After the wildly successful Star Wars movies of the late 20th Century, George Lucas followed up with a really boring prequel—a movie about the events that happened before the good stuff. But Lucas wasn't the first to make this mistake. History has mostly forgotten these crappy prequels.
Young "Ebby" Scrooge is visited by the ghost of a pilgrim, who lectures him about the evils of smiling. The ghost makes him face Thanksgiving Past by cleaning out the leftover cranberry sauce and mashed turnips which are still mouldering in the fridge. Thanksgiving Present is represented by the horrifyingly inept Dallas Cowboys being dissected by the mediocre Giants, and Thanksgiving Future drops a frozen 18 pound Butterball on Scrouge's foot, forshadowing his need for a cane in A Christmas Carol.
A high school athlete is cruelly punished for following his natural urges (his passion for blueberry muffins causes him to put on a few extra pounds) when he is forced to wear uniform number 666. In the climactic scene, the sophomore who loves him confesses that she baked the forbidden muffins, using an old family recipie which calls for extra lard. Then she explodes or something lame like that.
A thinly-depicted 20-something lives near the ocean. He wants to fish, but he has no fishing boat, only an inflatable kayak. He gets into surfcasting, and picks up a few stripers every now and then. There's probably a thinly-depicted point somewhere.
Strangely post-modern psychological misfits shuffle around in Scandanavia during the 1890's. The book starts at the Winter Solstice, and everybody is all depressed and purposeless. They cheer up a little as the days get longer, and some of them think life might have meaning, although you can tell the author considers them naive. Then the days get shorter again, and everybody decides life really is pointless after all.
Young and idealistic "Willy" Kurtz, working for a major British confectioner, is dispatched to Belgium for primo chocolate. There he encounters Max Spackle, an older but weirder man who believes that European cusine isn't absolutely perfect. Spackle subverts the dominant paradigm by using the water from last night's fingerbowls to make today's soupstock. Eventually the symbolism breaks down, because most readers aren't exactly certain what the epiglottis is, or why it had to be pictured so disgustingly on the bookcover.
One spring the lettuce crop doesn't do very well, and the family has to get by on sheep sorrel in their salads for a couple of months. But they manage, and then the spinach comes up real nicely, so nobody dies, and everybody maintains their dignity.
A bunch of kids goes on a weekend camping trip, and their sleeping bags get full of fleas. The veneer of social courtesy wears thin as the little creeps get all bit up. Sunday afternoon arrives none too soon, and they all go home before anybody starts making nasty comments about other people's weight.
This girl thinks this boy is really cute and stuff, but she doesn't want him to find out because he'll totally make fun of her. This boy thinks this girl is really cute and stuff, but he doesn't want her to find out because she'll totally make fun of him. Then they both find out, and they hold hands for a second before their parents catch them and drag them off by their respective ears. They never see each other again, but the pattern is set for all their future relationships.
A young man becomes a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany. One thing follows another in linear fashion. It's boring, then it gets stupid when the man is kidnapped by aliens. The author runs the plot through a paper shredder, shuffles the little strips of paper, and rearranges all his paragraphs to match the new timeline. Then he submits it to his publisher with a new release number.
Captain Ahab is a really nice guy, and all the sailors think he's swell because he kills whale after whale. Then one time he just wounds the whale, and the whale turns around and bites his leg off. He gets all pissed off and bitter about it, but really, what did he expect the whale to do, give him flowers and a thank-you card?
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