?Taken is making a lot of money!? an executive said. ?I know! This is great news!? said another. They toasted champagne glasses, filled with expensive alcohol and shredded spec scripts and drank deeply that night. ?You know,? the first executive said, ?we should make a sequel to Taken. I bet it would make a lot of money too.?
?How in the fuck do you make a sequel to Taken?? asked the second executive, and they proceeded to make the sequel without ever answering that question.
I'm not against sequels, by any means. Some of my favorite movies are sequels: The Empire Strikes Back, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, and Bride of Frankenstein, just to name a few. But all of these sequels have something in common: they have a natural right to exist. Because, and I know that this may shock you, there's a reason for them. Taken 2 does not have this same reason.
The first problem lies with the title. Taken 2 implies that someone was fucking stolen, again. Thus, it's literally Taken Again. If you could name it something else and do something new with Brian, Liam Neeson?s character in the series, maybe it could be slightly forgivable. But this isn't James Bond, so audiences aren't ready for a departure from titles that include the word ?taken.? They?re not used it. They?d see a trailer of Liam Neeson shooting people and asking for locations, with a different title at the end of the trailer, and think, This looks awfully familiar.
But maybe it's a movie that includes people being taken, but under radically different circumstances. Maybe Liam Neeson is so good at his taking-people-back job that he's started an organization that helps to find kidnapped people. No one would expect that. It?d be like a Ghostbusters team, except with broken knee caps and bloody noses. I would watch the hell out of that movie.
But nope, Taken 2 is a departure in the sense that the only other person in Neeson?s family, his ex-wife, is being taken. Because they can't possibly build up the kind of motivation that would require Neeson to look for someone else. It has to be a person that has a built-in sympathy clause. I've seen both Taken and Taken 2, and because she has the title of ?ex-wife that Neeson has an emotionally complicated relationship with?, we're expected to say ?Oh, man. This drama is fantastic.? But we don't, because the script shakes it's head at any attempt to get close to the ex-wife?s character. I cared more about the way someone?s bed was made than anything the ex-wife did.
The plot itself is literally the only plot you can have with a title like Taken 2 that doesn't have a synopsis that includes ?like a Ghostbusters team.? The wife is kidnapped by people hired by the father of one of Neeson?s victims in the first Taken. In the same way that they expect us to know the title ?ex-wife? and feel sympathy, we're supposed to see the title ?father? and get the hint that this time, it's personal. But it never is. Because this is Taken 2, which is the same damn thing as Taken 1, and we were done with people being taken by the end of the first film.
So, considering the state of Taken, Taken 3 will have both the ex-wife AND the daughter being taken at the same time, because why not both? They?re signified as ?ex-wife? and ?daughter?, so that has to mean something, right? But what the Taken franchise refuses to understand is that when you double nothing, it's still a lot of nothing.
Blake says
i’m pretty sure in Taken 3, HE’S the one who is taken
Nathan says
Stupid premise but reasonably entertaining mindless drivel. What annoyed me was the 12A rating which meant that every action scene is filmed with spazzy cam which jerks all over the place to avoid showing any actual violence. Got a bit jarring after a while.
Gingemo! says
I’m sorry Daniel, you said you watched the film? The plot also involves Neeson’s character being ‘Taken’ as well, and the focus of the film is him using his ‘special skills’ to escape. I guess you spent the whole film watching the ladies in the row in front.
Whilst i agree the plot of the film doesnt live up to the previous outing, i found it well worth going to see. It’s a ‘Quantum of Solace’ of sorts, being a more or less follow-on from the first film.
It is sad to see this site falling very well short of the standard set by the previous team, as all we seem to get are shoddy whiney unthought out articles like this…okay you dont like it, but at least get your facts straight before writing.
WASUPI says
Gingemo, I think you were watching the guys in the second raw if you think you have the facts straight. Never for a second did you think that how possibly a Mark happens to be the son of a muslim, or his cousin slash friend being shot in the eye through the wall whole is named Nikoll- for its the same as Nicholas another Christian name, on an extremist muslim. Dude come on, really this movie was a big failure, with a big F and an A too… waste of my 20 dollars