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10 “Unnecessary” Movies That Turned Out To Be Indispensable

There are a handful of words that, in the context of discussing movies, or art and pop culture in general, tend to be exceptionally gear-grinding, for me at least. “Unfunny” is one word that comes to mind, a term that may indicate that the described item lacks humor, but certainly demonstrates that the subject doing the describing lacks it altogether. “Unnecessary” might be at the top of the list of words that have virtually no meaning when it comes to labelling movies.

5) Toy Story 3

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I’ve written a little bit in the past about why I don’t really buy the conventional wisdom that states sequels (or remakes or reboots) are inherently bad, and the Toy Story franchise, especially in the context of the greater Disney/Pixar machine, is one example of the franchise model done right. Its makers took their time with each segment of the story, with each focusing on the various stages of human development, and so it worked. That is, that’s how they made it work. There could be countless ways of making such a continuation of a singular story work, and that’s the successful way they happened to choose for theirs.

Again, of course it’s not necessary for there to be a Toy Story 3, but despite that, it’s an absolutely wonderful film. There didn’t need to be two parts to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but allowing the book to be made into two movies, or, essentially, one long one split into two parts, resulted in a product with the amount of detail and richness that the filmmaking team desired. Popular entertainment is itself an indulgent medium. I’m curious why so many find certain aspects of its indulgence to be unbearable, while others go by without a glance. Where’s the line between acceptably indulgent and unnecessarily indulgent?