Swahili for "journey" / WED 3-25-26 / Suffers no damage / Sea urchin, to a sushi chef / Something a commuter might need to catch / Sedative in a zookeeper's dart, informally / Cocktail made from gin, vermouth and Campari / Longtime U.K. record company

Constructor: Jeff Stillman

Relative difficulty: Easy (possibly harder, depending on your familiarity with the movie titles)

THEME: Sequels — four movie sequel subtitles, hinted at by reference to the "grid art" (black squares that form the Roman numeral "II"):

Theme answers:

• FREDDY'S REVENGE (3D: A Nightmare on Elm Street [see grid art])
• HERE WE GO AGAIN (15D: Mamma Mia! [see grid art])
• LOST IN NEW YORK (7D: Home Alone [see grid art])
• BACK IN THE HABIT (11D: Sister Act [see grid art])

Word of the Day: Jules VERNE (34A: Captain Nemo's creator) —

Jules Gabriel Verne (/vɜːrn/; French: [ʒyl ɡabʁijɛl vɛʁn]; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright.

His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account contemporary scientific knowledge and the technological advances of the time. [...] 

Jules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare. He has sometimes been called the "father of science fiction", a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback. In the 2010s, he was the most translated French author in the world. In France, 2005 was declared "Jules Verne Year" on the occasion of the centenary of the writer's death. (wikipedia)

• • •

I really want to like this one, and I guess I do, but with reservations. I really enjoyed figuring out what the hell was going on, and this was one of the very few times that "grid art" ever did a damn thing for me. The "art" was simple, apt, and (ultimately) self-evident, and I actually used it! After trying to make Freddy Krueger stretch to fit the space by spelling his name FREDDIE KRUEGER (in my defense, Freddy can be pretty stretchy), I realized the KRUEGER part was never going to work, so eventually I got it to FREDDY and thought "what the hell?" Then I looked at the "grid art," saw the "II," and immediately realized I was going to be dealing with sequels. Now, that didn't give me REVENGE right away, but it helped me infer REVENGE pretty quickly from crosses. This brings me to one of two big problems I have with the theme execution today, namely that three of the subtitles have "sequel"-ness built into them, but one does not. That is, FREDDY'S REVENGE, HERE WE GO AGAIN, and BACK IN THE HABIT (the one subtitle I actually knew) all suggest a "return" to something ("revenge," "again," "back"), whereas LOST IN NEW YORK ... pfft. That just fits the space. Nothing particularly "sequel"-y about it. Why is this important? Well, two reasons. One is, not everyone (not even close to everyone) is going to know these subtitles off the top of their heads. The originals, sure, they're all famous (probably why they got sequels), but the sequel subtitles? No. Having some word indicating "sequel" in the subtitle is a giant help to solvers, who can then infer what they don't know. It also gives the themer set a sense of cohesion, the lack of which is the other big problem I have. The grouping here is totally arbitrary. Why these movie subtitles? Because they fit symmetrically is the only answer I can come up with, and that's not enough. Having "sequel"-ness baked into the subtitle at least gives the themer set *some* kind of unifying principle, however slight. With LOST IN NEW YORK in there, though ... now you've just got four random subtitles. Far less elegant.

Speaking of elegance, you've got a movie theme, so ideally (for me) you'd ditch all other explicitly movie stuff, all the stuff that's not part of the theme. No KATNISS, no MIRREN. And you'd need a new clue for MEL (54D: Brooks of film). Of these three film answers, only KATNISS was the outright distraction (since KATNISS was not just in The Hunger Games but in the sequels as well). I'm looking for a sense of careful construction, of theme cohesion, of execution that makes the theme really pop against the background of the fill. Movie content in the fill today feels like ... leakage. I was more dismayed by ugliness like DOTER and SLEEKEN, though. And OMAHANS. That's one of those words like UTAH(A)NS that is never gonna look right to me, only ... at least UTAH(A)NS applies to a whole state full of people. OMAHANS feels like it's missing a letter of syllable. Why not OMAHANIANS? You know, like Bahamas / Bahamians. Otherwise... how do you even pronounce "OMAHANS?" "O-MAH-hans"? "O-muh-HANS?" Do you sneak a little extra syllable in there when no one's looking?: "O-muh-HA-uns?" Truly, the awkwardest demonym. OGREISH is an OK word but it looks insane written out, like an Irish name (O'GREISH!). As for LAST BUS ... I wavered on it for a bit, but now I think I like it. It's no LAST TRAIN (to Clarksville or elsewhere), but it's a real phenomenon, and the "need" in the clue really sells it (7A: Something a commuter might need to catch).

Bullets:

• 1A: Swahili for "journey" (SAFARI) — should've been a gimme, I think, but I had DAS instead of AGS at 2D: Chief prosecutors, in brief, which put a "D" in the second "SAFARI" position :( I also had TAD before SOU up there (1D: Paltry amount). SOUs are the official currency of Crossworld, as decreed by OOXTEPLERNON, the God of Bad Short Fill (hallowed be His name). I have to remember to celebrate OOXTEPLERNON Day on October 30, for that is the day (in 2009) when OOXTEPLERNON revealed himself unto us, in grid form. How to celebrate? Simple. You sacrifice an Oreo (if you sacrifice it by feeding it to a NENE, even better ... for you. Probably not for the NENE)

• 20A: Sedative in a zookeeper's dart, informally (TRANK) — wrote in the TRAN- and then waited on the cross. Thought it might be a "Q" (both TRANK and TRANQ had five NYTXW appearances in the Modern Era ... before today. Now TRANK's ahead. Stay tuned for further information on the great TRANK/Q wars as it becomes available.
• 58A: Cocktail made from gin, vermouth and Campari (NEGRONI) — mmm. It's almost NEGRONI Season. When is NEGRONI Season? No one really knows. That's the beauty of NEGRONI Season.
• 47D: Suffers no damage (IS OK) — hoo boy, if any answer in this puzzle gave me trouble, it was this one. ISOK? ISOK?! Talk about four letters that do not look ... OK. ISOK??? Didn't she write Out of Afroca? You know, ISOK Dinoson!? The NYTXW once (maybe more than once) tried to convince me that I should know a Dilbert character (!?) named ASOK. ISOK makes me almost miss ASOK.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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