It was announced on Monday that It's a Wonderful Life — a classic, nearly seventy-year-old Christmas film — is getting a sequel.
Sometimes sequels are great (Toy Story 2), sometimes they're ok (The Karate Kid 2) —and sometimes they're so terrible, they nearly dismantle the first film (Pocahontas 2).
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Some films have such a strong fan base that Hollywood might believe would come to see their favorite characters in a continuation of the story. But there are movies that have a final, perfect ending that should not be disrupted for any reason.
Leave the Baileys alone, Hollywood.
We already know what's going to happen to Harry and Sally. They're going to turn into one of those adorable elderly couples on the couch lovingly recounting their unusual courtship.
What do we care if somewhere in between, they fight over the dishes or where to send the kids to preschool?
Do you know what happens in a sequel to Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Ferris gets an office job. Every once in a while, he'll send Cameron a Facebook message insisting they cut work for a day, which goes unanswered. Sloane begins to worry that her husband keeps spouting off catchphrases to no one.
Pixar take note, no one wants to see this.
Even the most diehard Love Actually fans know at best our beloved couples are hanging on by a thread.
Someday, cue-card guy is going to get drunk and tell his best friend that he's in love with his wife (probably written on a series of cocktail napkins). Poor Laura Linney's life is only going to get sadder, Emma Thompson will discover Adele and never leave her room. Sam will forget about his crush, and finally remember his mom's dead. Nothing good can come from revisiting those characters.
In a sequel, poor Billy would probably deal with the emotional fallout of living with a woman as a twelve-year-old boy, then realize he would never be as successful career-wise as he was as a seventh grader.
His desperation to return to those few glorious months in '88 will lead him to spend the entire movie frantically searching for Zoltar Speaks.
How could there by a sequel, you might ask. They both die at the end. Well, to start off, it would be in heaven. And someday Nicholas Sparks is going to run out of ideas and this will seem like a viable option.
It would be called Jennifers and there would be no blazers involved, so what's the point?
Despite the vocal backlash against Natalie Portman's manic-pixie-dream girl and Zac Braff's obsessive use of The Shins, Garden State still has its fans and supporters. More Garden State would undo all that.
What new sexual experience would Steve Carrel chase after? Where else would he get waxed? Let's hope the world never knows.
As a small child, Susan gains definitive proof that Santa is real. Any serious psychological repercussions that haunt her for years to come would make a sequel anything but cheerful family fun.
Just leave it alone. When the giant black and white bell rings, the movie ends and we should all leave it at that.
Image; Flickr, Loren Javier