Ask McFartnuggets: “What Is With All These Prequels These Days?”

I've always wanted to see
Batman fight dinosaurs.

Dear McFartnuggets: 

Fox has a new Batman prequel show coming out called “Gotham” that follows Detective James Gordon before he becomes Commissioner back when Bruce Wayne is a little kid. Who really wants to watch this? Watching the story of how Batman became Batman is fine. That’d be a nice prequel and it’s already been done. How far are they going to go with the prequels? Let’s say this does well, are they going to go even farther back and show the stories of James Gordon’s father? Why not just go all the way back to when Gotham was settled by the pilgrims? Let’s go even farther back and show Gotham when it was inhabited by dinosaurs! When are they going to just stop with this crap already? Can’t people make up new stories?  -- Betty from San Jose, California

Dear Betty:

They can make new stories, but it’s harder for studios to trust new stories. If they can hire some English screenwriter to make up new stories about famous comic book characters then that’s the chance they’ll take. As far as a show about cavemen in Gotham City, I doubt they’ll go that far back, but who really knows! These days they’ll make shows about anything. All you can do is get used to it because it looks like TV networks are doing a lot of comic book shows. They started with “Agents of SHIELD” and now they’re doing “The Flash.” It won’t be long until every comic book in the world has it’s own TV adaptation. The thing about prequels like “Gotham” is they’re a limited series. There’s no chance it can be hugely successful and have ten seasons. They know what they’re doing won’t last very long. Once they’re done telling all the origin stories they’ll inevitably move into the future and then you’ll probably see live action versions of “Batman Beyond” and “Spiderman 2099.” At least then they’ll be working with respected material as opposed to stuff some TV screenwriter is just pulling out of his ass in 2014. The real question is what are they going to do when every comic book character has already had a TV show with prequels and futuristic spin offs? What will happen then? I’m guessing human civilization will be over by then.

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