By Jonathan Klotz
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The second Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury turned up after the credit of Iron Man was the second that leisure modified perpetually. Each movie needed to be half of a bigger universe, with each teasing that the subsequent could be larger and higher. The pure finish results of this pattern has been studios filming a number of motion pictures back-to-back and planning from the start that, irrespective of the viewers response, this might be one other epic universe of interconnected movies.
The long-awaited 28 Years Later ran headfirst into each tendencies, ending with a tease for the second movie in a trilogy, after which 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple fell flat months later when confused audiences rejected it as an excessive amount of, too quickly, and too complicated.
The Bone Temple Doesn’t Sound Like A Sequel
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple picks up proper the place 28 Years Later leaves off and devotes its total runtime to Spike (Alfie Williams) and the Jimmys, a wierd gang based mostly on the British character Jimmy Saville (within the movie’s timeline, Saville’s intercourse crimes had been by no means uncovered). The movie itself is a good entry within the rising franchise by conserving the story’s focus tight on the group, which begins off as bigger than you’d count on for a horror movie, however shortly will get whittled down. It culminates in an insane sequence set to Iron Maiden’s Variety of the Beast that proves Ralph Fiennes can do something. The issue isn’t with the movie, The Bone Temple is properly price watching, however the issue comes from Hollywood’s fascination with milking each facet of each profitable movie earlier than anybody is aware of it’s a success or not.
Fortunately for everybody concerned, 28 Years Later was a success in the course of the summer time of 2025. It might have been awkward for the already filmed and edited sequel if the primary movie had crashed and burned. Sadly, the summer time of 2025 was just a few months in the past, and the final viewers didn’t assume 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was a sequel solely six months later. Hollywood’s “every part is a franchise” hubris lastly caught up with it, and the end result was a very distinctive horror movie that earned much less domestically than Tron: Ares.
2 Quick 2 Livid is a silly identify for a film, however it makes it clear that it’s a sequel. M3GAN 2.0 was one other catastrophe, however the 2 is correct there. The Bone Temple doesn’t denote it’s a sequel, particularly because the Bone Temple itself was a serious a part of the primary movie. It appears like a director’s lower model of the primary movie.
Followers Rejected The Jimmy Gang Months In the past
Working in opposition to 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the primary look of the Jimmys on the finish of the primary movie. Watching a gaggle of color-coordinated tracksuit-clad survivors ripping aside contaminated like post-apocalyptic Energy Rangers was such a tonal shift from the remainder of the movie’s meditation on grief and loss of life that it instantly turned off part of the movie’s fanbase. Which is unlucky, as a result of the solid and crew had a three-week break between wrapping one movie and beginning one other again in 2024, lengthy earlier than the general public response to the wild twist.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple earned $13 million domestically throughout its opening weekend and a complete of $46 million, which isn’t unhealthy, however it’s lagging considerably behind 28 Years Later. An estimated finances of $68 million implies that director Nia DaCosta’s follow-up to The Marvels is once more going to usher in a good sum for many movies, however the finances kills it. As soon as once more, the gifted DaCosta was saddled with bringing the studio’s imaginative and prescient to life, it doesn’t matter what the followers stated they needed.
The Bone Temple underperforming gained’t cease studios from purposely stretching out tales into a number of motion pictures, and it gained’t cease the pattern of filming motion pictures back-to-back earlier than anybody is aware of what the fanbase goes to latch onto. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple ends with one other tease for the third, and hopefully, last movie. Years of Marvel post-credit teases which have gone nowhere haven’t left audiences ready for each movie to vow an even bigger, higher sequel; it’s achieved the alternative, and now audiences roll their eyes out of annoyance. Studios want to chop their losses and return to specializing in telling one nice story earlier than some other fan-favorite franchises fall sufferer.