CineLinkr #200: The Story Behind the Puzzle
Spoilers ahead: for the puzzle and the movies/games
This post assumes you've already solved the puzzle. It reveals all categories and their connections, and discusses plot details, endings, and spoilers for featured movies/games throughout.
Apollo 11 uses no talking-head interviews. Todd Douglas Miller lets restored mission footage, control-room audio, and the astronauts do the work. The moon landing did not need a modern celebrity explaining that space is large.
🟢 Easy: Third franchise installments numbered three
Movies: Jaws 3-D · Psycho III · Rocky III · The Exorcist III
The numerals are doing heroic amounts of labor here. Rocky III puts Clubber Lang on the poster, Jaws 3-D puts the gimmick in the title, and Psycho III lets Anthony Perkins direct Norman Bates himself.
The Exorcist III is the oddest member of the set. William Peter Blatty adapted his own novel Legion, then the studio insisted on a title that advertised a franchise connection. The result has one of horror's best corridor scares and a Roman numeral carrying corporate paperwork.
🟡 Medium: Documentaries built chiefly from archival footage
Movies: Apollo 11 · Senna · They Shall Not Grow Old · Diego Maradona
These films trust recordings made at the time. Senna turns race broadcasts and private video into a biography with startling momentum. Diego Maradona uses the same archive-first method for a football career that rarely lacked cameras or trouble.
Peter Jackson's team restored and colorized First World War footage for They Shall Not Grow Old, while lip readers helped reconstruct battlefield speech. The technique is controversial, but the voices stop the soldiers from becoming anonymous shapes in an old reel.
🔵 Hard: Feature-length continuations of television series
Movies: Serenity · The X-Files: I Want to Believe · Veronica Mars · Dead Like Me: Life After Death
These are not reboots wearing familiar names. They pick up established television continuity and ask viewers to remember who hurt whom, who died, and which unresolved relationship still needs an uncomfortable conversation.
Serenity gave Firefly's crew a larger canvas after one television season. Veronica Mars took an even stranger route: fans pledged millions through Kickstarter, then the film sent Veronica back to Neptune for a high-school reunion and, naturally, a murder case.
The pleasure of the category is recognition. A spaceship, an FBI basement, or a familiar detective voice appears and an entire canceled schedule snaps back into place.
🟣 Tricky: Stop-motion stories about death or supernatural forces
Movies: Corpse Bride · Frankenweenie · The House · Wendell & Wild
The obvious shared trait is stop motion. The second click is that every painstakingly moved figure is dealing with something that refuses to stay dead, safely buried, or politely in the underworld.
Frankenweenie expands Tim Burton's 1984 live-action short into a black-and-white resurrection story. Corpse Bride sends a nervous groom below ground. Wendell & Wild gives two demons an entrepreneurial plan involving hair cream and the dead. Honest work was available. They declined.
The House is the slippery one: three stories, three versions of one building, and a growing sense that the property itself has opinions. It turns real estate anxiety into felt, fabric, and tiny doomed faces.
The archive documentaries linger longest because they remove the safety rail of hindsight. For another puzzle about memory, dogs, and extremely short fights, today's PixelLinkr board is waiting.