As the many, many film reviews on this site might suggest, I’m a big fan of cinema. Away from my penchant for low budget zombie films, I’m a big fan of laughing at awful movie subtitles (you may recall my rant about xXx2: The Next Level).
Recently, as Disney peddled yet another straight to video sequel, further diluting a once great brand into nothing more than a drudge factory, I started to think that movie sequel subtitles are actually getting worse. Sequels are being called things like “Die Hard 4.0” and “Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time”. Clearly, film-makers are incapable of coming up with decent subtitles.
Thankfully, I have a plan: a series of standardised subtitles for films. Rather than let script writers and marketers worry about what to tack onto a film, let’s just mandate a set of standard subtitles that must be used, largely culled from previous movies. Let’s use The Lion King in our examples:
- The Lion King (no subtitle required)
- The Lion King 2: The Wrath of Khan
- The Lion King 3: The New Batch
- The Lion King 4: Electric Boogaloo
- The Lion King 5: Mission to Moscow
- The Lion King 6: The Empire Strikes Back
- The Lion King 7: The Edge of Reason
- The Lion King 8: The Sequel
- The Lion King 9: Die Harder
- The Lion King 10: When Nature Calls
- The Lion King 11: Part II
- The Lion King 12: Judgement Day
- The Lion King 13: Fellowship of the Ring
- The Lion King 14: The Motion Picture
I think we can all agree that prescribed sequel subtitles are a much better idea than the current method (which involves pulling hackneyed phrases from a sack).