If someone were to bring up the idea that there is a movie that exists out there called Argo 2, the impression might be left that Hollywood has taken the sequel/reboot culture to new, possibly unethical depths. Well, there is a movie out there called Argo 2. However, it’s not quite the egregiously tacky cash-in project that it certainly sounds like.
A photo of a poster displayed at the Cannes Film Festival for the film, Argo 2 showed up on Vulture. Of course, most moviegoers know Argo as the 2012 Ben Affleck-directed film based on the real life C.I.A. ruse to rescue escaped hostages from the 1979-1981 hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran. While for the uninitiated, the idea that there would be an Argo 2 ranks pretty high in the "WTF?" department, the actually-existing film is a sequel to a 2004 Hungarian action film that also happened to carry the name, Argo.
Indeed, the 2004 Argo, which could conceivably call itself "the original," is about a treasure hunter named Tibi Balogh (Lajos Kovács) whose search for a golden owl statue MacGuffin leads him all across Hungary to nab it before his rival, Milkman (Sándor Oszter.) It’s hardly the historical-political thriller that won Best Picture at the 2013 Academy Awards. However, it apparently nabbed itself enough of a fanbase in Hungary to warrant a sequel some 11 years later. Moreover, the plot description posted on IMDb for said sequel is entertainingly insane in its own right. It reads:
In the last 10 years, neither Tibi Balog nor his crew have got any smarter. Their persistence does not come from a lack of self-knowledge, but the fact that there's always someone who believes them to be the criminals of the century. But the time when they need to face their weakness has come. So when they get a mission to obtain an interesting floppy disk, they turn to an expert. Maybe now they can get to Malibu. But of course, the gypsy mafia, Japanese assassins and the Slovakian army will have a word in this.
Guys… you had me at "floppy disk" and locked me in with "gypsy mafia." Interestingly enough, the unwittingly deceptive Argo 2 poster is not exactly a flashy spectacle matching that description and seemingly resembles some made-for-DVD $5 dollar bin find. It shows a close-ups of a pair of grizzled adversaries facing-off against a black background above a logo with flames in the bottom. In fact, it comes across as a fascinating curiosity, almost as a meta-infused joke whose apparent fakeness references the fact that in Affleck’s Argo, the C.I.A. concocted the fabrication of the escaped hostages being part of a film production for a sci-fi, Star Wars-esque project called "Argo." However, this film is very real.
While the Argo 2 poster probably didn’t leave anyone genuinely under the impression that a sequel to the esteemed 2012 Iran Hostage Crisis film was shamelessly underway, it does leave you to wonder, merely as an afterthought, if such a feat could be accomplished. Technically, the term "Argo" is public domain, culled from Greek myth as the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed searching for the Golden Fleece. It may sound like a tasteless gesture, but never underestimate the power of a hack producer’s prospective payday.
