First it was Indiana Jones. Then Tron. Now there's a fighting chance The Goonies will become the next important childhood touchstone to be given a belated sequel.
Possibly. The prospect of The Goonies 2 comes up time and time again, but nobody seems to actually know how concrete the plans are. Josh Brolin has spent much of the year talking about it, but you get the feeling that he's only doing that because it's much easier than trying to publicise Jonah Hex. Steven Spielberg might be interested. There might already be a script, and it might have been written by the man who gave us Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Original director Richard Donner has said that he'd prefer to turn the film into a Broadway musical. Jonathan Ke Quan, who played Data, doesn't think anything will come of it whatsoever.
And then there's Corey Feldman. He's spent the last couple of decades being the unofficial cheerleader for a Goonies sequel and he's refusing to let the idea die. Last week, for example, he insinuated that fan demand was so great Warner Bros would eventually have to relent and green-light The Goonies 2 once and for all.
But is he right? Have people really spent the last quarter of a century frothing at the mouth and insisting that someone makes a sequel to The Goonies? I'm not trying to be facetious here, I'm honestly interested. Personally, I'm in two minds. Here's a breakdown of my arguments for and against.
For
Look at Tron. In a way, the Tron sequel makes even less sense than a Goonies sequel ever would. The original film is older, the technology in it is almost 30 years out of date and one of the main characters is a barely convincing digital representation of 1982 Jeff Bridges. And yet people are legitimately excited about watching Tron: Legacy. It seems like producers have realised that the film will have dual audiences – fans of the first film and kids coming to the franchise fresh – and they've positioned it accordingly. If the Goonies sequel can manage to be as simultaneously nostalgic and new as Tron 2, it might be on to a winner. What's more, if it's a success then it'll turn a new generation onto the charms of the first film, which is no bad thing.
Against
Josh Brolin is 42. Corey Feldman is now 39 years old. So is Sean Astin. Chunk is now a well-respected entertainment lawyer. Sloth and Mama Fratelli are dead. This means that there's a very good chance that The Goonies 2 will be about some characters who live with their mothers and continue to clumsily feel their way through their burgeoning hormonal development despite all being middle-aged men. Keep it like that and it stands to be one of the creepiest films ever made. Then again, casting a new generation of kids and turning it into Goonies & Sons would be a cheap shot.
Second, there's the fact that Corey Feldman was also the unofficial cheerleader for a Lost Boys sequel, and when Lost Boys: The Tribe finally appeared in 2008 it was a franchise-destroying embarrassment.
Finally, it's important to remember that if Goonies 2 does get made, it would inevitably open the door for Flight of the Navigator 2. That would be a supremely bad idea on every conceivable level.
So where do you stand on this? Should there be a sequel to The Goonies, or should it be left well alone? Your thoughts below, please.
