Separate By A Letter

I was thinking the other day about the various films of the "Fast and the Furious" film series. I even hesitated just now in writing that out, because I wasn't sure which entry's title to go by in assigning the entire series a single name. Most of them have had rather different titles, which wouldn't be that bad, except that each title is made up of more or less the same words in different constructions. It's rather confusing.

It reminds me of the old days at the video store. There was then no easy way of researching movies. One could seek out a book which catalogued movies, but none of those was comprehensive, and it wasn't something you were going to have on you at the store. What you saw at the store was all that existed, unless you know for a fact from personal experience that something not there did exist. It was easier if you didn't know about something you didn't have.

I remember how my friends and I happened upon "Evil Dead 2". It had an appealing cover with a skull looking at you on it. We rented it, and loved it. We wanted more of the same, of course. Still, it was forever before we found out about "Army Of Darkness", the third in the series. We inferred from the 2 in "Evil Dead 2" that there was one before that, but didn't see that one for a while either for other reasons, I guess.

The reason we didn't see the third of the series was the same reason the "Fast And The Furious" movies are frustrating: it had a very different title. Consequently, it was not kept next to its predecessor on the shelf in the horror section. No, it was at the very beginning of the section, where we did not see it or connect it to the others. It was then, as I said, a rather long time before one of us excitedly reported to the others that it existed, and it proved to become our favorite.  I guess the lesson is that filmmakers should adopt standardized, uniform titles for what we now call "franchises".