Ten years ago is a nice, around number, ripe for reminiscing. It is with that in mind that I present to you the start of an ongoing series I’m calling Ten for Ten — basically I take something really cool, underrated, badass, or just really worth remembering from ten years ago and tell you about it here, a decade past its prime (hashtag: topical). You may even notice similar themes pop up on the 20th and 30th of each month, too. Because as a child I was always told to recycle and they never said that concept doesn’t apply to gimmicks, too.
Two-double-ought-three was the year where the sequel finally became king; properties like The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Bad Boys 2, X-2 (the X-men movie), 2 Fast 2 Furious all did outrageously well and as a result the moviemaking industry decided to slowly phase out all non-sequels/remakes by the year 2020 (trust me, it’s coming…or have you not seen the trailers for The Fast and the Furious 6, Top Gun 3D, Die Hard 4, or heard about the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie getting greenlit?).
But in a year where both twitter AND facebook hadn’t been invented yet and Netflix was still MAILING disc to its client base (I bet if video streaming had never been created the US Postal Service would still be delivering on Saturdays), what else were people to do besides go out and see movies? Talk? Yeah right, good one Dr. Phil. However amidst the turmoil of the pre-internet-addicted era, one 2003 sequel stands out above the rest…some would even go as far to say that it spawned the “threequel” craze that followed soon after (though I’m sure Star Wars, Back to the Future, and Indiana Jones franchises would disagree). I’m referring of course to The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
Like a boss.
mind bullets 