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It isn't an overwhelming truism but it certainly happens enough to warrant my own personal posing of the eternal question, "Why is the second installment of a series (or trilogy) always the darkest, bleakest, most pessimistic, etc.?" Rather than provide "definitive" answers up front, I will let my query suspend in the air for the time being, and allow this and future columns to serve as potential - and perhaps contradictory - answers. Now, let's hop in the wayback machine.

Just prior to helming Forrest Gump and steering that sentimental, bittersweet tale into the top ten highest-grossing domestic pictures at that time with a $330 million total — and making off with an Oscar for Best Director to boot - Robert Zemeckis directed the very bizarre, very black comedy Death Becomes Her, a ruthless satire on aging, vanity and plastic surgery, perhaps now best remembered for a nifty special effect shot featuring Goldie Hawn's character with a shotgun hole blown clean through her. Death performed decently, opening at number one with $12 million, finishing with nearly $60 million in North America and a worldwide total of $150 million, against a $55 million budget.

I draw the comparison both as a lead-in to this week's sequel - which in terms of style and tone falls squarely into category two - but also as an example of the polarity of tones existing in Zemeckis's career, at least up through the start of this decade, when he became obsessed, apparently, with making animated films using performance capture technology. Last week, I expressed consternation at special effects that create things that seem so nearly absolutely realistic that it becomes unnerving, and films like The Polar Express and Beowulf land under this heading. As a critic, I am required to see the films before I can opinionate, but until I can acclimate myself to how creepy "Tom Hanks" looks "playing" the train conductor in Express, I will have to say I'm not quite buying into it just yet.

Zemeckis has frequently been a go-to man for effects-heavy tales, and for seamlessly incorporating the effects into the storyline, but his material has always seemed to alternate between cynical/screwball (Who Framed Roger Rabbit or the underrated Used Cars being good examples) and more earnest dramas (i.e. Contact). Keep in mind as well that during the ‘80s and ‘90s, he was an executive producer and frequent directorial guest on HBO's Tales from The Crypt, and that under the Dark Castle production company banner, he has executive produced numerous schlocky horror movies, House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts among them. It may seem odd to single out Zemeckis for having distinct contradictory facets to his directorial persona — I mean, that is what we cherish about the talents we love — but whenever I consider his career in particular, I always feel as if his darker tones are where his heart is at and he feels compelled to do penance with more sincere material.

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