FIRST AMONG SEQUELS

One very effective way to waste otherwise-productive work time is imagine what sequels you could produce by combining together two different movies with similar titles – such as A Beautiful Dangerous Mind, or Steel Magnolia Dawn, or Zoolander II: The Quickening, or The Soylent Green Mile, or The Wedding Singer Planner, or Urban Legends of the Fall, or Who Framed Gilbert Grape?, or Accidental Paperback Hero, or The Invisible Bicentennial X-Man, or … you get the idea.

To really make it fun, though, you’ve got to try to work out a coherent plot summary:

The Juneteenth Warrior – a segregationist Southern US Senator is murdered by the mysterious Eaters of the Dead. Seeking to avenge his killing, an Arabian swordsman finds himself Orientalised, constructed as "The Other", and rendered the "Invisible Man" by his twelve Nordic companions.

The Matrix: Loaded – In a Sydney back street, Keanu Reeves and Alex Dimitriades … actually, you probably don’t want to know any more details.

24-Seven – a serial killer is stalking candidates in the California presidential primary, plotting to set Bill Clinton’s pants on fire and to puncture Howard Dean’s skull with a pair of surgical scissors.

Bring It On The Road – Blonde cheerleaders on acid pile into a kombi-van and steal one another’s best moves.

Charlotte Kray – Charlotte and her twin sister, Charlene, do gruesome things to members of rival French Resistance gangs, all the while addressing them as "sunshine".

Ciderhouse Dune – The malign sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit, unable to dominate Michael Caine, plot to assassinate him after they realise that one of the many unborn he’s aborted was the future Kwisatz Haderach.

Dorsey’s Creek – An ambitious young high-school senior, Ned "Dorsey" Litter, wants to be a prefect – but his teachers and fellow students are wary of him because he doesn’t seem to have a steady girlfriend. So he enters into a sham dating arrangement with Stacey, the girl-next-door and his best friend since childhood. However his best friend Payson Weary is angered by this betrayal and so, to get back at Dorsey, has a one-night romance with Jen, who in turn seduces Rico, whose girlfriend is Stacey’s sister… Eventually, by third season Stacey has decided she secretly loves Ned after all and tells him she wants to start dating for real. Ned refuses: "This is what we agreed, Stacey! Don’t you remember that? Don’t you respect that?" But Stacey is not deterred: "We have something between us, Ned! It was real! Don’t try to tell me that it wasn’t real!" (and so forth until the actors have all turned 37 and can no longer convincingly play teenagers...).

Meet Joe Black Dirt – Death takes human form, wearing a disgusting blonde mullet that’s obviously been lemon-bleached …

Remember the Titan AEs – After Earth has been destroyed by alien invaders, Terrans roam the universe as wandering refugees, treated like outcasts until one day a boy has a vision of a legendary gridiron football team that will restore them to their rightful place…

Sorority Report – new technology allows frat boys to see into the future to watch co-eds undressing in that very room.

The Hannibal Run – Last one across the line gets eaten by specially-trained wild pigs.

The Princess Turner Basketball Diaries – a free-thinking but unpopular teenager puts on a black trenchcoat and flies a plane into the Genovan embassy in Washington DC as a protest against the New World Order. THEN her classmates finally appreciate her for Who She Really Is.

Now: anyone want to devise a plot for Random Hearts in Atlantis: The Lost Empire?