The final sequel in the "Harry Potter" franchise earned an amazing $168 million in three days, shattering opening-weekend records and setting the bar so high that no other film can possibly top it — at least until November when the next "Twilight" movie opens.
These days, movie franchises really build on themselves, with subsequent entries in various series often topping the box-office take of the original — or the sequel that came before. And occasionally they even open to better reviews.
Aside from "Harry Potter," the most obvious recent example is "The Dark Knight," which bested "Batman Begins" in every way, including a pair of Oscar wins.
And before that, the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy did spectacular business, each film earning more money and more respect until the third managed to take home 11 Academy Awards!
But this wasn't always the case. In the early days, sequels were made quickly and on the cheap to capitalize on a popular title before it faded from the memory of a fickle public. As a result, such pictures were often considered inferior to — and seldom made as much money as — the original.
When movies began in the late 1880s, they were shorts. It was thought that an audience would not sit still for a "flicker" that was longer than 10 to 20 minutes. But then feature-length films started up in Europe around 1906 and it wasn't long before U.S. production companies followed suit, beginning in 1912.
One of the earliest features to achieve great acclaim at the time — and which is still studied today — is D.W. Griffith's notorious "The Birth of a Nation" in 1915. And a direct follow-up the next year (not by Griffith) was "The Fall of a Nation," which bombed.
Previously, franchises had been developed in the short form with popular characters returning to nickelodeon screens with some regularity. But "The Fall of a Nation" is widely believed to be the first feature-length sequel. (Sadly, it is also a lost film.)
That movie's failure, however, nonetheless began a trend. Among the more popular sequels of the silent era with stars repeating their roles are Elmo Lincoln in two follow-ups to "Tarzan of the Apes" (1918), Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in "The Mark of Zorro" (1920) and then as "Don Q, Son of Zorro" (1925), and Rudolph Valentino's "The Sheik" (1921) and "The Son of the Sheik" (1926).
Film series were abundant during the early sound era, from "Tarzan" to "The Thin Man" to "Andy Hardy" to "Sherlock Holmes," and many more. The sequels were popular but generally "B," or lower budget, movies, even when the franchise began with an "A" budget picture. This was more or less the accepted form from the 1930s through the '50s.
In the '60s, however, things began to shift as sequels were made to be A-list films on the same level of quality and budget as the original. And the box-office earnings began to justify that investment.
The first James Bond movie "Dr. No" (1962) was very popular, but "From Russia With Love" did even better the next year, and "Goldfinger" topped that one a year later. "The Pink Panther" (1964) was a smash as it introduced Inspector Clouseau, and later the same year, a second Clouseau picture, "A Shot in the Dark," was also a hit.
And so it went throughout the '70s and into the '80s for "Dirty Harry," "Superman," "Halloween," etc.
Then, in 1974, "The Godfather, Part II," became a landmark film by topping "The Godfather" of two years earlier with a bigger box-office take, better reviews and, of course, the Oscar for Best Picture (the first sequel to win that honor). It became the gold standard for sequels.
At least until 1981, when the second "Star Wars" film, "The Empire Strikes Back," upped the ante for what became the blockbuster sequel.
And it hasn't really let up much since then. Who doesn't know these series by their generic titles? "Star Trek," "Indiana Jones," "Die Hard," "Lethal Weapon," "The Terminator," "Austin Powers," "Mad Max," "Shrek," "The Matrix," "Rush Hour," the "Bourne" trilogy, "Pirates of the Caribbean" and far too many others to list — including the myriad superheroes that have dominated the past decade (and this summer).
Taken in that light, how can you blame Hollywood for being sequel crazy? After all, if we weren't going to them, the studios wouldn't be making them.
In the movie business, everyone knows there's really no such thing as a sure thing. But a sequel is probably the next best thing.
EMAIL: hicks@desnews.com