Every time a prequel craps all over movie goers' expectations from high atop a pile of money, there seems to be a common refrain among disappointed fans: How could they waste all that potential?! Afterall, a franchise loses its luster with each passing sequel. But the prequels should reverse the aging process, since they rewind the storyline to back before the original movie was ruined. The brainless jack offs in Hollywood must be trying to ruin these franchises. One thing you rarely hear people bring up is that it might be literally impossible to make a good movie prequel. After all ...

5 The Past Was Better Before We Saw It Happen

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When a magician hears the audience gasp and say, "How'd he do that?" he does not turn around and loudly announce, "Oh, the rabbit's in my assistant's ass." Similarly, professional writers know that there are some questions that their audience doesn't want answered, even though they think they do. Like a magician, a writer wants his audience to live in that space between knowing and wanting to know. That's what keeps them coming back for more. Unfortunately, when Hollywood studio executives hear the audience asking questions, they hire someone to start writing a prequel.



Questions invite thought, and audiences hate that.

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Hannibal Lecter became a pop culture icon in part because he was gleefully engaged in the taboo act of cannibalism without any specific reason motivating him to be such an evil bastard. 2007 brought us Hannibal Rising, which explained that Lecter was a tortured youth during WWII who got tricked into eating his dead sister.

If we're going to call the young Vito Corleone scenes in The Godfather Part II a prequel, we'll go ahead and bestow the same status on the first 30 or so minutes of Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's Halloween. The film delves into the childhood of Michael Myers, making crystal clear exactly how a young boy could commit such brutal murders. The short version is "He grew up in an abusive environment surrounded by a bunch of shitty rednecks."