Jarhead 3: Sequelitis

I may not be a doctor, but trust me, there is certainly in inflammation present in the Jarhead sequels.

The original Jarhead, though marketed somewhat as an action film, a proper war film set in the Middle East, was actually more of a psychological exploration of soldiers during the downtime between full-on engagements.  In my eyes, it was alright, nothing all that special, but solid enough as it was to not put down in any specific way.

Imagine my surprise a couple years ago when I saw that a sequel existed.  Jarhead 2: Field of Fire had absolutely nothing to do with its namesake original.  Instead, it was the type of action thriller the original had been advertised to be.  It was relatively low-budget, shot in Bulgaria (home of the barely-existent budget), and told a pretty weak and by-the-numbers war story of a unit fighting its way through Afghanistan, all the while protecting an Afghani woman from harm.  At the time, I thought it was a pretty shameless display of drudging up the memory of a relatively popular movie only to use it as a referential springboard for an unrelated property that would otherwise be completely overlooked as the derivative waste of space it was.  Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw a third Jarhead title pop up on my VOD sites.  “The fuck!?” though I, under the impression they had already sufficiently whipped the dead horse two years prior.  Apparently not.

Jarhead 3: The Siege plays like The Asylum’s knockoff of 13 Hours:  A squad of marines stationed at an American embassy in the Middle East (I wanna say Saudi Arabia…?) must protect the compound when it’s suddenly attacked by local hotheads.  Like I said, a watered-down 13 Hours.

Convinced that The Asylum was behind this, I went to IMDb to confirm my suspicions.  Sadly, though, I found myself to be quite in the wrong:  This wasn’t produced by The Asylum at all, but rather a division of Universal, the same company that produced the original Jarhead.  Now, Universal has never been one to shy away from cashing in on prior successes: just look at the far-too-long-lived Land Before Time series for proof.  But this is just fucking ridiculous.

The company behind Jarhead 3 is Universal 1440 Entertainment.  Their prior credits, according to IMDb, are as shameless as follows, in chronological order from the earliest: The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption, Curse of Chucky (AKA Child’s Play 6), Beethoven’s Treasure Tail (AKA Beethoven 7), The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power, The Man with the Iron Fists 2 (a film that made me beg for the sweet mercy of the mediocre original), Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, and, coming soon, Honey 3 (a sequel to an already in-name-only sequel), Hard Target 2 (a sequel to a John Woo/JCVD film from 23 years ago), and the sadly upcoming Kindergarten Cop 2.  Gotta love the lack of creativity that goes into these things, eh?

What gets to me, though, isn’t just the lack of creative effort.  It’s the blatant cashing in.  In The Asylum’s defense, they bust out some relatively new scripts that don’t even necessarily rip off the movies they’re marketed to mimic.  For example, Transmorphers owes more to The Terminator than to Transformers.  Sure, their mockbusters generally water down other ideas, but they generally don’t have the balls (or the legal rights) to coattail pre-existing properties.  Universal, on the other hand, is more than happy to greenlight plenty of low-budget, straight-to-video/VOD pieces of derivative garbage and hook them to nearly completely unrelated properties that have shown to be successful in the past.  The laziness and greed is far too palpable for my liking, especially when it’s shoved in my face with no hint of shame.

It’s one thing to beat a dead horse within an inch of its afterlife, keeping franchises alive for far too long, overstaying welcomes left and right; it’s another to pretty much lie to us all by marketing the dregs of the cinematic world as continuations of beliked (I can’t bring myself to use the term “beloved” here) titles.  This is not only deplorable on a principle level, but also on the premise that it brings into the world a bunch of shitty movies that, frankly, ought not to exist, especially when it means better ones remain unmade, unsupported.  Fuck this garbage.  Straight up.