Hello, San Diego!
I have never watched Crocodile Dundee or its sequel, Crocodile Dundee II, where Crocodile Dundee himself goes to New York City. But, I’m pretty confident that I would enjoy the sequel more if I were to sit down and watch both of them back to back. That’s because, in my history of movie viewing, whenever a franchise takes a film into a city, it usually rocks and rocks hard.
He's definitely too old for this shit.
For example, watching Predator 2 inspired me to write this. Sure, the original was classic with a Predator knocking off a whole Special Forces team all by itself until the Governator Commando’d his ass. But, here’s the thing about the sequel, there was actually a lot more carnage. In Los Angeles, there were a lot more people for the Predator to add to its trophy room. And, it had a more interestingly-difficult terrain to hunt while avoiding detection from the city’s millions of inhabitants. In the end, there were bodies everywhere compared to a few rotting corpses in the jungle.
Start spreading the news/He's killing today...
After 5 films of people asking themselves why people would continue to go to Crystal Lake (I say that because Jason’s mom was the killer in the first one and I bet people didn’t think the murders would continue after it), Jason Voorhees goes to Broadway in the eighth installment. What better way to scare people from different locales than with presenting the possibility that the killer can come to you? Jason kills people on a cruise ship only to somehow blend in with the New York crowd to continue killin’. How awesome is that?
Wet Bandits. How hot is that name?
Let’s face it. Home Alone 2 was easily more fun to watch than Home Alone. The thing about setting films in cities is being able to include a lot more because of what lies in a busy background. Kevin (Macauley) had more room to submit the Wet Bandits into more trap treachery. It’s all about setting, man. It’s all about setting.
Turn around! Turn around!
Jurassic Park was a great film. But, The Lost World was even better. You know why? Somehow, a T-Rex ended up treating San Diego as a buffet. It was on a boat. Killed everyone on that boat. Crashed that boat into a dock. Got off that boat. Ran around. Ate people. Crushed a bus. Drank from a pool. Ate a dog. Ate more people. That sounds way better than just staying on an island with only a few people who were dumb enough to be on an island filled with dinosaurs. Why isn’t this movie in my collection?!
So, anyway. You get my point. You may disagree with it but, you get my point. Put a movie sequel into a city and that movie has more room to do more bad things. I’ve heard that Avatar is getting a sequel. Let’s have a few Navi stowaway on a space back to Earth and see what happens in, say, Miami. Starship Troopers. What if the arachnids actually invaded us? Imagine giant insects running down a street in Chicago, ripping everything to bits. Tossing an asteroid at Buenos Aires was a bitch move, anyway. More bang for your studio bucks require more people and elements to bang on.
