Naming Nonsense | What is a Dequel?
This year, I watched many sequels, prequels, and remakes of various horror movies and I noticed a particular pattern concerning naming conventions that was really annoying me.
Films with more than one entry in the franchise often commit a sin or two when it comes to naming conventions. Typically, a sequel will just add a number after the title or a Part 2. There’s nothing offensive about that. There’s nothing wrong with adding a 3 to the third entry either. You’ll notice, however, that most film franchises don’t exceed the number 3 in their title because of the perception that anything more than two sequels is a sign that the quality is dropping off. Sometimes, it’s rightfully so. For example, there’s Jaws, then Jaws 2, then Jaws 3 (or Jaws 3-D as it’s sometimes called), and then there’s Jaws: The Revenge. The quality of that franchise with each entry, when viewed on a graph, mimics that of a plane crash. The lame subtitle did not do anything to restore the series to the quality of the original, but at least it was the last entry if you don’t count all the other shark movies that have copied Jaws.
Having a lame subtitle instead of just a simple number is one thing. I’ve always been more annoyed by the trimming or adding to the original film’s title or the weird morphing into something else entirely. For example, Rocky just progressed in numerical order to Rocky V like normal and with no subtitles; no problem there. Then, it became Rocky Balboa and now it’s Creed to pass the torch onto a younger actor and keep the franchise alive. The First Blood (Rambo) franchise is even worse and gets off track within the first three movies. It went from First Blood to Rambo: First Blood Part II, to Rambo III. Then it ditches the numbers with the fourth entry, Rambo, and now the latest film comes full circle to Rambo: Last Blood. Predator immediately was followed by Predator 2, like normal. But then they had to try to do the thing in the Alien franchise and call the third film Predators. Then, they did the thing I really don’t care for and called the fourth film The Predator. This then brings up the addition or removal of the word “The” from a title. Final Destination and The Final Destination are two different movies, as are Predator and The Predator, or Evil Dead and The Evil Dead. I’m frankly surprised that they haven’t made a movie called The Jaws yet.
All of those little naming annoyances aside, there has been this new shift in naming conventions that has really gotten under my skin. It’s the merging of sequels and prequels with remakes. It’s when Hollywood wants to have its cake and eat it too. Up until this point, if you were making a sequel or a prequel, you would have a number or a subtitle to differentiate it from an original. If you were doing a remake, you would use the same title or just tweak it a little bit using the word “the”, as I mentioned with Evil Dead vs The Evil Dead. Again, I’m not a fan of this naming convention, but at least it made sense. However, there then came the advent of the new naming technique in which studios would use the title of an original as though it were a remake, but still have it tied to the first film’s story in a way that made it a prequel or sequel. This is something that I’ve decided to start calling “Dequels.”
The first instance in which I recall this happening was in 2011 with The Thing. The events of 2011’s The Thing lead up to those of the 1982 film by Carpenter, making it a prequel. Yet, it has the same name. Now, when referring to the 1982 film, I often say “John Carpenter’s The Thing” to differentiate it from the 2011 film, while referring to the original film as The Thing from Another World. All that being said, Carpenter’s name may appear on the title card of the film as it does in Halloween, but it is still recognized as just The Thing.
Speaking of Halloween, this is a franchise with its share of confusing naming conventions. Obviously, it has its share of the sequel naming issues with all the subtitles up to Resurrection. However, things have gotten worse thanks to the unfortunate remake by Rob Zombie, which had its own sequel Halloween II (so there are two Halloween II movies), and the more recent sequel trilogy that started in 2018. When you mention Halloween, you could be referring to the original, you could be referring to the 2002 remake by Rob Zombie, or you could be referring to the 2018 movie that retcons every Halloween film other than the original and continues the story from where the first left off. This means the whole thing about Michael Myers having a desire to kill everyone related to him is thrown out the window because Lori Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is changed back to being just a traumatized babysitter instead of his sister. Maybe the fact that they were changing so much about the ‘lore’ of Halloween made them feel justified in using the name for what is essentially a sequel, but it just makes things confusing.
The same technique was used for Candyman from 2021. The story from the original Candyman film of the 1990s is continued in the 2021 sequel of the same name. Considering there are far fewer Candyman movies than Halloween, it’s even more absurd to not just give it a subtitle. But we know the reason why film companies are doing this, don’t we? It’s all about the $$$$
Why would a film company willingly reuse a title for a known property when they’re making a sequel or prequel as opposed to a remake? First, understand what the point of a remake is these days. While there have been the occasional exceptions in which a remake is made with good intentions, the primary reason a remake is produced is to get new audiences interested in a franchise that has a recognizable name. John Carpenter said it himself in a panel (in this funny clip below) where he points out that you have a built-in audience when you remake something, so it’s a somewhat safe bet. If you don’t pull in too many new fans, you still can rely on the existing fans to financially support it at the box office to make up for some of the damage. If it’s a success, you have a revitalized franchise that is able to continue to grow and make even more money.
So it’s all about making a ton of money off a recognizable name, obviously. Why then do a new story in the form of a prequel or sequel instead of a remake? I have my theories, and a lot of it is tied to the almighty power of nostalgia. Obviously, remakes play into nostalgia already, but there’s a slight difference. I believe there is a perception that the story as a continuation or expansion upon the events of the original slightly absolves it in ways that remakes are not. If you make a remake, it’s a one-to-one comparison to the original because of the fact that it’s retelling the story. Whereas, when you say it’s telling a different story, if it fails, it (somehow) has less of a negative public impact. Obviously, a bad movie is still a bad movie, but I definitely think that people are more forgiving of a bad sequel as opposed to a bad remake. Look at Robocop, for instance. I heard lots of people say that the Robocop remake killed the franchise, as though Robocop 3 hadn’t already done that.
There’s another, more obvious reason why you would do a sequel over a remake, and this applies to Halloween in particular. By making a sequel over a remake, you get the ability to reuse the same actors as the same characters. Why does this matter? Well, as we’ve seen from Hollywood over the years, they’ve become more and more reliant on the power of nostalgia to make up for their lack of creativity and writing ability. If you can continue the adventure of the main character that was popular with the same identifiable actor who played them, then you have the opportunity to pull in the optimistic fans who aren’t as pessimistic as I am. Jamie Lee Curtis returning to the Halloween franchise once again was a big deal, just like Linda Hamilton coming back to Terminator with Terminator: Dark Fate, and just like Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss coming back for another Matrix sequel. While not all of these movies fit the “dequel” category, they all have something in common: they’re not good movies. This, of course, brings up the bigger conversation of why films are terrible today, but I’ve rambled enough.
The point of this article is to simply suggest we use a term to identify the unnecessary additions to established franchises that use a stupid naming convention. If it’s a prequel or a sequel and it’s using the same name as the original film, call it a dequel because the D is for dumb.
