Franchises: A Controversial Conclusion

Hey all, I'm half back... amongst my travels away from MoFo, I've been keeping up with the movie biz and keeping watch, amongst time used to write my own novel...

And, watching all these movies, sequels, remakes, and legacy reboots, whilst at the same time trying to keep my own sanity writing my own story and trying to keep it original, and using the unoriginal template of modern movies and scripts as my poster-boys for what-not-to-do, I've come to a conclusion that some might not like to hear.

All the classic franchises we love... were never any good.

Not, they were good and aren't any more because of "whatever" has happened recently in the industry... I mean, they were never good.

-

The Xenomorph/Alien franchise: Not good, and never was.
Alien, a masterpiece.
Aliens, a masterpiece sequel.
Alien 3, a mixed bag that was filmed without a script. Some like it, but most don't.
Alien Resurrection, a terrible movie.
Since then, we've had Prometheus, Covenant, and Romulus.
5 bad movies, 2 good ones.
The Xenomorph/Alien franchise was never any good.

-

The Terminator franchise: Not good, and never was.
Terminator, changed the game.
T2, a masterpiece of a sequel.
Since then, we've had T3, Salvation, Genesys, and Dark Fate.
4 bad movies, 2 good ones.
The Terminator franchise, was never any good.

-

The Jurassic franchise: Not good, and never was.
Jurassic Park, a masterpiece and game changer.
JP2: The Lost World, is a mixed bag. Some hate it, some love it.
Since then, we've had JP3, and 3 Jurassic World movies, and another one called Rebirth on the way.
Rebirth looks like following the trend of pinching ideas from other movies, like Romulus did, and simply being a rewritten script of Anaconda 2, with Skull Island thrown in as well.
5, maybe a 6th bad movie... and ONE good movie.
The Jurassic Franchise, was never a good franchise.


-

Predator, is the same.
1 great movie.
A decent sequel.
Predators, The Predator, and Prey, all leaving a bad taste in the mouths of fans.
So let's call it... 3 bad, 1 great, and one OK movie.
Predator, never was, a good franchise.

-

LOTR:
Is going that way.
There's the masterful, and beautiful original trilogy... that has been marred by the Hobbit trilogy.
And a new movie in the works with Gandalf and Gollum as the main characters, Ian McKellen apparently returning as well.
We've got 3 good... and 3 movies with possible a 4th, bad movie.

LOTR is now bordering the Always Was A Bad Franchise category.

-

The MCU.
I did a count the other day of good and bad movies in the MCU.

Captain America: Brave New World is the 35th movie of the MCU... and as far as I can tell, the only good movies that people actually defend in the MCU are Iron Man, Avengers, GotG 1 and 3, Winter Soldier, and Infinity War.

The rest have been, well, forgotten or panned by fans and critics.

They're releasing the 36th movie this May.

So with 35 movies and a 36th on the way, and only 5 of them are aggressively defended by fans... the MCU, was never a good franchise.

-

And now the big one.
The Star Wars franchise:
Not good, and never was.

See... that original trilogy is classic.
But, Return Of The Jedi is considered weak when compared with the first two movies.
So, A New Hope is a game changer.
Empire Strikes Back, is a masterpiece.
Return Of The Jedi, is a hit and miss movie.
Then there's the prequel trilogy that has become more appreciated as time went on, but, let's face it, they're not good.
And now we have the sequel trilogy that undid everything the originals set up.
Plus, the two side movies in Solo and Rogue One being forgettable...

When you have 11 movies, and only two of them are aggressively defended by fans... I'm afraid Star Wars...

... was never good.

-

Maybe the more cynical side of me and my old age is getting the better of me, but, is my opinion of all of these major franchises, completely off base?

None of these beloved franchises were ever any good.

They were 2, maybe 3 good movies 30-50 years ago, and since then, just a series of nothingness and resentful bittersweet memories.

__________________

I agree that the franchises aren't any good and I'd even argue about some of those films you say were good in the first place.

But I don't think anyone but the moneymen are saying they are, are they? Obviously I don't know about the newer stuff because that's all crap anyway.

There might be an argument to say that the best franchise, that is to say, the one which goes furthest before hitting a duff one, is Die Hard? I'd say the first three are all good, but everything after that looks awful (not that I'd know as I won't watch them because they all sound/look awful)

Some might say Scream, but I'd say 3 is a big step down and, while it's enjoyable, it's not really good.

Nightmare loses it at 2 and again, although I like it, by trying to do something different it isn't really strong enough to keep in the race (regardless of how much I like 3 and think it's a return to form)

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

I'm sorry but IMO

There is nothing wrong with The Guardians of the Galaxy, Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit or the John Wick series. They are films I can watch over and over and still enjoy.

Yeah LOTR is borderline, with 3 good and 3 bad, it's getting close if they keep going and making bad ones.
GotG is decent as I said, it's one of the stronger MCU movies.
I never got into John Wick tbh... the first is a remake of a Brian Cox movie and I never really bought into the series after that.

Lethal Weapon for me over Die Hard.
Die Hard had 1 great movie, then the sequel was mediocre... bring back McTiernan for Vengeance...
Then................. two bad movies.
5 films with 2 good ones? Die Hard.... within the theme of this thread, Die Hard, was never a good franchise.

Lethal Weapon though... first two are absolute class.
3rd and 4th are in a different league of class, not as good as the first two, but, I'd take LW 3 and LW 4 over almost any action movie outside of Predator 1 and RoboCop 1.

Lethal Weapon is a solid Franchise.

I just hope that Lethal Finale, Mel Gibson manages to get the original cast back, seeing as they all showed up in the first 4 movies.
Lethal Weapon is a bit of an anomaly in terms of casting as they kept it a big family... as they all chant at the end of Lethal Weapon 4 when the camera clicks

I read most of what you posted and have a couple of comments.

Yeah, franchises, spin-offs, sequels, etc are never as good as the original/first episode or whatever, when that "universe" was new. That law is written into the structure of quantum mechanics and everybody knows that. I certainly do and, whenever a spinoff or sequel is out, it mainly has to be better than watching TV or messing around on social media for that night.

The other comment, is about how and why you see movies. Why do you go? Based on your comment, it seems like you need a break from them, especially episodes from a franchise since you already "know" that it will be bad. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Go to see a live play, take a walk downtown, get some dinner, see a musical performance, go to see an indie or foreign movie....do something other than go to franchise movies until the thrill returns.

That's all a small part of the larger reason I kinda left MoFo for a while to be totally honest.

Sickness and health problems, family stuff going on... and losing my father...

... and then writing my own stories.

I've piled around 4 years of my time into a novel that started as a few lines, and turned into a vendetta of needing to get it done and expanded

I think the loss of my Dad made me re-evaluate how I see life and stories, and in turn made me more bitter toward the current state of Hollywood writers and producers.

Took a minute to follow what you meant but I'm on board now. Right, some of them were never good as franchises.

It's obviously a very simplistic way of looking at things: people liked this story, so give them more. But a lot of the best stories are good specifically because the story they tell reaches a natural conclusion that is inconducive (if not downright incompatible) with the idea of continuing (cough Arcs sont Triomphe, cough).

I think the real test is whether some initial story can conclude, and the IP finds its way into the hands of a fundamentally different directing/writing/whatever team...and still produces a good entry. That's the real test of what makes for a good franchise.

To complicate things, there's "this was never going to work as a franchise" and there's "they messed it up." I think Terminator and LOTR could work, on paper, the latter because of the sheer tonnage of its legendarium, and the former because the premise naturally lends itself to twisty double-backs and things that would normally have to undermine earlier entries, rather than compliment them (T3 is a great example of this, and generally underrated).

Related concept: when I see a new lore-heavy show, I decide whether to throw myself into it in part based on whether it's based on, say, an existing book series or graphic novel. If it is, it's a lot more likely the first few seasons will be worth the time. And then, again, the big test is what happens if and when they go past the source material and have to forge out on their own.

Pretty much all of that is higher priority than seeing a movie, especially if they are not working for you. "Hollywood" movies are a combination of art and investment strategy, and, if the night doesn't work for you, why bother.

I think this is where the problems lay.

Branching out with a new team.

I think it lays with that there's just no talent in the system... or, the system is, ahem, systematically castrating the talent.

I watched the making of for the for 2009 Star Trek movie.

Orci and Kurtzman say:
"Trek was always Classic Music, and Star Wars was always RocknRoll. We wanted to inject some of that RocknRoll into Trek"

Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.

The teams behind Trek and Wars, just don't understand the IP.

Trek was NEVER Classical Music.
It already was RocknRoll.

It pushed boundaries, told stories of racial and social differences... the biggest example being Let That Be Your Last Battlefield of Trek TOS... and with the relationships of different races and species, being a mixed culture crew on the ship/s, and Data trying to discover Humanity... and delving into Alien diplomatic episodes like Worf going off mission and having Kirk kiss Uhura.

Trek was always RocknRoll.
Going against norms, upsetting the order, and saying f-you to the authorities.


Writers today, whether under the boot of corporate say-so, or just completely talentless hacks... mainstream, big budget movies today, are just, well... terrible.

And digging up 50 year old franchises, smacks of "lack of ideas and talent in the writing room".

Right, so part of the problem is thinking it's the concept that's the selling point, rather than the execution. Which is maybe an understandable mistake sometimes, but by and large over time I find myself interested in specific artists rather than specific properties.

It's kinda both I think.

Remakes and continuations off franchises can be a good thing.

The recent Dune movies are solid... Blade Runner 2024, also, solid (not to have a h*rdon for Villeneuve of course)
Digging up old franchises and movies can be a great thing... a wonderful thing.

Homages too... Moon (2009), Ex_Machina, and even Dredd with touches of Die Hard and essentially a redo of a number of movies, are all great.

The Blob (1988), is one I consider as one of the greatest true remakes of all time...

But now, they're on about doing another remake of The Blob... and my initial instinct is... really? With this current generation of hacks?
I think stuff like this is also marred by the keyboard generation... press buttons, and the computer does it for you.
Ala; The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance.
Didn't get a second series, because.............. doing stuff without being able to press 1 button and get the computer to do literally everything, is "just too difficult".

It's all just hollow now I think.
And given that a lot of the hollowness actually stems back to 20+ years ago, that the current generation of talentless keyboard pushers have been outed by the failures of those that came to prominence in the early 2000s.

It's all unravelling after two generations, and I've kinda lost my love for what the system is now pumping out, and have seen the failures of the past generations because of the drop in quality between then, and now.

I would definitely draw a bright line between remakes and ongoing/cumulative franchises. As eyerolling as remakes/reboots can be, they don't have nearly as many pitfalls as trying to continue someone else's story past the point at which it's naturally wound down.

There's also a thing where a lot of people can tell a different version of the same story. If it's a popular story a lot of very good writers probably dream about getting their turn at it, and the fact that the story is established gives them lots of opportunities for tiny subversions or tweaks which land a lot harder than they otherwise would.

Hard disagree. As far as I'm concerned they have released 35 pretty good movies.

Definitely looking forward to the 36th, 37th and all future installments.

But that's where the problem lays.

To take an established *thing*... and continue it...

They don't.
What we actually get is Jurassic World, GB Afterlife, and Force Awakens.
Remakes, packaged as sequels.

Basically, Friday The 13th (2009) pretending it's a sequel.

Because the writers have no idea how to write.

But then, the major problem is, is when they do try something new... and we get Jurassic World Dominion, or further back, we had Alien 3.

The whole system has been dying for a long time... and the franchises I mentioned before like Terminator, Star Wars, Aliens's's'... are kinda outed now by the failures of the previous generations because they created this current one.

I've watched all the MCU movies and can only tell you the names of three villains... Thanos, and Ego... and Green Goblin because he was originally in the Raimi-verse.

I think the point I'm trying to make is that the damage the current generation is doing, has made me wake up to the fact that a lot of these beloved franchises were never actually any good.

Demand and supply

That well could be it

The audience is the d*mbass

We all get excited at the new trailer, and yet, always get let down by the product.
It's like jangling the keys at the baby

Citizen never bothered to watch all of the bad franchise stuff, the following is all true, I promise

The Alien franchise is the only franchise where I didn't follow my own rule of not watching crappy follow ups:
I watched Alien, Aliens...brilliant. I watched Alien 3 poor and Prometheus which was so stupid I not only signed off of the Alien franchise I signed off of Ridley too.

The Terminator franchise:
Terminator, T2...first one brilliant, second decent. But I avoided the rest of the franchise like a stale meal.

The Jurassic franchise:
Jurassic Park was fun enough, I guess. But I didn't need to binge on a giant bag of dinosaur shaped cheesy puffs so avoided all the rest.

Predator one was enough, no need to wash and repeat.

LOTR: I disliked the 1st & 2nd ones so much that I can't be bothered to see the third one or any of the other follow ups either.

MCU, I never fell into that trap, the only one I seen was Wonder Woman and that bored me to tears.

The Star Wars franchise: Seen the first three and liked them, as a kid...but unfortunately I watched the fourth one and the one that reunited the original cast. I'm so unimpressed with the Star Wars universe that I don't even remember what those last two installments were called, nor do I care.

Rodent forgot one and I believe most would consider this an exception to his franchises are bad rule the Batman franchise.
I've only seen the first two, which I just rewatched and both were mediocre. I'm not interested in the Nolan Batman movies. Like all the rest I'm not into superheros and fantasy stuff.

Wonder Woman is DC, not Marvel