Hear Me Out: Legacy characters have no place in modern cinema
Nostalgia is a powerful tool in the world of cinema, and there’s no doubt that Hollywood executives have known this fact for decades. In a contemporary world that looks to the vibrant originality and economic prosperity of the past, such franchises as Star Wars, Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones have refused to let go of the power of nostalgia, with each of these series using needless legacy characters in their cynical pursuit of box office supremacy.
Alongside props, vehicles, sets and general pieces of iconography that are synonymous with a respective series, wrinkled actors are too often dragged from the safety of their retirement to the intensity of the Hollywood lights. Regularly wriggling with discomfort, the practice has seen countless former stars of the silver screen return to the franchises that made them famous with the same sad homecoming anticlimax of a college reunion.
The most recent victim of this sad industry practice is Ellen Burstyn, the star of William Friedkin’s iconic 1973 horror movie The Exorcist, who helped make the original film into one of the most infamous of its kind. Playing Chris MacNeil, the mother who tries to make sense of the satanic possession of her young daughter, Burstyn helps to ground Friedkin’s haunting film in reality, making it as much of a dark drama as a horror.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” groans Leslie Odom Jr in the new trailer for The Exorcist: Believer, a direct sequel to Friedkin’s film that celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2023. Cue Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’, which arrives almost like a comedic record scratch as we are introduced to Burstyn’s MacNeil, a character from the original film who was less of an expert and more of a victim to the devil’s disturbing possession of her daughter, Regan.
Coming face-to-face with the demon in the latest trailer, she pointlessly utters, “We’ve met before,” as if the mutual connection between the two beings will be enough for the demon to leave the body of the young girl out of social embarrassment.
Despite claiming to be a direct sequel to Friedkin’s original movie, it’s apparent that there’s little that’s similar about David Gordon Green’s new film, apart from the title. The tone is completely different, with Believer clearly going down the straight horror route rather than exploring the existential dread behind the themes, and the story appears to be far more sensational than the original. So, why hinder your film by placing an old thematic element at the heart of the story?
Sadly, Gordon Green clearly has a fondness for such legacy characters, using Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode throughout his modern Halloween trilogy to the detriment of the overall story. Yet, these characters aren’t brought back as essential parts of the future of any given franchise. They are merely crutches used by studios and filmmakers to lure in audiences craving that hit of nostalgia when they see their favourite characters from yesteryear.
These legacy reunions are pretty common, with the likes of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia appearing in the new Star Wars movies, Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler starring in Jurassic World: Dominion and Marion Ravenwood returning in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and in each instance, they are used as mere priceless ornaments that studios believe are enough to gain critical and commercial plaudits.
The sour reception to each of these aforementioned sequels should give us some promise that legacy characters will soon be a thing of the past, with studios hopefully seeking more original ways to get bums on seats rather than simply highlighting the glitz of bygone cinema.
