Prequels, or doing it all over from the beginning

There's a current fad of doing prequels to successful movies/stories. I find it extremely interesting, especially in how the story gets told. Often, it seems that the big draw of the successful movie oddly becomes the focus of the prequel (the Star Wars movies are a prime example, with the newest trilogy spending nearly all its time on Darth Vader). While it's understandable that the most popular character is what audiences want more of, the story should still be well thought out.

I recently saw a movie called "Oz, the Great and Powerful." It's a prequel to the Wizard of Oz, detailing how the Wizard got to Oz in the first place. What's interesting is that the main characters from the famous story aren't really much in the movie at all. Naturally Dorothy isn't in it, or the Tin Man, and so on. But the wicked witches don't appear as much as you'd expect. With the Wizard being a practically unseen character from the classic, this prequel centers around him. And, in this case, it works very well. The story is well designed, thoughtful, and entertaining.

Doing prequels seems to be a frightfully hard process. As a writer, they scare the soup right out of me. To take already popular characters and describe them when they weren't popular (and doing perhaps what won't make them popular) is terrifying. I've looked at my own stories and can't imagine doing prequels to them, since I picked the spot in the overall story that I felt was the best suited to be written so why would I choose a time prior to it? So, I tip my hat to those who've done it successfully. Well done!

- M