So the other day we finally heard word on what Chris Carter and pals decided to call The Untitled X-Files Sequel (as IMDB had it listed): The X-Files: I Want to Believe. I didn’t want to believe that was the title. I mean, I knew the film wouldn’t be called X-Files 2 and there’d be some lame subtitle attached to it. And it’s better than the subtitle for the first X-Files flick (Fight the Future, which could’ve just as well been the name for Back to the Future II). But I don’t know. “I Want to Believe” sounds silly as a subtitle to me. But the more I thought about it the more I realized, goddamn, most subtitles are just plain ass stupid anyways—the golden age of cinematic subtitles climaxed with Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, as far as I’m concerned. So these days, I’m sick of them.
Maybe it’s because I write about movies and hate typing out 50-word titles like The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl or The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor or Transformers: The Shia, the Fox and the John Turturro Roboto Golden Shower. You see! You see! That’s how I and bunch of other hacks react to the annoyance of subtitles. We end up making punch lines of them. It’s an uncontrollable impulse. A little up-yours to Yahweh for allowing the continual existence of films with dumbass subtitles.
Whatever happened to the days when all a sequel needed was either a “2” or “IV” tossed in after the title? The Godfather Part II. Death Wish 3. Simple and to the point. And if the filmmakers weren’t much for titles with numerals they found inventive solutions sans subtitle. Aliens. Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. Or maybe they’d been bumping lines of coke for 3 months straight and went all gonzo like and renamed the film entirely: Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom rather than Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Temple of Doom. See what I mean? Those were the good ol’ days.
And I’m glad a couple of movies this summer are carrying on this dying tradition. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. The Incredible Hulk. Or most noticeably, The Dark Knight. All though that begs the question of what moniker the third Christopher Nolan Batman film will go by. I doubt The Dark Knight Returns is in the running due to Frank Miller’s touchstone futuristic take on Batman of the same name. And The Winged Avenger sounds like a WWII fighter-pilot flick. So probably expect Batman: The Titillating Tales of the Two Faced Tormenter or some horrendous subtitle along those lines, verbose enough to make Charles Dickens go “enough already with the goddamn words!”
Why clog up the perfection of a title like Caddyshack II with 17 more syllables that in the end just spell out “Bullshit”? Most subtitles add nothing to the movie. And hell they don’t even need more words than a page from the Bible to bake a cow pie. Does anyone have the brains to figure out what “Requiem” had to do with the second Aliens Vs. Predator? Actually does anyone have any brains left after viewing AvP-R?
This is why subtitles piss me off other than the finger cramping I suffer from when typing them out. They’re pretentious. Not so much in a pseudo-intellectual sort or way. But more in the vein of a lunkhead fratboy who thinks Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins sounds really deep, bro.
A title like that hurts my brain. It’s retarded. It’s the type of abomination that makes me think outlawing the use of colons is a damn fine idea.
