Sequels

[Oyvind J. Karstad]

I think Toy Story 2 was excellent, *at least* as good as the first movie.
  (BTW, I wouldn't call Toy Story and A Bug's Life Disney movies.
  They're made by the independent company Pixar.)
When I think about it, the reason that this sequel did work,
could be that both movies start and end with the same conditions.
In fact, the "goal" of each movie is to get back to these "conditions", to get home.
This is just like it is in Disney Comics (unlike in some super hero comics),
where each independent story have the same starting point.
This is different from the Cinderella sequel,
where they have to continue with the already finished story,
because of the significant changes from the start to the end of original movie.
The alternative to this would be to start the Cinderella sequel 
exactly the same way as the original, and let something else happen this time.

You can find these to types of sequels in "real" movies as well.
The Police School, Home Alone and Indiana Jones represent the "Toy Story-type",
with several (mainly) independent stories.
Star Wars, Jurrassic Park and, of course, Harry Potter represent the "Cinderella-type",
with one underlying continuing story.
I don't say that one type works, and the other doesn't.
But if a movie is bad, I think it can make it even worse if it is, or should be,
a "Cinderella-type" movie (I'm thinking about Jurrassic Park III).

Some Don Rosa stories actually represent the "Cinderella-type",
since they continue on a storyline from a finished story.
Actually, most of them combine the two types,
like we can see in a lot of TV-series:
There is a lot of seperate "adventures", but there is also a story "behind",
running through several episodes, or even the whole series.
This is what we call continuity in our discussions,
although it demands that all significant changes at the end of the stories,
are declared invalid as soon as a new story begins.
I think that this balance between the two types of "sequels",
is what makes me like Don's stories so much.

Oyvind J. Karstad