This content has been automatically translated from Ukrainian.
Prequel (from English prequel) is a work whose action takes place before the events of the original work, that is, it is a backstory.
If sequel tells what happened afterward, then the prequel explains what happened before — how the heroes, events, conflicts, or the world we already know came to be.
For example, there is the film "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001), which opens the main story, and there is "The Hobbit" (2012–2014) — this is a prequel that tells the events decades before "The Fellowship".
A prequel helps to understand more deeply the origins of characters, the reasons for conflicts, the development of the world, or ideas.
The main thing to understand is that a prequel is not "the first part of a series" if it was created after the main story. If part 1 was filmed first, then part 2, and then the third, which tells events before part 1 — that is a prequel.
Prequel is a work that explains what happened before the main story, deepening the world or revealing the roots of key events.
The term "prequel" (prequel) appeared much later than "sequel" — and became commonly used only in the second half of the 20th century.
The very word prequel is formed as a play on words by analogy to sequel:
- from the Latin prae- (before)
- the part of the word -quel (as in sequel)
The earliest recorded uses of the term date back to the 1950s–60s, but at that time it was considered a neologism and rarely appeared in literature or the press. The term entered cultural circulation more widely in the 1970s–80s when the film industry began to experiment with stories "before the events of the main story".In the 1990s–2000s, the word "prequel" became widespread and well-known, especially after George Lucas's prequel trilogy of "Star Wars" (Episodes I–III), which appeared after the original films but chronologically took place before them.
The term prequel officially appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972. Since then, it has been established in media, pop culture, and even academic terminology.
One of the first prequels is "Another Part of the Forest" (1948), a drama directed by Michael Gordon. This film is a prequel to the play and film "The Little Foxes" (1941). It tells about the youth of the characters who were the main heroes of "The Little Foxes". This is one of the first examples where a film was consciously made as a backstory to another already existing film. Although the word "prequel" was not used then, in essence, it is indeed a prequel.
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