Yes, you know it had to happen, the sequel to continue the
epic story of the suffering Joads, in an equally epic American drama that
sweeps across the sceen, finding their struggles rewarded with great success, which
only crumbles into more misery and suffering due to the corruption of wealth
and power. It’s monumental; it’s sensational (in more ways than one!); it’s: The
Grapes of Wrath 2: Wrath of the Grapes!
Okay, so in this sequel to The Grapes of Wrath, which takes place after WWII (actually, it’s a
sweeping epic that goes from 1945 through 1985, following the Joad family from
poverty to monumental success), Tom Joad returns home from the war to find that
his family has worked their way through the war farming for the war effort, and having done so, they have
earned enough money to buy their own large patch of farmland in Napa Valley,
where people are beginning to build a wine industry. So the Joad family begins
making wines, importing a friend of Tom’s whose life he saved during his days
in France fighting the Nazis, and whose family had a rich wine making tradition
and a successful company, but whose vineyards were destroyed in the war, and
whose family members were killed. In their honor, they name the vineyard after
the old defunct French vineyard (and also to give their enterprise a suitably
appropriate name for wine).
With this expert help, the Joad’s vineyard becomes the toast
of California, turning their family into a wine empire, and turning their lives
upside-down with newfound wealth. And so their lives become a twisted power
dynasty like from TV shows like Dallas,
and their family is torn apart this time by feast, rather than by famine. (Oh,
the irony!) And they all become bitter alcoholics living lives of isolation and
torment even though they are still together as a family in the same (admittedly
sprawling castle of a) home and are now successful, because the whole thing is
just too much for them, proving that money isn’t everything, and that family is
the most important thing. (You know, so long as it’s not a family like theirs
has become, overwhelmed by avarice, lust, envy, entitlement, etc.)
Yes, now with wealth and power, the family members hate one
another and constantly battle tooth and nail for power and shares in the family
business, clashing over every aspect of the company’s future direction. And
their children and their children’s children are born hyper-entitled and
bratty, showing no sense of humility or character or modesty or generosity
whatsoever, with Tom Joad’s offspring turning out to embody the complete
opposite of his vision for social justice. (And an elderly Ma Joad constantly
berates them about appreciating things, to which they are mockingly arrogant
and abusive back to her.) And the remaining Joads from the original Grapes
of Wrath movie pine away for their previous
lives of desperation and deprivation, because at least they felt free and
determined and bonded together back then, when they were still a loving family
(kind of like Charles Foster Kane’s longing for his “Rosebud” sled). The End.
See? This takes the conception of the first movie, turns it
on its head, and demonstrates that people can be equally desperate and
miserable even where the grass is much, much greener: the perfect message for
our failing economy! So isn’t it about time that somebody in Hollywood finally
made: The Grapes of Wrath 2: Wrath of the Grapes?
