A longevity record for original sequel numbering

There aren't many good excuses, IMO, for a Scream 7, but here's one:

I think Scream may now have set a longevity record for any series still using numbers to denote sequels and still using the original numbering.

I mean, it may have already set that with Scream 6, but if so, it's just broken its own record.

How many other series can you think of that have been going on for 30 years and are still numbering the movies according to a plan set out at the beginning?

Granted, Scream has not stuck to the numbering at every step of the way. The movie that is technically Scream 5 was just called Scream. Also with the sixth Scream, they technically switched to Roman numerals for one movie. It's technically Scream VI. 

But yeah, a few small asterisks aside, this is still the original numbering system, 30 years later. 

If you think of other series with a ridiculous number of sequels, they either haven't been doing it as long, stopped using numbered sequels a long time ago, or never used numbers in the first place. Some examples of some of these would include James Bond, Saw, Friday the 13th, Star Wars and Star Trek. And some of those are examples of more than one phenomenon at once.

But I've thought about it, and I can't think of another series that's done what Scream has done -- which, granted, it was only able to do by missing 11 years in there from 2011 to 2022, in which there were no Scream movies. Maybe if they'd had a Scream movie every three years during that period, they'd already be at ten and would have decided to go with Scream: Ghostface Returns for one of the ensuing titles. (As if that could ever be a specific enough title within the series. Ghostface returns in every movie. It's kind of the point.)

I have to state that it doesn't really count if you have only one sequel. For example, The Odd Couple II (1998) came out 30 years after The Odd Couple (1968). It doesn't count or a lot of reasons, but primarily, they wouldn't have even established a numbering system until there was a second movie, so you can hardly say that they have maintained a sequel numbering system for that long or longer. (Bambi II is a particularly hilarious version of that, coming out 64 years after the original.)

Even before Melissa Barrera made her controversial Gaza comments -- which, it seems, effectively cancelled her, and not just from the Scream series -- I was not a fan at all of Scream VI. So I think I'm sitting Scream 7 out. Though it's coming out so early in the year that I'll obviously have many opportunities to watch it before my ranking deadline, and that could easily happen almost accidentally.

Okay I found one other contender, but for now, Scream still holds the record. Just for a few more months though. And this one benefits from fewer movies and more lengthy gaps, but it still definitely qualifies.

Toy Story 5 is coming out in June. I'm not any happier about it than you are. I don't know, maybe you're happy about it.

Toy Story came out November 22, 1995, which was just about 13 months before the original Scream. (The original Scream was released on the last release date before Christmas. Who knew?) 

I suppose if the world ended tomorrow, Scream would finish by holding this record, because none of us would ever seen Toy Story 5. But Scream will have to pass the baton in just a few more months. At least until Scream 8. 

But maybe, hopefully, there won't be any more movies in either of these franchises, and Toy Story -- the much better franchise by any measure -- will get to retire in victory. 

It's perhaps a more deserving champion as well, having stuck this whole time purely to numbers, without even involving the Romans or reboot titles at any point. 

In Scream, no one can see your Roman numerals

Flush with confidence after last year's Scream reboot was considered a success, the studio is already back with another Scream movie this March.

The title is right there in that poster, but I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't notice it. 

See Paramount Pictures didn't go the extremely confusing route that Rob Zombie's Halloween reboot series went, where not only was the reboot also named Halloween, just like the original, but the sequel was also named Halloween 2, just like the original sequel.

They did manage to confuse things a bit though.

Instead of doing what the more recent Halloween reboot series did, calling the movies things like Scream Kills or Scream Rises or Scream Goes to the Bathroom, the Scream movies have picked up with the original numbering of the series -- even though there was never a Scream 5.

Scream VI is a direct sequel to last year's Scream reboot, which was effectively if not actually Scream 5, and it is indeed the sixth movie in the series, but keeping everything else straight may be a tall task.

And for young people who haven't seen a lot of movies that use to a Roman numeral to denote the sequel number, they might not even see the bloody VI in this poster.

So there's at least a chance that some people will think that the sequel to Scream is also called Scream.

I kind of think the only reason they chose this title was because someone had the brainwave that they could fit a Roman numeral six into the letter M. That's pretty flimsy if you ask me.

Oh and the Alien reference in the subject of this post isn't just random. I got a promotional email about the release of Scream VI in which they use a tagline "In a city of millions, no one hears you scream." (See it's set in New York. Okay, something new at least.)

This is pretty lame -- either they fucked up the reference by using "no one hears" rather than "no one can hear," or they deliberately avoided it to steer clear of a lawsuit, in which case, they should have just gone with something else entirely.

I was one of those who thought the Scream reboot was pretty good, so I guess I'll probably see Scream VI as well. Ghostface chasing a victim to the top of the Statue of Liberty's torch is going to be epic. 

Viewing conundrums across the international date line

Whenever we used to fly east across the Pacific Ocean from Australia to the United States, the flight would leave in the morning Melbourne time. Not early morning, but like 11 a.m. This brought you in to Los Angeles at something like 8:30 a.m. on the same day, making for one very loooong day. All the movies I watched on the flight were part of this one day. 

For some reason -- COVID? -- that's changed now. The flight leaves at night. Our flight was at 9 p.m., bringing us in to Los Angeles at 6:30 p.m. Which I thought would be fantastic, since we'd only have to stay up a few more hours before going to sleep -- theoretically getting on the new time zone that much faster.

Well, tell that to the worst jet lag I've ever had. After six nights in the United States, I've still only had full night sleeps with the assistance of a sleep aid, and even those were not always as effective as I expected them to me. There was one night -- the second night -- when I slept nary a wink. In fact, at about 4:30 I gave up trying and watched The Amazing Spider-Man, which I'd never seen, on Netflix. 

But I'm not here today to talk about jet lag.

I did want to tell you about how I saw a movie on July 26th, then a movie on July 27th, then two more movies on July 26th, then two more movies on July 27th.

What, Vance? you say. That's impossible.

Au contraire mon frere. And the later departure time had everything to do with it.

See, when you leave in the late morning, you cross the international dateline in the same day. But not when you leave at night. 

As far as I can tell, though the internet has been anything but helpful on this, you cross the international dateline about six hours after leaving Melbourne. If you leave at 11 a.m., that means you cross at about 5 p.m. Melbourne time, effectively staying in the same date on which you left. 

If you leave at 9 at night, though, that means it's about 3 a.m. the day after you left when you cross, before you jump back into the previous day. Whole different story in terms of assigning dates to my movies on my movie list.

Father Stu, the first film I watched on the flight, quite clearly belonged to Tuesday, July 26th, the day I left terra firma. But the second movie, the new reboot of Scream, was not quite so straightforward. If I didn't watch all of it before those six hours elapsed, I watched enough of it to count it toward whatever day it was for me that day. And since most of the viewing would have come between midnight and 3 a.m. Melbourne time, it was a Wednesday, July 27th viewing for all intents and purposes.

By the time I started Kimi, I had time warped back to Tuesday, which was also the day I watched The Duke. (And this answers my question about whether movies on the streamers would be available. Kimi is part of Steven Soderbergh's ongoing deal with HBO, so without this flight I might not have seen it. It's ended up being my favorite film I've seen since we left.)

Then on our next flight to Indianapolis, which was well and truly on American Wednesday after a night in an LAX hotel, I saw Marry Me and Sundown. 

So this is how it looks in my "movie order" document:

Father Stu (7/26/22)
Scream (2022) (7/27/22)
Kimi (7/26/22)
The Duke (7/26/22)
Marry Me (7/27/22)
Sundown (7/27/22)

So it's in chronological order, even if the dates are not.

Of course, this does not work on Letterboxd, the other place I record the order of my movie viewings. A movie on a later date cannot appear before a movie on an earlier date, for obvious reasons. So Scream comes after The Duke but before Marry Me on there. 

And hey! This "crazy" phenomenon gave me the excuse to write my first post from this trip. There figure to be more.