With the allure of additional profits to be had, Hollywood
has been all too willing to torch high-quality brands as if with perfect
impunity. A case in point is the film, Inferno,
which followed The De Vinci Code and
Angels & Demons in the Robert
Langdon film series spanning ten years (2006-2016) based on novels by Dan
Brown.
Noticeably absent from Inferno
were any traces of theology, which had given the first film such narrative force,
are arguably even sustained the second film. On first seeing the title, Inferno, I expected the film to involve
the Christian concept of hell (hence Dante’s Inferno). L’Inferno, the
1911 European silent film, for example, is loosely based on Dante’s classic
text. The film was an international success, taking in more than $2 million in
the U.S. alone.[1] In
contrast, the 2016 film received generally negative reviews and did not do well
financially in the U.S. Rather than being about hell, or even religion, Inferno is
about climate change and over-population combined with biological warfare. The
link to religious symbolism is tenuous at best, so the justification for the
protagonist, Robert Langdon, is insufficient.
Film can indeed handle substantive theological issues. Films
such as Rosemary’s Baby, Agora, The Last
Temptation of Christ, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and The Devil’s are but
a few stellar examples—exemplary still because their respective producers did
not risk the brands by attempting to squeeze out more profits from a line of
diminishing sequels. In contrast, the reputation of The Exorcist was diminished by Exorcist
II: The Heretic and Dominion: Prequel
to the Exorcist; both films, justifiably receiving stinging reviews,
departed from the original storyline without bothering to be faithful to the
original.
Producing sequels until the marginal revenue approaches zero
is not a good business model for Hollywood. It is indeed possible for ensuing
scripts of sequels to burn, or at least tinge, the original even long after it
has been made into a film. Even from a business standpoint, the box-office flop
of a sequel can negatively impact sales of the original film because of the hit
to its reputation. Contradicting elements of the original story, such as
occurred in sequels to The Exorcist,
burn holes in the believability of the storyline itself. Was or was not the
African boy, Kokumo, possessed by the demon Pazuzu?
In short, too much of a good thing can be
counter-productive. If the reputation of a film’s “brand” means anything, it
should be protected rather than prostituted out. Rather than pushing for sequel
scripts, producers with one hit “under their belt” can better satisfy their
economic and personal-brand self-interests by looking for another unique
script. In the case of films with a theological dimension, scripts that engage
a viewership with substantive problems rather than superficial
protagonist-antagonist “drama” are the best bet.
[1] Antonella
Braida, "Dante's Inferno in the 1900s: From Drama to Film." In Antonella
Braida, Antonella and Luisa Calé, Dante
on View: The Reception of Dante in the Visual and Performing Arts (Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2007): 47-49.
