“Advantage of sequels”: the roles Jack Nicholson wanted to reprise
There are many films that we come away from with a burning desire to know what happens next, with many stories being left on cruel cliffhangers that are never resolved. It could be the second season of Mindhunter that was left with a nasty open ending or the ambiguous final scene in Mulholland Drive, but we can all think of one story in which we would kill to have a bit more understanding over the events that followed after the screen cut to black.
There are many actors who also share the same longing, who have spent months immersed in a character only to find out that they don’t have the happy ending they envisioned for them. Jack Nicholson has played many iconic characters over the years and also shares similar feelings of dissatisfaction about the ending of their stories, describing two roles that he would most like to return to.
Whether it be the tragic ending of Chinatown or the haunting conclusion to The Passenger, Nicholsons’ characters have truly been through the wringer over the years, working with great directors to realise their twisted visions. However, while many of us may have found peace with not knowing the future of stories like The Shining and The Departed, Nicholson has not been able to do so and still wonders about the fate of two characters in particular.
Five Easy Pieces, directed by Bob Rafelson in 1970, follows a disillusioned young man who drifts between meaningless jobs and towns until he is called back home to visit his sick father, being confronted with his potential and personal failings. It is a tragic tale that shows a man who is too afraid to try, and so instead decides to do nothing, crippled by the possibility of his talents and choosing to embrace obsoletion. However, the film ends on a very harrowing note, with the character not learning anything from his time at home, abandoning his girlfriend and moving on to another life.
The Last Detail also ends on a fairly unresolved note, with Nicholson describing his curiosity to revisit both films, saying, “I thought about revisiting three of them as a certain unit of work. You know, ones that were unresolved. This thought came to me because Ponikson wrote a sequel to Last Detail. A lot of movies in that period where the form of the movie was – well, they just went off. And because they were all about different eras, I thought, ‘Here’s an actor’s trilogy.’ You know, as a literary conceit, in other words.”
The actor expanded on his theories about the potential future of these characters, saying, “Where did Bobby DuPix from Five Easy Pieces go? Did he go to Europe and play the piano? Did he stay? What did he do? And who he was was very typical of America at that moment. Same is true of the military guy in Last Detail. So this, to me, is always the one advantage of sequels.”
While it is unlikely that we will ever see a sequel to these films now that Nicholson has retired, the idea of seeing another addition to these story worlds is very comforting. However, perhaps it is best to leave these characters unresolved, leaving with them their decisions and letting them be.
