And Beyond
Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and Forky Warning: here there be spoilers aplenty. Sequels have been around as long as storytelling. The best storytelling is incomplete. It creates outlines of engaging characters, but lets the audience use their experience and imagination to fill them out. It does the same with the universe in which it places these characters, as well as with the plot that carries them from beginning to end. To do this well, the storyteller must trust the audience, and have confidence in their intelligence and creativity. The best-told stories leave audiences both satisfied and hungry, wanting to revisit the universe, spend more time with the characters, see it from different angles. But the best stories are so complete that sequels are unnecessary: the work stands on its own. To justify its existence, a sequel must present something so new, no distinctive, that it is a good story in its own right. Such was the case with the most ancient story/sequel pairing I ...