Movie titles aren’t just thrown together in the vague hope they’ll grab your attention and create a bold enough statement to make you want to run straight out of your home and hand over your money at the nearest box office. Simply a movie’s title has to speak to you directly, treating you as a possibly, possibly not, friendly stranger.

The most striking example of this is “Jaws” a simple straight ahead one syllable title, the sound of which is almost bone-crushing in itself. Say it aloud to yourself and see what I mean. You can almost feel some unknown alien jaw grabbing you unexpectedly and doing you great damage. Just like what happens to many an unsuspecting swimmer in the movie itself. If you heard of a movie bearing that name now you’d walk into the cinema knowing roughly what to expect, even if you had no idea of the plot. I doubt you’d be walking in with the mistaken belief you were going to see a sweet flick with a happy ending. A film like this really does just do as it says on the packet.

I suppose these are the most disappointing kind of movie titles, they appear to us the result of a lazy studio boss trying to flog us a dead horse yet again. Think of the innumerate “Police Academy’s” whose chronologically named series seemed to last forever, with each one just that the slight bit worse than its immediate predecessor. This is not really case, though maybe in the case of “Police Academy” it might’ve been!!, as bosses and those concerned with marketing are creating a brand name and are trying to inspire a brand loyalty in we the movie goers. If we liked the first one, we’ll at least give the second one a look. Also if maybe we missed the first one but meant to see it, we’ll make sure we catch the second to make sure we don’t miss out on anymore of what might becoming a phenomenon .As most sequels are similar, i.e. cast and tone of movie but different in terms of story, it doesn’t really matter greatly if we’ve missed the first movie in the sequence.

A sub-section of the above with probably only one movie title in it, though movie buffs may know different.

Upon releasing the original Star Wars George Lucas famously gave it the title of “Star Wars: Part Four”. It wasn’t because we’d somehow managed to miss the first three or even that Lucas was bad at mathematics!! But a rather neat and quite deliberate device. Lucas always intended the whole series to be a very long and involved one told in a chorological order. However lack of technology seemed to scupper plans to film the first three films, so Lucas set out to make the fourth first (though it wasn’t given the title of part four until just before “The Empire Strikes Backs” was released, as this was number five the original took it’s proper place in the sequence to save confusion, though arguably it caused just as much!!)., not believing at this point he’d ever get the chance to make the first trilogy.

But once we’d gathered “Star Wars” was in actual fact the fourth part of a series still unmade, we immediately became intrigued at what the first three parts would’ve been about if we’d ever had the chance to see them. Thus, though it was probably unintentional at the time, Lucas had created a story in a universe with an obvious past, we felt like we were stepping into a great epic adventure and felt part of the whole journey from the off, an effect which would’ve been hard to achieve had we started off the adventure at part one. Somehow we felt apart of the whole story at once rather than just part of a story which might have no further to run.

You know like “Indiana Jones and the temple of doom”, “Indiana Jones and the lost crusade”, “Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix” etc…..

We get to know and love the eponymous hero, whilst being assured that he, or indeed she is setting off on a new adventure. Basically we know what we’re getting but different. It’s a more interesting way of branding, it also suggests that our hero(ine) gets out a bit rather than being stuck in the same old place and routine, by giving a movie such a title the makers are showing that there’s life in the old dog yet and that there are plenty more adventures to come. It is an awful lot better and more exciting, for fans and casual viewers alike than just plain old boring number sequels. It also gets fans talking and creates a buzz long before the film hits the screens as they speculate on the significance and meaning of the new title.

So next time you go and check out a movie, don’t just disregard its title, there’s probably been an awful lot of creative thought and energy gone into it!!