Hotel Transylvania 2: The Unexpectedly Good Sequel

Who’d have thought?

Hollywood is notoriously bad at making sequels. From the Star Wars franchise to Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul to Wreck-It-Ralph: Ralph Breaks the Internet to Shrek the Third, the trend is clear: Fans excitedly anticipate their favorite characters on-screen only to realize that these characters appear for a brief cameo, while a forgettable side character goes through a half-baked journey of their own. Worse, the traits that made these characters memorable in the first place are ignored by the writers completely to make way for a basic plot structure to satisfy the money-hungry pockets of their parent studios who want to sell the remainder of their merchandise to a nostalgic fandom.

I re-watched Hotel Transylvania’s sequel a few days ago. Maybe Hotel Transylvania 2 stood out to me from the unfortunate trend because it was better than I initially gave it credit for. Maybe I’ve been conditioned by hyper-critical reviews that it was an objectively bad movie.

Or maybe, because I had hated every character in its predecessor and had no hopes on the sequel, I was surprised when it came out as “decently acceptable.”

Nonetheless, Hotel Transylvania 2 manages to do what even many critically-acclaimed franchises fail to accomplish: Acknowledging the growth of its characters, emphasizing character flaws within those characters, and expand world-building to create solutions to overcome these flaws.

Step 1: Acknowledging Growth of Characters

Let’s start with Dracula, the main character of the franchise. In the last movie, Dracula overcomes his wife’s murder by humans and learns to accept them. (Grossly oversimplified, of course) After meeting Johnny, Dracula softens his
“anti-human” stance.

Every other character — Mavis, Johnny, Frank, Wayne, Griffin, Gigi, Murray, and everyone else who is too forgettable to remember — does not have an arc.

Cool? Cool.

Step 2: Acknowledging Character Flaws

Character flaws. Not I-forgot-what-I-learned flaws. The average Hollywood sequel would have Dracula struggle with prejudice against humans again. The pitfalls are endless. Maybe we’d see him interact more with Johnny’s parents as he learns to deal with culture shock. Or maybe, we’d see Dracula struggle to fit in as he traverses the wonders of a… *gasp* shopping mall!

But its lazy writing. Even second graders would be scratching their heads thinking to themselves, “Where did I see this before?”

Oh right. The first movie.

If I wanted to see something that the first movie executed to varying degrees of success, I don’t want to regurgitated on the silver screen with stupid gags that remind the audiences to buy marketable plushies after the screening.

Yet, in this surprisingly decent sequel, Dracula does learn something. He learns to accept humankind, for all their “good ones” and “bad ones.” Contrary to deeply-ingrained tradition, he learns to accept Johnny.

And now, he must accept the consequence of his acceptance of Johnny and Mavis’ marriage and the new changes that he must learn to accommodate as a result. Dracula’s flaw is that he is stubborn. His stubbornness to protect his daughter is responsible for his successful safe-haven-like hotel for such a long time. But as a deeply traditional person, we get to witness the struggle between the preservation of traditional values of his family and accepting its unconventional nature, similar to Tevye on Fiddler on the Roof.

Step 3: Expand World-Building!

Here’s the fun part! (And the most difficult part) Expressing growth through new issues that arise.

And the new issue is… Dennis!

As the child of Mavis and Johnny, there might be a chance that Dennis might just be a regular human.

If we know one thing about Dracula, we know that he does not like change. He may not hate Dennis because he is human, but rather Dracula is afraid of the implications of human-Dennis. He doesn’t like the fact that the centuries-old traditions of learning to fly as a bat and growing fangs are becoming obsolete. He doesn’t like knowing that his grandson will live far away from him, unlike the childhood that he had provided his daughter.

He may now accept Johnny as a part of his family. But cannot tolerate the end of his traditions. This is his struggle.

I haven’t watched the end of the trilogy. Something about a summer vacation? I don’t know, and I don’t care to find out. After all, I maintain my stance: The sequel stinks. But if it weren’t caught up in Hollywood’s moneymaking scheme, would we have gotten a A-rated film?

…On second thought, probably not. But I’d like to imagine that there was real playwrighting talent behind its nonsensical script.