How To Nurture A Franchise

We've seen so many franchise now. Every summer tentpole is a franchise, except for Dwayne Johnson's surprise hit San Andreas. However, we've seen desperation that calls old franchises to be revitalized in the new era. Like, Jurassic Park or Terminator or Mad Max. Some are really dear to some audience's hearts and it's insulting to us to see something valuable ruined for the sake of money. So, I think I've seen quite a lot to show those Hollywood exec on how to continue/reboot/remake/restart a franchise.

1. Continuity
Continuity matters. Like a lot. This problem happens in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They have stand-alone films and then an event Avengers film. They have different directors in it, therefore different vision. I really like Joss Whedon but he's the biggest culprit in this matter. I mentioned this one before, Whedon likes Black Widow/Natascha Romanoff in short hair. So, despite her being incredibly sexy in her long hair in The Winter Soldier, the hairstyle changes again in Age of Ultron. Also the costumes, being rebooted each time without any explanation, save for Iron Man because he's rich and he can change it anytime.




2. Admit Mistakes
If you made really bad movies in the franchise, man up and own it. Don't be lazy and just say these movies don't exist. I haven't seen Jurassic World but I heard that the movie disowns The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, which means: fuck you Trevorrow. Terminator Genisys recently did so as well, they disowned Rise of the Machines and Salvation which confused me from the first five minutes of the film. If they stayed true to Judgment Day, it means that the subtitular Judgment Day has been averted but why is it still happening in the backstory of Genisys. The new Judgment Day should be in 2003 as per RotM's storyline. But then Genisys moved it again to 2017 for no fucking reason. While I'm not a fan of RotM (I liked it because it still has a badass Arnie, the killer T-X and Claire Danes in it), I thought Salvation was quite awesome for bringing us to 2018 during the actual war.

The only franchise that owned up to their mistakes is the Fast and Furious franchise. They chose an ingenious way to do so, where they jumbled up the order of the movies but still making sense of them all. Delaying the events of Tokyo Drift to make way for installments 4, 5, and 6 is smart. Not only it brought back the original cast but also maintaining Tokyo Drift's breakout character Han. The X-Men franchise did a quasi-admission to their mistakes. They know The Last Stand and Origins was an unfortunate addition so they did a hard reset with Days of Future Past to erase that movie. However, it is still a shame because it means erasing the whole original trilogy and Wolverine's solo storyline.

3. Know When to Stop
Well, no franchise has known when to stop. Even Harry Potter which has a definite ending, has to be milked out with Fantastic Beasts and J.K. Rowling's inability to fucking move on. Yes, Rowling, it's not cute anymore for you to spill 'new' information about the wizarding world. Maybe there are some franchises that know when to stop, but they needed to be slapped with the hard truth when their movies have become intolerable and bad. No one goes out with a bang. Examples: The Matrix franchise (if you think Revolutions is awesome then you need to submit yourself to a mental hospital), Saw (I never watched any of it but pretty sure it's not even downhill anymore when it gets to installment number seven). I believe Resident Evil franchise will stop after the upcoming movie, but that's after the box office numbers have became really low. So many movies that should have ended a long time ago. For example: Indiana Jones franchise with The Last Crusade, Pirates of the Caribbean franchise with At World's End, Middle Earth films with LotR: Return of the King, Transformers franchise with Dark of the Moon, Die Hard franchise with With A Vengeance (although Live Free or Die Hard is pretty awesome).

This is also relevant to those YA movies that has to split their ultimate chapter in to two parts. It worked for some movies but not all of them. Yes I'm looking at you two for now, Mockingjay and Breaking Dawn. Man, but both of ya still managed to make me pay for both chapters. Shit.

4. Stop Picking Up Old Franchises
Okay, how many franchises are built upon an original movie that happened 20 years ago? So many. Tron Legacy is the trendsetter I guess for I guess setting the record for mainstream sequel with 28 years gap. This one kind of similar with point number three above. Sometimes they pick up these old franchises because they think they still have some steam. Like Star Wars franchise. I love the movies but making them again after a perfect ending with Revenge of the Sith seems pointless. Even with J.J. Abrams as director. After the announcements I have been quite excited for The Force Awakens but do we really need Star Wars standalone films? Why does no one on the Internet object to this idea? Only me? Having some steam in the franchise doesn't mean it will be good. Gamble all you want but when it backfires, write down them checks.

5. When You Reboot, Do It Cleanly
Terminator Genisys is a reboot that was done dirtily. It wanted to be a new reset but it still wants to homage/drag the original films. The cleanest reboot is Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy but that's not fair because bad movies that couldn't go nowhere prompted that reboot. Genisys still has some work to continue but decided to reboot. I guess the cleanest reboot for this matter would be Mad Max with this year's spectacular extravaganza Fury Road. No time for nostalgia because it's all fire and blood! Witness that movie! The other good reboot is J.J. Abrams Star Trek alternate timeline, which should be in the same case with Genisys. Abrams' films still provoked nostalgia with the late Leonard Nimoy showing up in the two movies and Into Darkness was basically a remake of Wrath of Khan. But at least it does not rely on the amazingness that was in the original series.

I hope this is useful for you, Hollywood. Take notes from this guy who should be writing his final essay instead of doing bad photoshop jobs and doing this.

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they just went and made a new dinosaur. is it a good idea?