It’s bad enough that modern life is full of meetings that could have been emails. Now, Hollywood is doing it too. Films and TV shows are suddenly obsessed with telling elaborate back-stories of characters we love, but honestly would have preferred as flashbacks.

This year’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga leaves Max out of Mad Max to explore how Furiosa became a one-armed warrior. It’s got exactly what audiences would expect: Desertscapes, long chases, crazy warlords and a story about a young girl taken from her family. Boilerplate race and revenge over two-and-a-half-hours. It could have been a 15-minute interlude in Fury Road (2015), or avoided entirely.

Wonka (2023), at two hours, is mercifully shorter than Furiosa. It was a look at the early life of the weird owner of the chocolate factory from Roald Dahl’s classic story. There’s singing, dancing, sumptuous costumes, Oompa Loompas, candy and lots of Timothée Chalamet brooding. And yet, it’s an origin story no one asked for. Willy Wonka is better appreciated as a mysterious adult than an earnest young entrepreneur.

Some worlds are so richly imagined, there’s more to say even after seven books and eight movies. Of course, Harry Potter fans wanted to know how Dumbledore came to be headmaster at Hogwarts. What they didn’t want was tedious CGI and build-up in The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) and The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022). Readers don’t get even a hint of the rumoured romance between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. They know nothing about his family. There’s much more on Pottermore or fan fiction pages on Reddit.

At least Dumbledore was a beloved leader. Sheldon Cooper, physicist and resident oddball on The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019) is selfish and downright mean. And yet, there are several seasons of Young Sheldon (2017-2024) about his life before college. It could have been an ’80s homage. It could have helped viewers understand what caused his odd personality. It does neither.

The only way to justify an origin story is to have fun with it. Cruella (2021) presents the villain of 101 Dalmatians (1996) as a woman wronged but determined to make her mark. She’s got sass. She’s funny. She only hates Dalmatians because they caused her mother’s death. The lead-up is as fun to watch as the original movie.

X-Men: First Class (2011) treads lightly and enjoys itself too. It’s set in the ’60s; everyone’s halfway radicalised, anyway. Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr are just beginning to understand what they can achieve if they collaborate. Recruiting looks like a blast. Quicksilver comes and goes in a flash. (Man needs his own spinoff!) We all know who wins and how it all ends, but the beginning is just as crucial.

It’s what Shonda Rhimes has figured out in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023) if not the whole series. The standalone shows reimagines how Charlotte met and married King George III in 1761, and dealt with his mental illness with courage and love. It makes us bow to a Queen long before she starts to reign.

A series about Elle Woods from the Legally Blonde movies is in the works. It’s set in the years before Elle went to law school, the part of her life no one cares about.Many fear it might turn out to be a more tiresome version of Mean Girls. Isn’t it more fun to see her on the job instead, demolishing opponents in pink dresses and comfortable heels? What? Like it’s hard?

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