“Less is more”, as the old saying goes, and nowhere is this more apparently true than in modern TV and film culture.
It is understandable that when audiences see a great film or TV series, they want more of it. They want to see the characters they know and love and get to know them even more.
Similarly, when a cinematic work is a great financial success, it is equally obvious that executives will want to mine that success for all it is worth.
It’s therefore no surprise that an unholy alliance has been formed between those who demand and those who supply, not art, but an endless stream of “content”.
The most obvious player of this game is Disney, which has relentlessly mined the Star Wars and Marvel franchises to the point of exhaustion.
Other less egregious examples might be the latest Gladiator film. Gladiator was the perfect example of a stand-alone film with a self-contained story. No sequel was needed. What next? Casablanca 2?
Another example might be the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, which have been spared the worst excesses of Disney, but still had to suffer the indignity of Amazon’s Rings of Power series and a recent anime film.
It would be untrue to say that all this extensive material is terrible. It is possible to find some gold among the slop.
But the fact that modern culture has come to this point suggests an endless need for more, and a shallowness of thought.
The problem is not sequels, but the lack of an overarching story. Both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the original Star Wars trilogy (plus the prequels) told an overarching story that culminated with the final defeat of evil.
In this respect, both stories end in the same way that the Bible does. After the fall of Sauron/the Emperor, there is no need for anything more. Revelation ends the Bible with God and man finally reconciled.
Imagine if church leaders struggled to come up with a sermon every week because no new “content” has been added to the Bible for nearly 2,000 years. Instead, what they do is engage with what has been tried and tested over millennia.
To be able to read, watch or examine a piece for the hundredth time and to take away something new is possibly what defines a piece as being a masterpiece.
This is one of the reasons the Bible has remained such a bedrock of our culture over the centuries and what allows man-made works to be added to the pantheon of the greats.
So, resist the urge to consume the next portion of slop before moving onto the next thing, and take some time to appreciate and re-examine the great films, TV shows, books, plays and art. Perhaps if enough people do so, then eventually someone will make a film worth going to the cinema for.
