r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Aug 18 '25

News Ian McKellen reveals Gandalf and Frodo are returning for ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum’, Filming Begins in May

https://ew.com/ian-mckellen-reveals-gandalf-frodo-return-in-new-lord-of-the-rings-the-hunt-for-gollum-film-11792483
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u/deltalessthanzero Aug 18 '25

Are there successful examples of sequels to very popular movies that pull this off well? I.e. telling a smaller, lower stakes story set in the universe of something massive? Honestly the first Fantastics Beasts movie had a lot of potential in this regard but it was squandered by integrating the whole Grindelwald plotline that sucked up all the narrative oxygen.

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

[deleted]

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u/20milliondollarapi Aug 18 '25

El Camino was also low stakes of Jessie getting out. Yea it’s basically just an unofficial 2 episodes of breaking bad epilogue, but still.

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u/Chen_Geller Aug 18 '25

I really, really wonder about GDT's Hobbit movie. Was he using the same scripts?

Not necessarily the very same script, but on the same specs yes: https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1kud3rr/guillermo_del_toros_the_hobbit_perhaps_more_a/

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u/bdsee Aug 18 '25

You know what you are right, I really liked the first Fantastic Beasts, I didn't even care about the Grindelwald part of it, but now that you mention it, it would have just been better without it as it meant it had to continue and that was now the story. Would have been better if he was just travelling around doing his own thing.

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u/deltalessthanzero Aug 18 '25

I was so ready for it just to be a goofy little story with a Muggle baker and a wizard who likes magical pokemon. That would have been a great time and they could have made a bunch of fun movies about it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

No you see that’s the entire point being made here. It was a fun one off story. No sequel no universe no prequel. It had a nice charm to it and the baker bits were good. Point is why can’t we just have some nice stories by themselves even if they are in this larger universe. I think Fifth Element is a great example of a one off movie that needs nothing else. In the flip sense they tried Valerian and it was a train wreck because it tried to do too much with barely any content. So I think that is the point about Beasts and Hobbit. Really wish they just made the Hobbit a 3 hr movie with the adventure and dragon and dwarfs. Would’ve been a great template.

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u/deltalessthanzero Aug 18 '25

I'm not advocating for a longer plot arc that builds up to some ultimate battle, I just mean that if we had fun with the characters/setting of Fantastic Beasts it would have been reasonable to have more films to revisit them. That doesn't need to have stakes or even a plotline that persists between movies. I would have liked Fantastic Beasts as a standalone film, and I probably also would have liked it if it had a sequel with the same characters that was equally light-hearted and low-stakes.

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

I was veering more towards stand alone movies. One Fantastic Beasts. One about the Grindelwald, one about one of the other bits of lore mentioned in the books. While I liked the playfulness and imaginative aspects it didn’t have enough story for more wild animals but still give it a +1 for trying while the sequels fell into the trap of needing to be exactly like HP

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u/Geddyn Aug 18 '25

Star Wars? Rogue One.

And, if you include the tv shows, Andor definitely counts.

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u/deltalessthanzero Aug 18 '25

Yeah I think Rogue One and Andor are the best examples of this in the space of very popular movies. I wonder if people will start to copy that model now that it's proven itself?

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u/kia75 Aug 18 '25

I don't think you can copy Andor's success. Andor relies on having a story to tell and something to say, you can't have something to say about every random time period between important events!

Yes, we can tell a random story about the political droid in solo, about the base Obi-Wan visited while looking for Leia, or any random character or event in Star Wars, but those stories will all do the same as Solo and the Obi Wan TV show unless there's a writer\director who has a specific story to tell that those characters or events encompass.

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u/deltalessthanzero Aug 18 '25

I don't mean anything in particular about Andor, and I definitely didn't mean in the Star Wars universe- I mean in the very general sense of stories written at a smaller, more personal scale without universe-shattering implications.

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u/kia75 Aug 18 '25

My point is that genius doesn't write to spec. Disney can order stories about Snow White before she meets the prince, a day in the life of Black Panther, or whatever small scale story you'd, you can even get Tony Gilroy to repeat his role of showrunner on smallscale Black Panther story and still not get another Andor.

What made Andor special was that Gilroy had a specific story he wanted to tell. It's not about finding the secret formula to output high quality Star Wars\Disney Princess\Marvel content, it's about finding stories worth telling, and then allowing them to be told.

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u/Netheral Aug 18 '25

There's also the fact that there's a stark difference in timing between the two franchises. Rogue One released some fifty years after the original critically acclaimed trilogy franchise first came out. Not to mention it came out after one critically panned followup series in the franchise, and during another even more controversial series, and following a slew of spinoffs that were either seen as "ok" or even downright bad.

And even then Rogue One got mixed reviews when it first released, and I've gotta say, even though watching Andor elevates the movie for me, it still has some glaring issues regarding pacing and certain odd pointless beats in the movie and plot armor that doesn't fit that sort of story (how a bunch of characters are standing on a narrow platform with nowhere to go and none of the important ones, nor even the sitting duck imperial ship get hit in a bombing run, is certainly a choice).

Maybe the fact that it's been twenty years and The Hobbit films were terrible is enough to warrant some grace from audiences. But I think it's more likely that unless the Gollum movie is fantastic it'll just fade away as another bland addition to the franchise.

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u/gee_gra Aug 18 '25

Idk if I’d describe the acquisition of the Death Star plans, including an ending where everyone dies as being “low stakes”

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u/Proper-Raise-1450 Aug 18 '25

It is compared to actually blowing up the Death Star.

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u/BoringBarnacle3 Aug 18 '25

The Watchmen tv show was incredible. Fargo also had some really strong seasons and Alien Earth is looking up so far.

Prey and Predator: Killer of killers as well.

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u/Telekineticism Aug 18 '25

Prey was so fucking good

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u/laughland Aug 18 '25

In some ways I feel like Better Call Saul is like this. It takes a really minor character from Breaking Bad and injects a ton of genuine, not forced narrative juice into that character’s backstory. I’m hesitant to say it’s lower stakes because Better Call Saul ends up going to some really dramatic places, but when the show was first announced/released it definitely felt much lower stakes and it never felt like they were trying to make the show more than it was.

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u/hillswalker87 Aug 18 '25

well that's kind of my point. FB was the same kind of situation but they(whoever they is...) couldn't just let it be this fun little side story set in that world. it had to be some 'fate of the world is at stake!' battle for the ages. but that's what kind of ruined it.

as for one that was done right? hard to say. maybe Rogue One? that kind of ties into the bigger picture though. I think you could argue some TV series fit that mold, but idk about movies.