The Times Magazine 5o here is Lockdown 2 – the
sequel to this year’s earlier
smash hit, Lockdown 1, which
everyone was talking about,
albeit unwillingly.
The way of sequels is that
they always have a secondary
title – Lockdown 2: Back in
the Habit; Lockdown 2: 2 Fast
2 Furious – to distinguish them from the
original. Already, I’m wondering what we will
call this one. Lockdown 2: But This Time It’s
Raining? Lockdown 2: At Least the Kids Are in
School? We can keep blue-skying it for the next
couple of months – see how it’s received by test
audiences. The marketing is very important.
A sequel is harder to sell. People have fatigue.
There is a lot we can learn from movie
sequels when dealing with Lockdown 2: The
Squeakquel. For it to succeed, the government
must tell the country a story – why we are
doing this, what the stakes are and what the
eventual reward will be. But – and here’s the
big thing – again. We’ve already done this.
And we hated it the first time around. In this
way, the government is like Lucasfilm in 2002,
trying to drum up enthusiasm for Attack of the
Clones after everyone was already pretty
“meh” about 1999’s The Phantom Menace.
Yeah, we’ll go and see it. Of course we will.
Primarily because, in the case of the lockdown,
we’re legally obliged to. But we already know
we’re going to bitch about it all the way
through. Here, then, the key snags this second
lockdown faces, production and plot-wise.- The casting is a massive problem. A lot
of the big, key stars who provided a “feelgood”
element to the original lockdown aren’t taking
part this time round – making it a bit of a
Grease 2 situation. There’s no new Tiger King;
Sophie Ellis-Bextor isn’t doing her Kitchen
Disco, and it’s hoped that Captain Tom Moore
won’t be doing a second charity marathon
around his garden, now the weather’s turned.
And when it comes to the big cast
members still in the picture – the government
- we have what might be termed “a Johnny
Depp situation”. In between 2018’s Fantastic
Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald and the
forthcoming Fantastic Beasts 3, leading man
Johnny Depp went from “one of Hollywood’s
best-loved actors” to “that guy from the libel
trial and the poo stories who is now box-office
poison”. This gave Warner Bros a massive
problem: Depp is the Grindelwald of the
S
CAITLIN MORAN
MEH! MY LOCKDOWN 2 VERDICT
All sequels are hard to sell. This one gets zero stars from me so far
ROBERT WILSONtitle. The whole project revolves around him.
Over in Westminster, our government faces
a similar problem. In the past year, Boris
Johnson has undergone his own version of a
poo-story PR meltdown. Since the Cummings
fiasco, his approval rating has plummeted
from an initial “Go Bojo!” 66 per cent to a
catastrophic, “Get f***ed, Etonian Honey
Monster” minus 4 per cent, and shows no sign
of improving. And yet, the whole Conservative
party project revolves around him.
Given that, last Friday, Warner Bros bit the
bullet and “asked” Depp to resign – “My life
and career will not be defined by this moment
in time,” Depp said, incorrectly, of an incident
where he had to stop being a magic wizard
because of a poo story – one wonders what
conversations are going on at CCHQ. Still, until
then, the shitshow must go on! That’s showbiz!- Is this still a musical? Lockdown 1’s genre
was clear – it was a musical. Whether it was
the all-star singing disaster of Gal Gadot’s
Imagine, Matt Lucas’s cheerful Thank You
Baked Potato, or Elton John dementedly and
incongruously singing I’m Dill Danding in front
of a huge privet hedge, Lockdown 1 had a lot
of musical numbers. Uplifting, or inspiring,
music was used to make us all feel less alone.
This time around, however, uplifting
anthems don’t seem... appropriate. For a song
to capture the public mood, it would probably
have to feature a choir of massed, tetchy
sighing, and a resigned chorus along the lines
of, “OK, so, off to queue outside Tesco again,”
accompanied by a mournfully pomping tuba. - What are the big set-pieces? We know
all the iconic sequences from Lockdown 1:
clapping the NHS on our doorsteps;
Sourdough Loaf Month; people finding joy in
that dazzling spring of blossom and birdsong.
But none of those are in this new story:
the NHS grimly battles on; no one cares about
making bread, and it’s horrible outside. If the
first lockdown was about coming together and
trying to focus on what comradely and childlike
joy we could find – like Toy Story – this sequel
feels more like an older, more tired Britain
facing lacerating sorrow and fear – like Toy
Story 3. Specifically, the bit where they have to
reconcile themselves to going into the furnace.
In conclusion, Lockdown 2: Here We Go
Again! is going to be like most sequels: darker,
more expensive, shitter than the first, harder
to sell to the public – but, sadly, like Police
Academy 7: Mission to Moscow, inevitable. n
This time Britain feels
older and more tired,
full of sorrow and fear.
A bit like Toy Story 3