I don't know what you want.
If you're looking for a ransom, I
can tell you I don't have money, but what
I do have are a very particular set of skills.
The Taken franchise has a unique place
among the canon of great action films.
The film's essentially completely reinvented
Liam Neeson as an actor for new audiences
and launched an entire subgenre of films
carried entirely by his newfound bona fides
as the next great Hollywood action star.
So what happened?
How did this promising film series take such a nosedive
into mediocrity?
Ultimately, it fell victim to one
of the greatest challenges any movie franchise faces,
a fear of reinvention.
This is gonna end bad for you.
Don't be such a pessimist.
But before we get an angry phone call from Brian Mills,
don't forget to subscribe to Nerdstalgic.
The year is 2008, only a few months before audiences
would be, well, taken by Taken.
The first Iron Man film sword into theaters.
Studios didn't know it then but this
would be the shot across the bow for the entire film industry.
It's this summer where the modern feverish
chase by every single studio to build
the next Marvel cinematic universe
would have its quiet beginning.
All of this context is to put into perspective
why Taken is truly one of the last
of its kind, a star-driven action blockbuster.
At this point in the history of movies,
the action genre is in the midst of an identity crisis.
By 2008, the reign of the great action movie
stars like Schwarzenegger and Stallone had ended.
It was an era ended by a mixture of increasingly diminishing
returns in both box office and film quality, not
to mention the earliest superhero films, especially
the Raimi Spider-Man or the Singer X-Men
were huge hits, proving that audiences were
ready for a different class of hero, which is exactly
what Liam Neeson was for action blockbusters
when he first appeared as Brian Mills
in the original Taken film.
Neeson's prestige as an actor was something very out
of the ordinary for this type of boilerplate action film.
His high-caliber status as an actor
lends the film more artistic credibility
than a Jean-Claude van Damme or a Steven Seagal
ever could muster.
The film was pitched to director Pierre Morel
by producer Luc Besson, and almost immediately Liam Neeson
was sought after to play the lead.
According to Neeson himself, he originally
did not envision his rebirth as an action star to happen.
In an interview with GQ, Neeson said
I wanted to do more physical stuff.
I really thought it would be kind of a little side
road for my so-called career.
I really thought it would go straight to video,
but it just got great word of mouth.
I was stunned.
Despite his surprise, if you look back
on Neeson's filmography, you can see a burgeoning action
movie star has always been lurking
behind his award-worthy reputation.
Some of his earliest roles were in large-scale action films
like Excalibur or The Dead Pool to taking
on a skewed version of a crime fighter
in Sam Raimi's Darkman to only a few years
before Taken playing Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins.
Neeson's career has a surprising amount
of action film highlights for a guy who
until Taken was seen almost exclusively
as a serious thespian.
When you go back and watch the original trailer
for the first Taken, it's evident
how much the entire film was sold completely
on Liam Neeson's gravitas.
His over-the-phone monologue to the ransom
who kidnapped his daughter Kim became instantly iconic.
However, it's impossible to imagine
some of the other iconic action stars delivering
the same speech to the same effect.
I'm going to take you to the bank, Senator Trent,
to the blood bank.
This single monologue and Neeson's steely delivery
probably earned the film about 50% of its box office alone.
The movie, while certainly entertaining,
is a gritty, stripped down, meat-and-potatoes thriller.
Its success rests almost entirely on Neeson.
So with all the success, what went wrong
with the other Taken films?
With any film franchise, the biggest question
you have to ask when it comes to sequels
is does this film justify its own existence.
The answer for both films is a resounding no.
One of the major problems is that the premise
of the original Taken franchise really only has one core idea--
someone Brian Mills knows gets taken.
It's a premise that can't be replicated
without quickly getting stale.
At a certain point, if someone in your life
is getting kidnapped multiple times,
maybe you need to start taking stock of your own choices
rather than getting mad at everyone else.
I killed your son because he kidnapped my daughter.
Pierre Morel, director of the first Taken film,
similarly felt another Taken film would just
be a rehash of the same story.
He turned down the opportunity to direct the second film.
With Morel out, director Olivier Megaton
would take over directorial duties
for the second and third films.
While the films were financially successful,
the stories are utterly middling.
Taken 2 proves Pierre Morel's instincts
about the original film correct.
It just couldn't be replicated without feeling
like an absolute retread.
Your mother and I are going to be taken.
It also squanders its two most intriguing ideas
almost immediately.
First, the film's villains are made up
of entirely the friends and families of the people
Brian mills killed in the previous film.
The film's opening with a mass funeral
for everyone who was murdered in the first Taken
is the kind of unintentionally hilarious action movie
camp you don't see enough of these days.
But there's a kernel of a clever idea here.
This opening sequence digs into a somewhat subversive premise
to directly hold an action hero accountable for all those
he killed by having him confront their friends and families.
However, by the halfway point of the movie,
the film is no longer interested in any level of deconstruction
or moral questioning of its lead,
and it immediately wants us to cheer on another murderous dad
rampage.
The other wasted idea is that the film sets up
a reversal of the first movie where Brian and his ex-wife
Lenore are kidnapped, and instead Kim must step up
to perform the rescue.
The early sequences of Brian coaching his daughter
on how to be the lead of an action movie
is actually quite entertaining including
an increasingly ludicrous sequence where Kim haphazardly
throws live grenades into civilian areas
so her dad can pinpoint her location.
For a moment, Taken 2 seems as if it's
about to become the story of Kim becoming an action
star in her own right, but the movie is too eager
to abandon the premise as well as in favor
of getting Liam Neeson back to murdering
an endless supply of nameless goons
through horribly edited hand-to-hand combat sequences.
Ultimately, Taken 2's greatest sin
is that it sets up two far more interesting ideas for films
and then becomes nearly indistinguishable
from the original movie.
Instead of taking risks, it decides to play it safe,
which ends up being the death knell of the franchise.
Immediately post Taken 2, Liam Neeson
openly stated in an interview that it
was unlikely a third Taken film would happen.
Despite the critical thrashing the film took, the third movie
was brought into production rather quickly
with Taken 3 arriving in theaters two years after Taken
2.
Neeson's reservations about the third film
were no doubt quickly erased when he was reportedly
paid nearly half of Taken 3's $48 million budget
to appear in the film.
Taken 3 similarly struggles to come up with a reason
to justify its own existence.
Now credit where it's due, the film does
do something different with its plot.
Here, Lenore is murdered, and Brian is framed for a crime
and must clear his name.
So the something different in this case
is copy the plot of The Fugitive.
I didn't kill my wife.
I don't care.
At this point, Liam Neeson is 61 years old,
and his believability in this role is straining credulity.
This is most evident during the poorly edited action sequences
including the infamous fence jump that
requires chaotic haphazard editing just
to make us believe Neeson can climb a fence.
The franchise can no longer hide that it's not
just the premise of Taken that has been worn out.
Its star has been, too.
In the end, this ability to experiment and push itself
to new heights is what did the Taken films in.
It could have easily been the proto John Wick.
When viewed in the context of John Wick,
it's like looking into a mirror world
where the producers at the head of the franchise
had real vision.
They're both fairly straightforward action
franchises, but where Taken chose stagnation,
Wick chose reinvention and diversification.
The plan going forward with John Wick
is to have the feature films focus on the continuing
adventures of the character of John
while the TV show The Continental will focus
on the worldbuilding and long-term development
of various factions of lethal assassins.
This carving up of the narrative real estate
will help to generate more opportunities
for exciting crossovers and story developments.
This eye towards diversification is
exactly what Taken should have done
but didn't have the gall for.
If it had either tried to set up an interconnected universe
or just taken bold and unconventional approaches
to making sequels that were a departure
from the original film, it could have
been a franchise for the ages.
But ultimately, it didn't have the ambition, knowhow,
or gumption to really swing for the fences,
and thus we got this.
What do you think?
Is there still a possibility of more Taken films,
or is the franchise better off left alone?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below
and we'll see you next time with Nerdstalgic.