The only movie sequel Woody Harrelson thinks is better than the original: “It’s so rare”
There aren’t many actors who haven’t been able to resist the lure of blockbuster fare and franchise filmmaking for the entirety of their careers, which is fair enough when it’s about the closest thing to a guaranteed – and relatively easy – payday as anyone can hope to find. Woody Harrelson has been in a few, but he wouldn’t go out on a limb and say his sequels managed to better their predecessors.
As a recognisable star with an accomplished filmography on stage, screen, and television that spans more than 40 years, Harrelson was always going to be hoovered up by the IP machine eventually. He’s taken a typically zen approach to his effects-heavy efforts, though, balancing his broad crowd-pleasers and scenery-chewing shows of excess with smaller, more intimate, and character-driven projects.
He was phenomenal in No Country for Old Men, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Messenger, The People vs Larry Flynt, Natural Born Killers, and more, which helps excuse the dodgy wigs and rampant ham he brought to the table in empty-headed nonsense like Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the Zombieland duology, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the Now You See Me series.
War for the Planet of the Apes is the closest Harrelson has ever come to doing serious acting in a big-budget production, although The Hunger Games does run it a close second. He’s never played any character more often than the four times he embodied Haymitch Abernathy in the dystopian literary saga, which saw him go against his better judgment and general disinterest in returning to the well.
“That is a weird thing,” he mused to Rama’s Screen of signing a multi-picture contract. “Because it’s not that I don’t believe in sequels because sometimes they are great.” To illustrate his point, Harrelson dug deep into his memory banks to pull out his completely unexpected candidate for the high point of cinema’s sequel obsession.
“What was the one? Babe! Babe 2 was better than Babe 1, but it’s rare,” he explained. “It’s so rare that the sequel is even as good as the original; that’s why I’m never that encouraged by the concept.” Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but calling Pig in the City the superior talking pig flick? Come on now.
The heartwarming original won an Academy Award for its visual effects, landed six more nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, and cleared a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office. Pig in the City wasn’t bad, but not even Babe‘s producer, co-writer, and Mad Max mastermind George Miller promoting himself to the director’s chair could stop it from feeling like an inferior retread that flopped in cinemas.
Harrelson clearly disagrees, but it’s hard to call Pig in the City the best of the two Babe movies, never mind that rarest of Hollywood unicorns: a sequel that outstrips the original in every way.
