Apparently, I write about films now.
Forrest Gump 2: A Preliminary Review
The lucky dumb bastard from Alabama is back — and he’s pissed.
First, I’d like to offer you a preview of the script, which was kindly shown to me by Steve Cockovitch, a friend of mine and one of the founders of the website Rotten Tomatoes. This excerpt is not exclusive. It has been doing the rounds of the critics for some time to generate excitement about the release.
INT. HUMID SHED SOMEWHERE IN COLUMBIA — NIGHT
FORREST and LIEUTENANT DAN are sorting giant bags of white powder at a sweaty table while a twenty-something FORREST JUNIOR played by grown Hayley Joel Osmond) stands guard at the door with an AK47.
FORREST JUNIOR
Hey Dad, I love you, but can you guys hurry up? The sun will come up soon. Damn, I wish Mom was here.
LIEUTENANT DAN
Forrest, you better tell that little shithead son of yours to shut his goddamn pie hole before I stuff one of these bags down there and watch him lose his shit like Cocaine Bear. And don’t you think it’s about time you told him that Jenny is goddamn dead? He’s twenty-three, for God’s sake.
FORREST
You’re so funny, Lieutenant Dan.
LIEUTENANT DAN
What in God’s name are we doing here anyway, Forrest?
FORREST
I don’t know. I just felt like selling cocaine, Lieutenant Dan.
Lieutenant Dan laughs like a maniac with white powder all over his face.
Those Pricks in Hollywood Are At It Again
Perhaps, like me, you thought this decades-later sequel crap was over.
In that case, we were both wrong.
I found out the terrible news while perusing an article about how Ridley Scott is trying to do something different by casting Ryan Gozleme as a different character in Bladerunner 2099, and I thought, fuck, that does not sound like a good idea to me.
And if the day couldn’t get any worse — there it was — confirmation of the production of Forrest Gump 2.
Forrest Gump is one of the best films ever made. And if you are like my cousin who doesn’t enjoy the film because he doesn’t like people portraying mentally impaired people, if that’s the correct term, then I feel sorry for you because it’s simply brilliant.
I mean, sure, watching Tom Hanks do accents can be painful.
If you haven’t seen The Terminal, then you should for the sheer comedy value of watching Hanks try and do a Russian accent. But don’t expect to enjoy the film. It’s horrific and drenched with more plot holes than the movie ‘Swiss Cheese’ starring Brie Larson.
But Gump is different. From the magnitude and ambition of the filmmakers to the vast number of memorable lines, scenes, and characters, it’s up there.
But why remake it? Why is Hollywood so short of good new ideas?
Everyone was getting sick of the sequel phenomenon. I don’t know anyone who thought it was a good idea to keep making sequels to classic films thirty years later.
There was the horrendous all-female Oceans Eleven. Then they massively stuffed up the female Ghostbusters. And none of it was because there were females in the film, of course.
I like females in movies. I’ve seen Pretty Woman and Legally Blonde. They both had female leads and were great films.
The films were garbage because the scripts were garbage. If they had come to me and asked, I would have given the project of writing female Ghostbusters to my two-year-old niece, and the result would have been profoundly better than the crap they managed to pump out.
Somewhere in between, they managed to massacre Point Break.
Then there were the ‘fun’ remakes.
The Matrix Resurrections wasn’t great, but it poked fun at itself, and the Matrix fans I know, including myself, quite enjoyed it. Was it necessary, though? Absolutely fucking not.
Bill and Ted? More of the same nostalgic, barely enjoyable shite.
Coming 2 America needed a more straightforward title instead of trying to be clever in a dumb way. And the film was an utter turd but, again, a celebration of nostalgia that I happily watched. Would I watch it again, though? I’d rather watch a pig fuck a tramp on a waterbed.
But while fans of the originals would have smiled at the remakes, when you look deeply, they had one thing in common — the scripts were all bags of crap.
People had just about gotten over the sequels when Top Gun 2 emerged from the post-covid darkness.
And I admit I was quite wrong in my pre-assessment of that.
Fortunately and unfortunately, it was one of the best God damn movies of the modern era.
And people who haven’t seen it say, are you sure? And yes. I’m sure. It’s unbelievable.
Trust Tom Cruise to bust open the shit sequel thing. People go after him, but I’ve always liked that crazy bastard. And you can’t dispute that his incredible movies far outweigh his bad ones, especially in the modern era.
The bad thing about Top Gun 2 being good is that it reset the sequel game.
Now they are making Forrest Gump 2, and I’m sure Zemeckis and Hanks have already talked about how it has to be like Top Gun 2, not Zoolander 2.
It’s given the bastards something to aim for.
So, thanks to Tom and the makers of Top Gun 2, we now have the following sequels to look forward to:
Beverly Hills Cop 4: Axl gets his prostate cut out.
Beetlejuice 2: Starring Harrison Ford as Michael Keaton and Dame Judie Dench as Winona Ryder.
Demolition Man 2: John Spartan and Simon Phoenix take each other on at Words with Friends.
Dirty Dancing Two: AKA No-one puts Baby in a care facility. You might be sad that Swayze won’t be there, but you’ll soon also be saying, who the fuck is that playing Baby?
I Am Legend 2: I wish I could stand up to my wife, the way Will Smith stood up to Chris Rock.
Lethal Weapon 6: I’m too old for this stuff. Riggs and Murtagh take on Elon Musk’s rogue Optimus robots turned heroin dealers.
These are not jokes, either. These are actual films being made right now. (source)
I’m probably missing a whole bunch. But as Forest Gump said, stupid is as stupid does, and in the case of the mainstream film industry, it’s not stupid that they keep making sequels. It’s just stupid that they can’t seem to write decent scripts for them.
Keep going like this, and we’ll be in this territory:
Schindler’s List 2: Revenge of the Jews: A Hollywood production. Written by ChatGPT.
