, Bourne. You killed two people.

And that's what the supremacy is all about. And then that movie is such a stylistic achievement. If you look at action movies before and after Born Supremacy, you can see the difference. Like the action is more propulsive. You can kind of like feel every body blow and feel every car crash in your chest. Can I tell you something, man? Please do. Obviously, Power Strikes Back.

Classic. Aliens, those two are always on the list. I would also add Terminator 2, The Dark Knight, and Star Trek, Wrath of Khan. So many. Wrath of Khan, I think, just got entered into the National Film Registry this week. It's so good. And the first Star Trek movie was like, it's okay. And these are all examples of movies that are doing something different from the predecessor. Like Terminator 1, that was almost like a backdoor horror.

horror movie right like the terminator was like a slasher villain and that's all he does that's all he does in terminator 2 they make him the protagonist and it becomes more of kind of an action action where he has to defend young john connor against this more advanced robot right how long do you live i mean last whatever 120 years with my existing power cell can you learn stuff that you haven't been programmed with so you can be you know more human and not such a dork all the time

Aliens in comparison to Alien. Alien was this like haunted house in space kind of thriller, right? And James Cameron, also director of Terminator 2, James Cameron says, let's just take that and let's throw that away. Not throw it away, but let's revamp it and let's make it instead this kind of action military, you know, almost like Vietnam allegory type of thriller. You know, you can appreciate Aliens and Alien as two very distinctive achievements. It's not a recycling. It's not a rehash. They're different experiences. Yeah.

That's Mark Rivers, a producer for All Things Considered, who sometimes comes in and talks to us about movies. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Scott. This episode was produced by Brianna Scott and Mark Rivers. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. Thank you to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. You can learn more at plus.npr.org.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.

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