Brett Ratner Defends Hollywood's Sequel Whores

In today's LAT column expressing profound dismay that even a gifted* and wildly successful filmmaker like Steven Spielberg has proven unable to resist the creatively bankrupt siren call of the sequel in signing up to direct Indy 4, a despondent Patrick Goldstein, unsatisfied by the self-serving explanation of Spielberg DreamWorks collaborator Stacey Snider, turns to the Voice of a Hacky Generation for some straight answers:

So why spend the best years of your creative life doing something that's already been done? Some filmmakers truly have a sense of artistic proprietary: Once they've started a franchise, they don't want the material slipping into someone else's hands. Others are clearly eager for a paycheck. "But it's not always about the money," says Brett Ratner, who's finishing "Rush Hour 3," one of this summer's many sequels. "I get the same fee for directing an original script as I do for this."

Ratner, who also did the last "X-Men" sequel and "Red Dragon," an installment in the Hannibal Lecter series, admits that franchises aren't creative high points. "I know that Soderbergh's great film isn't going to be one of the 'Ocean's' sequels," he says. "But I don't feel like I'm slumming. If Ridley Scott could do a sequel ["Hannibal"] to a movie than won an Oscar for best picture and hold his head up high, then why couldn't I?"
Ratner insists that sequels are challenges. "You have to make the film feel fresh and keep the audience's expectations satisfied, all at the same time. Trust me, it isn't easy."

Having already claimed all of idol Steven Spielberg's records at the tender age of 38, Ratner hardly has to defend his professional choices, and we do, in fact, trust his assertion that sequels present a unique set of creative challenges that makes them artistically rewarding; we imagine that the feeling of fulfillment that Ratner experiences after devising a new way in which Chris Tucker can express that he does't understand Jackie Chan's broken English is just as heady as the ones he'll derive when he's finally given the opportunity to ruin an original, Oscar-worthy project.

[*At least until the last ten minutes of each film, when he can't help but fire up his rainbow-spewing Happy Ending Machine.]

[Photo: BrettRatner.com]