![]() Director Robert Rodriguez, along with co-director Frank Miller, who wrote the graphic novel series the films are based on, was smart to bring back the visual elements that worked so well the first time–the crisp black and white with occasional splashes of color, the stark, graphic novel-y framing, the moments where characters suddenly become animated silhouettes. In fact, a lot should be familiar about the second movie. It’s also a line from Sin City: A Dame To Kill For. “Walk down the right back alley in sin city and you can find anything” is a line of dialogue from Sin City. Instead of introducing new famous faces, 22 Jump Street populates its world with lesser known talent like Jillian Bell and The Lucas Brothers, who prove so arresting its impossible to leave this world without wanting to know more about them. Seeing Lady Gaga and Jeremy Piven in the graphic novel universe might take viewers right out of the movie, and over to Benecio del Toro’s house, hat and hand, to ask him about funneling some of his charisma from the first film over to the sequel. The sequel attempts to repopulate the city with similarly left field choices, but these don’t work quite as well this time around. The first Sin City had a sprawling cast, a substantial portion of which ends up reduced to bloody pulp in a hail of gunfire. It’s as if the events of the first film don’t matter–which makes it difficult to swallow Marv helping Jessica Alba’s character, Nancy, avenge those events. As it turns out, most of the first two-thirds of A Dame To Kill For is a prequel–but by the time we get to a vignette that is definitely set after the first film, Mickey Rourke’s deceased Marv character is still around, with no explanation as to why. Characters who were killed in the first movie show up here, sans resurrection. Connective tissue between the two emerges eventually, but even then it doesn’t all add up. Anyone who didn’t watch the original immediately before dipping into the new film will almost certainly be confused. And then there’s Sin City: A Dame To Kill For. ![]() In a fun, meta touch, it even offers a handy recap in the guise of one of those “Previously on…” bumpers that run before certain shows. (The original is mostly split into 20 minute chunks, and sustains its zippy pace the entire runtime.)Ģ2 Jump Street picks up right where 21 left off. The second Sin City is 20 minutes shorter than the first, which would probably work in its favor if 47 of those minutes weren’t devoted to a single, somewhat draggy vignette this time around. Both 21 Jump Street and its sequel are 110 minutes long. By the time the movie came out this past August, it was kind of a hardcore fans-only proposition.Īnother timing issue involves the lengths of the movies themselves. ![]() In the interim, demand for the project cooled considerably. ![]() By contrast, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For came out nine years after the original, owing to assorted delays and complications. The resulting effort was a surprise hit, however, and the filmmakers wasted no time reuniting for a sequel, promptly delivered two years later. Nothing about the year 2012 made it particularly suited for rebooting 21 Jump Street, a show whose peak popularity occurred during the Reagan administration. 22 Jump Street is superior to Sin City: A Dame To Kill For by almost any measure, and the differences between these films explain everything about why sequels succeed or fail in the current cinematic climate. That is a stupid amount of money! It didn’t land inside some Hollywood financier’s vault by happenstance, though. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s 22 Jump Street, the Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum-led sequel that may have exceeded its predecessor in critical affection, and hauled in a hefty $130M more than the first one. (Take it in your arms and throw it into the ocean.) While the first film in the series earned widespread acclaim for its innovative visual style and achingly hip cast, not to mention $148M worldwide, the sequel was almost universally panned and it made less than a third as much money. Take, for instance, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For.
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