George Lucas' Wildest Sequel: The Admirable Audacity of 'More American Graffiti'

No, it’s not the ‘Star Wars’ prequels. Universal Pictures By Meg Shields · Published on September 3rd, 2021 Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay on the wildest sequel by director George Lucas: 1979’s More American Graffiti. When a film is especially near and dear to you it can be tempting to avoid its sequels like the plague. Why run the risk of tainting your memory of the original film? Of sullying its hallowed plot beats with the knowledge that the story continues, for better or for worse? A sequel doesn’t even necessarily have to be “bad” for this Schrodinger’s paradox to kick in. It turns out that Bride of Re-Animator is a solid and thoroughly enjoyable follow-up to Stuart Gordon’s original film. But mustering up the courage to finally give it a shot was like pulling teeth because, well, you know, what if it was bad? This whole affair becomes especially tricky when sequels are infamously terrible. Enter: George Lucas, a man whose directorial reputation is inextricably linked to sequelitis. But while his Star Wars prequels are their own can of worms, today we’re interested in his much worse…
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