Screen Crush film critic Matt Singer coined the term legacyquel in 2015 as the Star Wars franchise returned to the movies with The Force Awakens. It refers to the kind of sequel that rekindles love for an older film or franchise that hasn’t been around for a while. Singer characterizes these films by their introduction of new characters alongside legacy counterparts. Often, these movies have a reverential attitude towards the elder characters and events. “You’re the guy who…” the new characters say, regaling events from past films. “I used to be,” our hero replies, and we get chills as the cinema dies a little bit more.
The years have been kind to Singer’s original article. As developing new ideas feels unhip, dull, and risky to higher-ups, legacyquel movies have gained prevalence. The way of the future is the past. According to executives, where we’re going, we actually do need the roads of a former film. For this reason, a generation is beginning to think that cinema is an old-fashioned notion. Why wouldn’t they when most of their generation’s pop culture is a reheated hash from years past?
Surprisingly to many, these kinds of films have been around longer than the 2010s. Martin Scorsese’s 1986 movie The Color of Money is often miscited as the category’s originator. In that film, Paul Newman returns as his character from The Hustler (1961) to teach Tom Cruise’s hot shot to shoot pool. Year’s later reverential sequel? Check. Old mentor figure teaches a new character a thing or two? Check. Nostalgic references to the events of the previous film? Also, check. However, the horror genre may have the legacyquel patent, whether you draw the line at the “just like the original” play of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) or even earlier with Abbot and Costello’s comedic takes on legacy monster flicks. Then there are strange early one-offs like Return to Oz (1985), which simply follow the original movie’s source material’s sequel but cash in on the movie’s nostalgia.
That was all well on occasion years ago, but now our cinemas are clogged with reminiscent films. We’ve had an influx of so many more of these pictures that they’ve become a dominant part of the culture. In just this decade, we’ve had Bill and Ted Face the Music, Candyman (2021), A Christmas Story Christmas, Clerks III, Coming 2 America, Disenchanted, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Hocus Pocus 2, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Matrix Resurrections, Scream (2022), Space Jam: A New Legacy, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), Top Gun: Maverick, and surely many more. Then, in superhero media, especially, there’s the typical sequel treated like a Legacyquel, like Spider-Man: No Way Home or Logan.
Enough already! If I hear another slow piano version of a John Williams, Alan Silvestri, or Danny Elfman theme, I’m going to lose it! All this reverence, nostalgia, and fanbait is a baby food-like mush. Sure, legacyquel movies can be enjoyed on occasion. But its dominance doesn’t compose a diet with the future of cinema in mind. Memory plays an important role in our experience of these movies. Sitting in the theater, we are comforted with childhood recollections of fiction. Riding the Falcon with Han Solo or hearing a meta-joke as a character runs from a ghostface mask triggers a primal “Hey, I know that!” response. They serve a similar function to Disney’s dreadful live-action remake initiative by reminding us of what our younger days were like. What happens when we no longer have movies to remember that aren’t movies that remember something else?
The legacy sequel in our culture represents a reversion to what felt comfortable, both for movie studios and audiences. This may seem like old news. Hollywood, to many eyes, has been going down this path towards sequel-based, comfort-food cinema since the ’80s. But like the rest of culture, it accelerates forward faster because of the internet. In our modern, convenient lifestyles, we don’t ever have to adventure, discover, or make an effort at all to find something curated for us. Taking a chance on a movie you may not like becomes a rarer risk, so the familiar is the best option. Why would a typical couch sitter try something new when a YouTube algorithm will find something based on what they already enjoy?
Modern viewers make no difference between mediums as long as they get their entertainment fix. That flattening of form into “content” makes competition for films stiffer. When filmmakers and studios look at the market today, they see a battlefield against YouTube, TikTok, and plain social media. Every movie has to be better at grabbing attention than the meme your friend sent you on Instagram. It’s no wonder we no longer ask for anything but the old hits again.
Entertainment is free now. Realize how ahistorical that is. Entertainment of the costless variety used to require creativity and effort from the entertainee. Now, it just requires a smartphone and a willingness to check your brain when you are at the lock screen. Movie studios are no longer competing with each other, and they’re competing with our pocket communicators. Legacyquel movies are a desperate attempt to give us something from the cinema that you can’t get from newer media: the comfort of tradition.
It’s easy to remake something old as audiences continue to seek validation from their art and entertainment. Truly, our current obsession with childhood and retreating towards simpler times in our own personal histories has made us prone to earlier film history. Needing to keep that childhood “validated” or a fandom “sacred” stomps out flames of creativity that could have caught on. The layman hates the implication they should be challenged by art. In recent years, it became an indication of snobbery to think this way. Those who use “It’s all subjective” as an excuse for a lack of internal interrogation are to blame. We must watch more than what comforts us. Otherwise, we are bound for a world where entertainment only pampers our childishness.
In This is Spinal Tap, released in 1984, one of the characters speaks offhandedly about the state of film at the time. “….every, every movie, in every cinema is about death; death sells!” This is no longer true. Instead, legacyquel movies seek to validate childhoods, make you “feel like a kid again,” and retreat as far from your inevitable death as possible. They are a false fountain of youth for audiences and the industry alike. IF there is a death they are about, it’s the death of cinema as a whole.
