10 Prequels We'd Pay to See

Sometimes, a movie is so beloved that we want to see it again and again. But sometimes the story is essentially over. I mean, come on, Scarface is dead. No doubt about it. Therefore, to cash in a franchise where there can be no sequel, authors invented the wondrous prequel. This is the coolest excuse to revisit a story that can't be revisited (cough Monsters University cough).

But let's face it, there are a lot of stories we want to revisit. Here are 10 prequels we would pay to see.

1. Student Of the Year: The Walter White Story

A wonderfully gifted student, so morally and intellectually superior to his high school classmates that every teacher — particularly the chemistry teacher who has seen his genius — thinks that he is going to be an amazing leader for the students of the future. Along the way, Little Wally also impresses a wonderful, if a little mean, young lady named Lois, who he some day marries. His son inherits his genius-level intellect, but Walt has … other concerns in mind. (Too much?)

2. Despicable Minions: Banana Begins

Gru is a despicably evil bachelor that lives alone in a house filled with deadly traps, until he adopts three wonderful little girls (nice one, Child Protective Services). But while the girls bring out his human side, there is a cadre of henchmen that love him. Like, really love him. They will die for him, they will do evil for him. They will do good for him.

But where are they from? How did so many little yellow munchkins just come to our world? What if they are aliens, sent here to steal the world’s banana supply?

3. The Girl Without the Dragon Tattoo

Lizbeth Salander was not always the deeply disturbed, emotionally withdrawn woman we know. At one time, she was also a little girl who, upon seeing her mother get abused, burnt her father down and spent years incarcerated in a torture facility masquerading as a mental institution. So, where does a girl like that end up becoming Europe’s best hacker? Where does she start working for private investigators, digging up dirt? And where does she come across such an awesome tattoo parlor? Important questions.

4. There Will Be Blood: The First Pokémon League

Once you get past all the natural beauty and yellow or pink fuzzballs, Pokemon is an insanely creepy premise. So the question then becomes, who was the first guy to say “let’s create a world where helpless creatures are enslaved in little machines, forced to fight each other for the whims of millions, while little children leave home before they grow chin fuzz to capture all these creatures?”

My guess is Team Rocket was really behind it all along.

5. The Big Bang Theory: Dorm Days

There must have been a time when our friends Leonard, Sheldon, Raj and Wolowitz were not genius-level professors. Instead, they were once genius-level students, trying to graduate college on a steady diet of used textbooks and cold ramen. Just imagine: when they were not at the top of their field, when they were still struggling to gain the respect of those pretentious snobs called academics, how would their lives have been different?

Maybe Raj had a terrible experience that paralyzed him from speaking to women. Maybe Wolowitz’s mom paid the college a visit. Maybe Sheldon went too far with his experiments and destroyed the western half of the campus. The possibilities!

6. When Romeo Met Amy

Juliet is the kind of girl you die for. She is the kind of girl you kill for. She is the kind of girl you take on family and kin for.

But before every Juliet, there is an Amy. Maybe she’s the best friend of the Juliet in her group. Maybe she’s the one with the “great personality.” Maybe she’s the one who’s got a brain, who always speaks her mind. Either way, Amy is the kind of girl idiots always skip over, instead going for the Juliets of the world. So this story, like any love story worth telling, ends with a breakup.

7. The Hulk: Diary Of a Wimpy Kid

There was a time when Dr. Bruce Banner’s anger did not make him awesome. There was a time when he was just a nerd who got nothing more from throwing a tantrum than a bad nosebleed. There was a time when he had to use his brain, because he had absolutely no brawn. That was a sad time.

In order for us to truly appreciate what anger can do to a human, we must first see the thing that fills every single nerd with abnormal levels of rage: years of wedgies, Wet Willies, and purple nurples. Now you see why he’s always angry?

8. Two Dollar Baby

Long before she was an over-aged boxer trying to make it big with the help of an over-aged trainer who’d lost it all, Maggie was a girl that knew nothing but pain and rejection from her own family. Because she was the only one who actually wanted to escape the trailer, who wanted to not drown in a bucket of fried Oreos, who wanted to be something, Maggie got nothing but struggle and disappointment.

You can already read Tomato-meter consensus: “unapologetically cathartic and shamelessly exploitative, this latest movie starring Hillary Swank wants nothing more than to wring out the tears.”

9. The Bourne Potential

There are many soldiers in the world that would do anything to be part of the most elite, experimental and only super-soldier program that Tom Clancy hadn’t written. Jason Bourne volunteered to be a part of the experiment. But what was it that he did to even be placed in contention for the role? Did he foil an amazing bank robbery? Take down an entire room of super agents with nothing but a pencil and duct tape? Kill both James Bond and Jack Bauer with a single bullet? Naturally, Paul Greengrass should direct.

10. Bad Teaching College Student

Is there anything Cameron Diaz can’t do? No, no there isn’t. Before getting her teaching degree and horribly misusing it in Bad Teacher, our irresponsible teacher of the year was an equally irresponsible college student, trying very hard to keep mooching off her parents money and delaying her fun-filled sorority days to the absolute limit. Maybe her parents cut her off and she has to find clever ways to stay in college until she can get her degree, while still enjoying life? That sounds eerily similar to Van Wilder, but Cameron Diaz would make it better. Promise.

So who which story would you like to see revisited? Just promise you’ll make a better choice than Disney did with Monsters University.