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I used to be a massive fan of the Omen trilogy back when I was in middle school, though even then I noticed some of the weirdness about the infamously weird timeline. Apparently, there were originally supposed to be seven movies, so maybe the timeline would have made more sense. Having recently seen the new prequel that came out earlier this year, I got to thinking about that again. This is a bit of a ramble, so bear with me:
- The original The Omen came out in 1976. It takes place over the course of a few years, though it mostly focuses on when Damien is five years old. The year is never explicitly stated, but visually and culturally, everything in the film indicates that it takes place approximately when it came out.
-The second film, Damien: The Omen II, came out two years later, in 1978. This is where the issues begin to arise. In this film, Damien is twelve years old and going to military school with his cousin. Once again, the year is not explicitly stated, but everything about this movie appears to take place approximately around when it was released. Most of us can say that the world was a pretty different place visually over the course of seven years, at the very least because people dressed in different styles, not to mention more significant cultural shifts. It could be assumed that maybe this is supposed to take place a few years later if not for something that happens in the next film...
-The final film in the official cinematic trilogy, The Omen III: The Final Conflict, was released three years after that, in 1981. In this film, Damien is a thirty-two-year-old CEO who becomes an ambassador. Not only does everything visually take place in that time, but there is an explicit reference made to Damien having done something as an adult in 1978, when the movie that he was a twelve-year-old in came out. Once again, all cultural references and fashions clearly set it when it came out.
(I never saw the straight-to-TV sequel The Omen IV: The Awakening from 1991, which is about Damien's daughter, Delia, who is now eight and has a conjoined fetus or something?)
I haven't read the book novelizations of the movies, but I hear that they set the timeline so that the first one is in the 1950s and so on so that Damien's age in the final one makes sense. However, I am more inclined to consider the official movies canon, as they were movies before they were books. The recent prequel, The First Omen, was set in 1971, which makes sense for Damien to be a five-year-old in 1976. Despite the ~questionable quality~ of the sequels, I actually thought that this prequel was pretty good and it even had some setups for possible sequels, though it included clips of the first one, which does not need to be messed with (that 2006 remake, while fun in its own way, was unnecessary).
I was thinking, if they really wanted to remake the sequels, to make them both good and have a more sensible timeline, they could adjust it accordingly. It has been long enough that we have seen the years that they would sensibly take place in and we know what was culturally relevant at the time in terms of politics, media, fashion, et cetera. If we want to keep the same ages, the second one would take place in 1983 and the third would take place in 2003. Heck, they could even make Damien spawn again and, if they want to jump to modern day, the kid would be in their early twenties by now.
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