Macaulay Culkin Returns For Dark As Hell Home Alone Sequels
Macaulay Culkin returned for MULTIPLE Home Alone sequels — and they’re as dark an adulthood as you’d imagine for Kevin McCallister
In the first of several bizarre Home Alone sequels, Macaulay Culkin finally returned to say two of the most recognizable C words in history.
One of them is Christmas. The other is not said outside of polite or intimate company lol. (It’s not cumquat. Stop saying it’s cumquat.)
Y’all remember Home Alone, right?
I watched Home Alone 2: Lost In New York. Again. In which Kevin gets lost from his family. Again.
HA2 is one of my favorite movies. I like it more than HA1. Remember when Trump got a cameo because it was the only way he’d let them film HA2 in Trump Tower? Yeah... Those were the days.
I always wondered what it would have been like if they had made another Home Alone sequel about Kevin again instead of the other movies that are about other families and other kids and other robbers. So stupid.
I get that Macaulay Culkin retired from acting before they could film HA3, but how did 20th Century Studios (known as 20th Century Fox back then) not simply recast the role and swing for the fences?
I dipped out of the series as soon as I saw the premise for Home Alone 3
When an inept group of criminals tries to get a stolen top-secret computer chip through airport security, it ends up in a toy car in the luggage of the elderly Mrs. Hess (Marian Seldes). Unable to promptly retrieve the chip, the felons follow Hess and the car to her neighborhood. After she gives the toy to young Alex Pruitt (Alex D. Linz), who is home sick from school, he becomes the target of the criminals. However, the precocious kid is on to their schemes and ready to fight the thieves off.
Everything about that premise jumps the shark harder than Live Free Or Die Hard trying to convince us it’s normal for gritty, down-to-earth, grassroots John McClane to play darts by shooting cars at helicopters.
Kevin’s charm is that he keeps it low tech. Why use a flame thrower when you can smash their face with a paint can? It’s called being rational.
Even the Australian horror movie version of Home Alone — 2016’s incredibly graphic Better Watch Out — knew to reference the ****ing paint cans.
Home Alone 3 almost starred Kevin’s cousin Fuller
When Macaulay Culkin declined to reprise his role as Kevin for the third outing, John Hughes briefly considered writing the screenplay with Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern reprising their roles as burglars Harry and Marv, respectively, who target Kevin’s cousin Fuller (Macaulay’s real-life brother Kieran Culkin, now starring in the acclaimed HBO series Succession).
[In the original draft of Home Alone 3,] Fuller would be the main character, with Gerry Bamman and Terrie Snell reprising their roles and Fuller’s parents Frank and Leslie, respectively, who go on vacation and leave Fuller home alone, to defend himself against Marv and Harry. The idea was scrapped, as Pesci and Stern refused to reprise their roles, and wanted to pursue other projects, and Kieran felt he couldn’t follow in his brother’s footsteps as the lead. Hughes then wrote an entirely different screenplay with no characters from the first two films.
Home Alone 3 could have been good, right?
The film was so bad that it barely lost that year’s Razzie Award to Speed 2: Cruise Control. My mom always told me if you can’t be good, at least be good at it. HA3 couldn’t even manage that much.
Gerry Bamman — he played Uncle Frank in the first two Home Alone films — said making the movie without Macaulay Culkin was a mistake.
HA3 does have a couple of things going for it
HA3 is the first Home Alone movie to feature a female villain. It also had decent Box Office. But The Flop House podcast calls that BO, and this one sure stinks.
It’s the only time I read a review from Roger Ebert and thought wtf, this dude is no longer with it (he said HA3 was better than the first two!!!). His review buddy but IRL nemesis Gene Siskel nearly fell out of his chair.
HA3 of course proudly highlights Ebert’s review on every release.
Shameful. Just shameful.
HA3 also almost cool because it’s an early Scarlett Johansson film role. Not her first, though. That was North, the universally reviled film that helped Ebert find the title for his book I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie.
And yet he liked HA3? Ebert…was that a joke?
My god, what a lost opportunity. Couldn’t they have at least, I don’t know, tried to connect it to Kevin McCallister?
And I swear to fur baby Christ, didn’t the headline of this article promise me Macaulay Culkin?!!!!!
Wait, wait, my dog is handing me a note —
Home Alone 4 is actually about Kevin?!
But with a different actor. Okay, okay…
That’s close. Maybe close enough. What’s it about?
Home Alone 4 sounds…good?
Home Alone 4 is the forgotten sequel — at least I forgot it, which may as well be the same thing — that’s actually kinda cool. While part 3 was nonsense, part 4 used a different cast but was a true sequel to Home Alone 2.
Kevin’s parents can’t take the stress. They get divorced, his dad moves into a high-tech mansion, and Kevin is trying to make himself at home when Marv and his new female partner in crime reveal they’ve been casing the joint for weeks…
The big twist is that the maid for the mansion is — Marv’s mom! She helps Marv and his new accomplice break into the mansion, but Kevin stops them again.
That doesn’t sound half bad!
At least worth watching.
My dog promises that Macaulay Culkin will be here in a few seconds, so while we wait, we should probably go ahead and watch HA4 —
Hold on. My dog is handing me a second note.
NO ****ING WAY
It turns out Macaulay Culkin returned many years later to star in SEVERAL Home Alone sequels.
And when I tell you they’re dark as hell, you’ll understand what people are paying to see (and failing to get LOL) when they go to see Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey.
Here are your links to stream each WTF Home Alone sequel starring Macaulay Culkin
In the first of several bizarre Home Alone sequels, Macaulay Culkin finally returned to say two of the most recognizable C words in history.
One of them is Christmas. The other is not said outside of polite or intimate company lol. (It’s not cumquat. Stop saying it’s cumquat.)
‘How about this, it’s Christmas time. It’s f***ing Christmas and your whole family goes on vacation and they forget their 8-year-old f***ing son… I had to fend off my house from two psychopath home invaders. I was just a kid, I still have nightmares about this bald weirdo dude chasing me around.’
Kevin tells his unfortunate (fortunate?) passenger about just how traumatizing the whole experience of HA1 and HA2 were. At one point, Kevin ignores a call from his mom — no doubt phoning it in from a break on Schitt’s Creek — as his cell phone plays the Home Alone theme music.
And yes, episode 5 reveals that Home Alone, like Everything Everywhere All At Once, is part of a multiverse with superpowers. (You can skip episodes 2 and 3if you’re only here for the secret Home Alone sequels.)
But wait, there’s more
This Macaulay Culkin Home Alone Parody Might Just Ruin Christmas
I Made My Family Disappear: Recutting Home Alone Into A Horror Movie
Other stuff
Joe Pesci Bit Macaulay Culkin On The Set Of “Home Alone” | Late Night with Conan O’Brien
What Ever Happened To Alex D. Linz, The Kid From ‘Home Alone 3’?
At one stage, the script was considered being filmed as a television pilot, but in the end, the studio decided to go ahead and make it as a feature film. The reverse would later happen with The Wonderful World of Disney: Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House (2002), which was originally intended to be a stand-alone television movie, but was restructured during production, to serve as a pilot for a television series that ultimately never went ahead.
PS. Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey
Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey has determined that Succession could theoretically be a Home Alone sequel featuring Kevin’s cousin Fuller after he took a new name and claimed a new birth. Hope no one finds out he’s adopted.
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