We caught up with Orci on the red carpet at the SyFy/Entertainment Weekly party, last Saturday evening, and we had a lot of questions for him.

First of all, we asked Orci about his statements the other day that Star Trek 2 and 3 might have a linked storyline — maybe with a cliffhanger, or a plot thread that continues from one movie into the next. Orci downplayed the speculation, saying he, writer Alex Kurtzman, director J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof and producer Bryan Burk had had one meeting, lasting 15 minutes, and they had considered for a brief moment the idea of doing the next two movies as a linked story. But it's still way too early to say anything definite, and they're still in the phase of throwing ideas out there and seeing what sticks.

When we interviewed Orci and his writing partner, Alex Kurtzman, about Transformers 2, they pointed out that it's very common for the second movie in a series to feature the protagonist trying to quit the "hero" racket. (Think Superman II or Spider-Man 2.) Transformers 2 follows that pattern, with Sam wanting to go off to college and lead a normal life. So we were wondering if Star Trek 2 would follow that formula as well — would we see Kirk thinking about quitting the Enterprise and going back to Iowa?

But Orci says the formula isn't iron-clad, and it doesn't apply to every second movie in a series. In the case of Trek, he sees the Enterprise crew as being much more committed to their mission and to doing good in the universe, so that kind of "hero no more" story wouldn't fit.

Meanwhile, Orci says that the Fringe writing staff had originally wanted to wait a few years before unveiling the "alternate world" storyline — but doing it now forces them to be more inventive about what happens next, and to create an even larger world to explore. "Let us force ourselves to come up with a bigger world. So you get a little bit of both. We wanted to answer things and see where that leads.

As for Cowboys And Aliens, the movie with the world's most self-explanatory title, Orci says, "We're wrapping up another draft, and hopefully that one will be good enough."

After yesterday's list of sequels that don't suck — and I still cling to RoboCop 2, although maybe I should watch it again — people asked for a list of threequels that do suck. Which seemed kind of pointless, because that would be the same as a complete list of threequels. Search For Spock? Sucked. Return Of The Jedi? Blew. Spider-Man 3? Superman III? RoboCop 3? X-Men 3? It's making my head pound just to list them. Alien³?

In the non-"this movie is melting my pituitary gland" category, there's... Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. Which isn't science fiction, and for my money isn't quite as good as Raiders. But it's way better than Temple Of Doom. There are also some movies with numbers higher than three that were decent, like Star Treks IV and VI.

So why are so many "threequels" so horrifyingly bad? Here are some possible explanations.

There's no ready-made formula.

Talking to Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman about Transformers 2 drove something home for me: there's a standard formula for the second movie in the series, just like there is for the first. In the first movie, the young hero discovers his (usually his) heroic destiny and learns from a father figure, who frequently dies or transcends somehow. In the second movie, the hero rejects his heroic mission and tries to return to a normal life — just like Superman in Superman II, Spidey in Spider-Man II and Sam in Transformers 2. Even in Star Trek II, you could argue that Kirk is questioning whether he's too old to keep adventuring.

But what happens in the third movie? Uhh... The hero gets a new hairstyle? There are more bad guys than before? What? There's no road map.

Studio interference.

Sam Raimi blames Sony for the disaster that was Spider-Man 3, and I sort of believe him. Once a movie series becomes cash-cowy enough for the studio to want to do a third go-around, I guess the suits get a bit antsy. They start insisting on shoe-horning Venom into a movie where he and his giant alien tongue just don't belong. Or they demand random rewrites of a perfectly good script, or weird stunt casting. (Hello, Richard Pryor!) The same execs who might have been willing to let a film-maker have a long leash the first couple times start tugging at that leash more, and choking the director and writers, because there's more at stake.

Just google the phrases "third movie" and "studio interference", and you'll see what I mean. Terminator 3, Alien3, X-Men 3... all blamed on studio bigshots stepping in and meddling.

Creative attrition.

Sam Raimi's presence on Spider-Man 3 was, in itself, an aberration. Normally, after directing two awesome movies in a series, someone like Raimi would have stepped out to do a serious Nazi epic or cop drama, leaving Spider-Man in the hands of Brett Ratner or Joel Schumacher. I'm actually not the world's biggest fan of Tim Burton's first two Bat-films, but compared to the Schumacher films that followed, Batman and Batman Returns look like Citizen Kane and Citizen Kane's Big Score. (Now I'm picturing Citizen Kane In Africa — sorry, in-joke.)

For some reason, very few writers and directors are willing to stick around for a third ride on the blockbuster-mobile, even if they're up for a second.

Creative exhaustion.

And even if any of the original creative team do come along, it's entirely possible to get a bit burned out after spending years of your life working on one saga. (It's probably a different matter if you're filming a trilogy all in one go, like Lord Of The Rings.) As much as any studio nonsense, I'm willing to bet that Sam Raimi's Spider-fatigue was a big reason for Spider-Man 3's problems. Raimi needed to go work on a smaller, less mainstream project, like Drag Me To Hell. (And here's hoping that his return to low-budget horror has cleansed his palate a bit, so he can come back to Peter Parker with a fresh eye.

And finally, there's always...

Problems in the source material.

A lot of these big movie series are based on comic books, television shows and older movies, which started out with a clear premise and a simple format: a guy dresses up as a bat and fights crime with the aid of fantastical tech. A guy gets bitten by a spider and gains fantastica powers, which he uses to fight crime. Etc. etc. So if your first movie is based on the early issues of the comic, or the early episodes of the TV show, you're golden. But the longer the source material goes on, the more convoluted and confusing it gets. The guy who dresses as a bat teams up with a circus acrobat and a girl librarian, plus he's got an imp from another dimension following him around, and so on. The more simple and pure the concept starts out, the more confusing and ridiculous it gets. So if a movie series tries to stick to the original, it'll run into similar problems the longer it goes on.

That's one huge problem with X-Men 3, for example — the need to include cameos from dozens of random X-people who were big in the 1980s and 1990s. Ditto with Venom in Spider-Man 3, and Robin and Batgirl in the Schumacher Bat-scursions. It doesn't really excuse those films' wretchness, but it's really true that the longer a serial goes on, the more baggage it tends to accrue. Movie-makers have be very careful to avoid shouldering that baggage as well.

X2

The original cast and director returned for this second outing, and it brings forward the themes of mutants in a society that hates and fears them. This time around, the rogue Col. William Stryker is plotting to use the mutants' own technology and superpowers to track them all down and destroy them. The early scenes of Magneto in a plastic prison are striking and well-realized, and the attack on Xavier's school drives home how vulnerable our mutant heroes are in a world that hates them. The first X-Men movie was a bit rushed and formulaic with the need to introduce so many mutant heroes, but this one feels a bit more cohesive.

Back To The Future Part 2

Easily my favorite of the BTTF movies, this one actually takes us to the real future, instead of just 1985. Biff, the hapless bully, beats Marty at his own time-hacking game, creating an alternate timeline where Biff rules. I'm a sucker for any storyline where the hero has to cross his own timeline and run around the same series of events a second time, without upsetting all the applecarts he set in motion the first time around. Sure, it's goofy, but so was the first one.

Superman II

A confession: I haven't yet seen the "director's cut" that came out on DVD a couple years ago, because the idea of giving this movie the same ending as the first one seemed just patently silly. Famously, director Richard Donner had a falling out with the studio over this film, and the studio brought in someone else to finish this movie, and recut the final product. But I still really like the original cut, for its awesome mega-villains from Superman's own home planet, including General Zod. Of all the sequels to feature the hero giving up his powers to live a normal life, this is the most interesting, since Superman probably couldn't be with Lois otherwise. And I love the random yahoo in a bar beating the crap out of Clark. The only major flaw is the memory-erasing kiss at the end, which is total drek.

Robocop 2

This is another questionable one — but this film has a special place in my heart. Frank Miller's first foray into making movies, back when he was still an edgy maniac, picks up the satirical themes of the first movie and goes nuts with them. (Sure, the studio messed with Frank's script, but the result is still pleasingly freaktastic.) Detroit is being privatized, the police force is maneuvered into being on strike, and Robocop is out there on his own. We venture deeper into the dark heart of Robocop, as Alex Murphy tries and fails to recapture his original life with his family — and meanwhile, every attempt to create a new Robocop only leads to suicides (and murder-suicides) as the replacements can't face the horror of what they've become. Until OCP tries creating a totally amoral, power-crazed version.

Spider-Man 2

After reading the original Michael Chabon script for this movie, I marginally prefer that version — the whole "Peter Parker stops being Spider-Man" subplot in this movie is handled really weirdly and confusingly. (He suddenly needs glasses? Why?) But either version of the story is still a worthwhile continuation of the first film. Alfred Molina is a sympathetic but deranged Doc Octopus, and the sequence where Spidey stops a runaway train — and then the passengers don't rat out his identity — is a classic for a reason.

Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

The first Peter Cushing Dalek movie was a total flying-saucer wreck, with blond hippie aliens in blue eye-shadow and non-deadly Daleks. But this sequel, also based on an episode from the Doctor Who television series, is a total classic. It has much more energy, from beginning to end, and the Daleks are awesomely bloodthirsty. The supporting cast includes Bernard Cribbins and Philip Madoc, and the TV episode's slightly bloated plotline benefits a lot from being compressed down to a movie length.

Blade II

Guillermo del Toro stepped in and directed this sequel, instantly elevating it to a gothic horror masterpiece along the way. Blade, the "daywalker," is more enigmatic and cooler, and his relationship with Whistler takes a weird turn when he has to cure Whistler of vampirism. But mostly, this movie is memorable for its genetic engineering project, where the vampires are trying to breed a new race of super-vampires. Vampires + weird science = win.

The Chronicles Of Riddick

Thanks to Pansy for suggesting this one — it really should be on the list. Riddick, the merciless killer from Pitch Black, gets a whole backstory and and a heroic destiny, but mostly he kicks a whole lot more ass than in the first movie.

Dawn Of The Dead

Following on from the undead flesh-eating plague set up in Night Of The Living Dead, George Romero's second zombie film shows in more detail the effects of a widespread epidemic of reanimated cannibals. Containing one of the most famous shopping mall sequences in movie history, it's no accident that this is the Romero classic that Zack Snyder chose to remake. Thanks to Dr.Wadd for suggesting this one — although I think I can't quite get with Escape From L.A.

Mad Max: The Road Warrior

Many people probably didn't even know this was a sequel when it came out. The first Mad Max movie didn't make nearly as big an impact (in the United States, anyway) as this incredible follow-up, with its long scenes of caravan carnage. (It didn't help that when the original Max came out, Mel Gibson was dubbed with a horrendous American accent.) The original Max is a total classic, but movies like Doomsday are still biting the feeling of anarchy and vehicular mayhem that this sequel brings. Fans are still doing Road Warrior reconstructions on the public roads.

Aliens

James Cameron steps in and shows how to do a sequel to someone else's creation. Ripley goes back to the moon where she encountered the alien eggs, accompanied by a platoon of colonial marines. Every character in this film is an awesome archetype, from Burke the corporate weenie to Vasquez the tough marine chick. The supporting cast of this film is more memorable than the main characters of a lot of other films. (Even Newt, the cute kid, is tolerable.) From the moment they return to LV-426, the tension is palpable, and the action sequences only reinforce the feeling of a squad under siege in cramped quarters. By the time Ripley takes care of the alien queen using that power suit at the end, you're jumping up and cheering for her.

Terminator 2

Cameron already proved he had what it took to make a killer sequel when he returned to the film that put him on the map. In some ways, this is just a remake of the original, only with Arnie's Terminator in the role of protector instead of pursuer. But just like Cameron increased Ripley's bad-assery in Aliens, he does the same for Sarah Connor here, including her awesome mental institution escape. Having a reprogrammed Terminator — and actually getting to open up its head and change it from read-only to read-write — opens up all sorts of fascinating questions about the nature of artificial consciousness that the first movie barely touched on. All the cool ideas in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles get their start here.

The Dark Knight

I almost left this one off because of the constant debate over whether it really counts as science fiction... but still. This really is a primer in how to do a decent sequel. Batman Begins shows us the making of Batman, and the sequel comes close to showing us the breaking of him. Instead of another sequel where the hero randomly decides to walk away from being a hero in order to get married or have a "normal" life, this film shows us Bruce Wayne choosing to remain Batman in the face of almost unimaginable chaos that's laid at his door. Okay, he does almost reveal his identity at one point, but in the end, this film is a great continuation of the first movie because it shows just what it takes for Bruce to stay Batman. Thanks to all the commenters who insisted it should be in here.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

RoboCop 2 director Irvin Kerschner also directed another sequel, which might be slightly more famous. There's so much to love about this film, including our first meetings with Yoda and Lando Calrissian, and the way Darth Vader goes through Admirals like popcorn. But really, the reason why it's the best film in the series is because of the way it builds up to the revelation that Luke Skywalker's dad went bad — and there's an excellent chance that Luke will go the same way. The sequence in the cave, where Luke confronts his own inner darkness, is more powerful than everything Hayden Christensen ever committed to film.

Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

And then, of course, there's the film that all other sequels are compared to. It doesn't hurt that the first movie in the series consists of three hours of watching a train pull out of a station, while people talk about grain futures. But still, this movie makes the original Trek characters as vivid as they've ever been, from Spock and McCoy both giving birthday presents to Kirk all the way up to the end. Almost every line of dialog in this movie has been in someone's sig file at some point, and this film does for space battles what Road Warrior does for car chases. And then there's Ricardo Montalban's magnetic turn as the obsessed, arrogant space maniac, Khan.

I had been meaning to write this "keep Khan out of Star Trek 2 (or 12, rather)" blog post for a while now — but honestly I thought Orci and Kurtzman were just kidding about including him. The script for the next Trek, at this point, consists of a few Gorn cartoons on a cocktail napkin, and they're barely batting ideas around. So it's easy for them to hint at all sorts of fan-favorite stuff: Sure, maybe the sequel will include the Doomsday Machine and V'Ger blasting each other. Why not? Anything's possible at this point, and it doesn't do any harm to answer "maybe" to every question. And of course, if the fans get particularly thrilled about one of these trial balloons, then that tells them something.

But now, it sounds as though the Fringe co-creators may actually be considering resurrecting Khan, who's still sleeping in his little suspended-animation capsule in their revamped timeline. So just in case they're really serious about this, here's a list of reasons why a new Khan would be a terrible, epically bad idea:

You can't improve on the original.

They don't make villains like they used to — and that's not just a cranky observation. It's really true. If you think about it. Khan is almost emblematic of what we no longer see in movie and TV villains, for several reasons. He's suave, in a way that nobody is suave any more. (Can you even think of a Hollywood actor who's suave now? Maybe George Clooney.) He's ruthless, and willing to do whatever it takes to win, and to prove his superiority. His arrogant swagger isn't just bravado, it's ideological: he believes, deep down, that he's the pinnacle of human evolution.

And you can't discount the Ricardo Montalban factor. His "Corinthian leather" showmanship is easily mocked, but he was one of a hundred bullies, bureaucrats and demagogues who went head-to-head with Kirk. And there's a reason he's one of the few we remember. (Remember Anan 7 from "A Taste Of Armageddon"? I didn't think so.) Montalban brings all of his gravitas, charm and menace to the role. I can't think of an actor working today who could do the young Khan justice, and it would be hard to imagine a modern-day summer movie that could make Khan as compelling as he was.

And remember, this wouldn't be the batshit-crazy, revenge-driven Khan from the movie. It would be the smooth-as-silk younger Khan from the episode "Space Seed."

Say goodbye to the freshness.

Abrams' Star Trek reboot threw armfuls of candy at the fans, to distract them from the fact that this was a whole new Star Trek. You had the Kobayashi Maru, the classic lines like "I am, and always will be your friend" and "I'm giving her all she's got," the Orion woman, Pike in a wheelchair, and so on. The constant hand-holding got a little annoying, because I'd rather see a movie that's concerned with telling a story than with placating a minority of OCD fans. But it was okay, because behind all of this clutter, there was a fresh story.

Even though Nero was a weak villain, he was at least something new, and he had a few really great moments. But it's hard to imagine a storyline starring Khan that wouldn't feel a bit warmed-over. It would be the opposite of the first movie: a few fresh ideas, wrapped around a core of fan-pleasing deja vu. Pass.

He'd probably be just one of two or three villains.

It'll be hard enough to avoid the traditional "sequel = villain multi-ball" syndrome in this film, in any case. It's hard to think of a recent sequel that hasn't had two or three villains. The pattern goes like this: the original film has the hero's origin story, plus one villain. The second movie lacks an origin story, so the writers throw in a second (or third) villain to compensate. Boom, you're in the movie business.

But for some reason, the addition of Khan makes me even more certain the new movie would end up having more than one villain. (Despite all those tantalizing hints that there might not be any villain at all.) After all, Khan has already starred in one movie as a solo villain. So how do you distinguish between this film and Wrath Of Khan? I know – why not have Khan plus a couple other villains. Like, say, Khan and the Squire of Gothos both giving the Enterprise hell. Or Khan teaming up with the Klingons! That would be awesome! Er, no.

Khan would need to have some kind of trauma.

It's another iron-clad rule of modern-day villainy. The villain can't just be a shithead who wants to rule the universe — a modern-day reinvention of Khan would need to be emotionally scarred. And he'd probably have daddy issues, or some other childhood trauma motivating him to go around trying to take over starships.

You certainly couldn't have a villain who's motivated by ideology — not in this day and age, and not in a Hollywood blockbuster. In "Space Seed," Khan wasn't just a random maniac: he was the product of a genetic engineering project to create the ultimate Nietzschean superman, designed to rule the world. Just like Doctor Who's Daleks, Khan is intended to conjure echoes of the Nazi "master race" ethos. He's a warning about the dangers of meddling with the human genome too much, but he's also the product of a social movement that believed in his rulership. Strip all of that away, and he's just another snarling maniac.

The new Kirk doesn't have the gravitas.

One huge reason why Khan is such a swaggering, charming, magnetic figure in "Space Seed" is because he has to stand up to William Shatner's Kirk, who'd long since perfected his own brand of both swagger and smarm.

Not only that, but the episode comments explicitly on the differences between the two men: one from the barbaric 1990s, the other from the civilized, egalitarian 23rd century. Khan's forcefulness and brutish charm ("I take what I want") are contrasted with Kirk's more domesticated manliness. Yes, Kirk is a sexist tool as well — but compared to Khan, he's a sensitive new-age guy. The episode hammers home the comparisons: Kirk keeps his masculinity under layers of manners and irony, whereas Khan's is right out there in the open. And that's why Khan is so fascinating to Lt. Marla McGivers: she sees him as a throwback to a rawer, more unrefined version of masculinity.

I'm sure Chris Pine's "young hooligan" version of Kirk will grow on me, but I don't think he'll ever have the same "gentleman scholar" vibe that Shatner managed to convey. If you put Pine up against a young Ricardo Montalban, I'm not sure he could really hold his own. And most of all, I don't think you could create the same contrast between the more civilized Kirk and the barbaric Khan.

But the main reason I'd rather not see Khan come back is:

No more excuses for dyslexic bloggers to misspell his name as "Kahn."

Seriously, it makes me think that Madeline Kahn is going to jump out and start showtuning the Enterprise crew to death. Anything we can do to prevent that, we should do.

Top image is from ShitmyJorts.com. All other images from IDW's "Wrath Of Khan" comic book. [Movie-Moron interview via TrekMovie.com]

A new Predator movie, with or without a post-governorship Arnold Schwarzenegger? Why not. A new Fantastic Voyage remake? In development. (And it won't be as campy as the original, he promises.) A sequel to Hitman? Maybe. A new Die Hard movie? "Never say never." A third X-Files movie, in spite of the second one's poor showing? It's entirely up to Chris Carter. A stand-alone Silver Surfer movie, building on Fantastic Four 2? It's in the pipeline. Independence Day 2? If Roland Emmerich wants to do it, Fox is on board.

And, as previously reported, Rothman also told IESB he's already thinking of Avatar in terms of "franchise potential," so we could be seeing Avatar 2 or 3, directed by someone else, in a few years. And then there's the Daredevil reboot, which is "something we are thinking very seriously about."

To be fair, at least half of the above-listed projects are probably just being tossed around or just not being "ruled out." But if even half those films get made, and other studios think the same way, our current deluge of contempt-breeding familiarity could look like a trickle by comparison. [IESB]

Headline: "Stardust Evidence Points to Planet Collision"
Movie Title: Armageddon II: Are you Gettin' It?
Director: Michael Bay
The Set-Up: For reasons that defy logic, Venus has jumped its orbit and is headed towards Earth. Back at the farm, scientists determine that they must detonate the rogue planet before it obliterates the motherland. So NASA turns to a grizzled, retired explosives expert (the best in the world, natch) for an assist. One catch: They must first find a way to pry him away from The Bottle and rekindle the curmudgeon's will to live. Perhaps a visit from his saintly kindergarten-teacher ex-wife will do the trick?

Headline: "U.K. experts say Stonehenge a place of healing"
Movie Title: How to Get to 11—The Nigel Tufnel Chronicles, Vol. 1
Director: Akiva Schaffer
The Set-Up: It's 1973. Having recorded five albums with his band Spinal Tap, guitarist Nigel Tufnel is in a creative funk. Seeking spiritual inspiration, he makes a pilgrimage to Stonehenge, "where a man's a man and the children dance to the Pipes of Pan."* He soon lands in a hospital after contracting a VD from this chance encounter with a Tap groupie who happened to be part of his tour group. (Hey, she looked clean.) And it is there, hopped up on antibiotics and whatnot, that Tufnel starts writing Spinal Tap's no-so-seminal album 1974's Intravenous de Milo.

*Note: The track "Stonehenge" ended up appearing on the band's 1975 release, The Sun Never Sweats.

Headline: "Scientists demonstrate how to make a hidden portal"
Title: The Being John Malkovich Prequel (working title)
Director: John Grisham, in his directorial debut
The Set-Up: Before the employees of LesterCorp got wind of the portal, an oblivious John Malkovich was making troubling career decisions, like starring in Mary Reilly or Con Air or The Man in the Iron Mask. You see, for a brief period of time, his consciousness was inhabited by a schizophrenic. Trapped in the eccentric actor's consciousness by a mad scientist, the mental patient is ruled missing until a perseverant psychiatrist tracks him. A lost cause? Hardly. Ignoring her skeptical colleagues, she embarks on an interdimensional adventure to liberate her fragile patient from the mind of Malkovich, all the while giving him hope with her tough-love maternal instincts.

First, try abstinence.

The absolute best way to avoid sequel-itis is to avoid sequels. Just say no. Don't succumb to peer pressure — just because everybody else lets go and greenlights a fourth Spider-Man movie and a second Wanted movie doesn't mean you have to. Tell everybody you're saving yourself for the right original project.

If abstinence fails, at least don't be a story slut.

So you had a story that worked really well in the first installment, and you want to go back to the well. At least try to expand on the story that worked the first time — don't go hooking up with every stray idea that comes along. Look at The Matrix: The first film had a perfectly excellent set of ideas, dealing with the nature of reality, and whether you can be sure you're not living in a virtual world created by evil machines. The Wachowskis even wrote a sequel script that dealt with those same issues (a copy has been floating around for years, and I think it's genuine). But then they decided to go off in a million other directions, dealing with fate vs. free will, cyclical history, rogue computer programs, evil ghost Rastas, etc. etc. etc. Now we can't even watch the original Matrix without thinking about all the layers of crud the Wachowskis added to it. Like orgasm cake and the keymaker and stuff.

Don't get caught up in trying to chase a bigger and bigger rush.

It's understandable — you want your sequel to be bigger and crashier than the original. If the original had one great chase scene, the sequel needs five great chase scenes. If the original had a poignant soliloquy about the hero's burden, your follow-up novel should have a 500-page treatise on the burdens heroes must bear, and whether it helps for the hero to have lumbar support. Etc. etc. This is how we get movies, with numerals in their titles, that are five hours long and feel as though you've always been watching this movie, since before you were born. (It's not science fiction, but the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie made me feel like I was keeping vigil over the melting of the polar icecaps.)

Along those lines, skip the villain crowd scenes.

Villains are like giant missiles. You know how when you shoot two giant missiles in opposite directions, they can cancel each other out? So that it's almost like you didn't fire any missiles at all? Villains are like that. Two villains are almost like no villains in a movie. Three villains are like half a villain, according to a complex mathematical formula that I will be happy to sketch on a napkin at Comic-Con for anyone who asks. More than three villains in a movie, and you actually have a villain implosion that leaves your movie completely mellow and sort of peaceful... like laying in the grass watching the clouds explode in the distance.

Avoid the "We won! What now?" subtext... or at least do something with it.

When you make one of the biggest movies of all time, it can be kind of overwhelming, and the pressure to craft a sequel that matches — or tops — that accomplishment can be pretty intense. It's almost like you, the filmmaker, are the hero who's vanquished the ultimate evil, and you're left wondering what you're supposed to do with the rest of your life. So it's tempting to play out those anxieties in your story itself. Like Spider-Man 3, for example, which is clearly partly about the creators' anxieties about the success of Spider-Man 2. How else do you explain the fact that Spider-Man has gone from being publicly reviled to becoming everybody's favorite hero, with people celebrating Spider-Man Day? And suddenly the story is about whether fame will go to Peter Parker's head. Wha huh?

If you have to play out the "What next?" anxiety in your story, do what The Dark Knight did: make Batman's success part of the problem. Batman has done too good a job of pushing out the mob, and he's opened up a power vacuum that can only be filled by a mofo as crazy as Bats himself.

Don't do a three-quel.

Just don't. There's no need. Or if you're doing a book thing, maybe do a trilogy and stop there. Don't go back to the well until it's a brackish puce color. We'll all thank you.