A prequel is a literary, dramatic or cinematic work whose story precedes that of a previous work, by focusing on events that occur before the original narrative. A prequel is a work that forms part of a backstory to the preceding work. The term "prequel" is a 20th-century neologism from the prefix "pre-" (from Latin prae, "before") and "sequel". Like sequels, prequels may or may not concern the same plot as the work from which they are derived. More often they explain the background that led to the events in the original, but sometimes the connections are not completely explicit. Sometimes prequels play on the audience's knowledge of what will happen next, using deliberate references to create dramatic irony.
History Though the word "prequel" is of recent origin, works fitting this concept existed long before. The Cypria, presupposing hearers' acquaintance with the events of the Homeric epic, confined itself to what preceded the Iliad, and thus formed a kind of introduction. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "prequel" first appeared in print in 1958 in an article by Anthony Boucher in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, used to describe James Blish's 1956 story They Shall Have Stars, which expanded on the story introduced in his earlier 1955 work, Earthman Come Home. However, Christopher Tolkien, writing about the history of The Silmarillion in 1977, claims that his father, J. R. R. Tolkien, "coined the highly uncharacteristic word 'prequel'" when badgered for a definition of the relationship between The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion sometime after 1955. The term came into general usage in the 1970s and 1980s. Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979) may have introduced the term "prequel" into the mainstream. An example of a prequel is C. S. Lewis's 1955 children's book, The Magician's Nephew, that explained the creation of Narnia—the subject of Lewis's seven-book series The Chronicles of Narnia—which began with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). The Adventures of Ben Gunn, a 1956 novel by R. F. Delderfield, was written as a prequel to the novel Treasure Island.
Usage
Rather than being a concept distinct from that of a sequel, a prequel still adheres to the general principle of serialization, defined only by its internal chronology and publication order. For example, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) is a prequel to the Star Wars original trilogy (1977–1983), but is only a predecessor of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) because of the release order. Likewise, 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a prequel to 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, in that it is set in 1935, one year before the first film. In some cases, such as this one, there is little impact by the relative placement over overarching plotlines. When an entire continuity is started over again, a so-called reboot, such as in the case of Casino Royale or Batman Begins, it is typically not thought of as a prequel, although it is set earlier in the common chronology of the characters and may give away plot points common to both timelines.
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