By Kunle Ajao Who doesn’t love a franchise? Except when it gets tarnished and sullied, of course.
Here are 11 movies that did their franchise no good:
A Good Day to Die Hard
For those who know (and love) Andy Samberg’s character in the Brooklyn Nine-Nine series, they’ll know our fictional Jake Peralta is obsessed with the Die Hard movies (he once travelled to Canada to get a copy of the first film because there was a rumour it had better sound quality). But even he knew ‘Die Hard 5’ was a franchise bust.
Frankly, A Good Day to Die Hard ticked all the boxes of a franchise on its last legs: weak plot, terrible characters, cliches, and a reliance on the goodwill the franchise had the earned in the past. A let down, and a franchise ruining pic, all in one.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
If you were a cynic, you’d say the film that ruined the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was the one that came right after the first. Was one more than enough? But to do away with the overt cynicism, the second and third films still had a sense of self and whatnot.
The problem came with Film Number Four. On Stranger Tides saw this franchise having to pick up its pieces and deal with the absence of key cast members in Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley (even Bill Nighy was gone). This movie tried its hand with Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane among the new faces to the franchise… it didn’t work.
Surely, they wouldn’t have done a fifth one or more after that .
Blade: Trinity
Mahershala Ali has signed up to be Blade in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe calendar. But while Ali has some
giant Wesley Snipes-shaped shoes to fill, his first task would be writing the last Blade action in our memories.
For all the goodwill the Blade movies had, they started to go downhill after the first film. And if Blade II dipped in quality,
Blade: Trinity was the real kicker that made us eager to bid it goodbye. A villain that displayed such weakness despite
being touted as the big bad in the franchise was only one of many things that disappointed.
Transformers: Age of Extinction
Like Pirates of the Caribbean, the Transformers franchise was facing big changes going into its fourth film. By the
third film, Dark of the Moon , things had started to look dreary; Megan Fox left the franchise, and Rosie Huntington-
Whiteley came in.
Then by the fourth film, main man Shia Leboeuf was also gone. But it wasn’t just that Transformers had very much
(sorry about this), transformed by Age of Extinction. It was also that the change was bad. Our new villain Lockdown had a cool name, but that was that. There was the
disappointing Last Knight to come in 2017, but by then, this franchise was all but done.
Fantastic Four
Let’s be honest, the original Fantastic Four films of the 2000s were not that great. It’s literally the kind of franchise that you hope the MCU reboots and jolts it to life. So, it
would take something pretty bad to be the film that even sullies that. Enter, a first reboot.
The Fantastic Four film in 2015 had Miles Teller (beloved from Whiplash), Jamie Bell (beloved from Snowpiercer and being Tintin), Kate Mara (House of Cards ), and the beloved Michael B. Jordan. Should make for at least a beloved movie, right? Wrong. Not only was this a cliched rehash of the first film, every other element also failed. It felt an attempt at modernisation of a franchise gone badly wrong.
Fast & Furious 6
The Fast & Furious franchise will run for two more films, after its ninth instalment was released three weeks ago.
Only a die-hard cut-me-and-I-bleed-Fast-saga fan will fail to recognise that this franchise is running on fumes (pun intended), and relying on a lot of cinematic buzz and goodwill.
Frankly, the Fast saga was done a while ago. Fast & Furious 6, in 2013, was when this franchise started to change itself;
suddenly we went from chaotic people with fast cars causing trouble to them being heroes saving the world. The whole point of it got lost here, and the fact that it has produced three more films since is astounding.
Terminator: Genysis
Did anyone feel any sense of excitement when Genysis dropped in 2015? By the third Terminator movie, Rise of the
Machines , this franchise was already scrambling. And when Salvation happened with Christian Bale in 2009, we were
begging it to stop.
Our scepticism and pessimism proved right when Genysis came along and, despite being something of a soft reboot,
sealed the franchise’s coffin. Not that it prevented us from getting another in 2019, mind.
007: Die Another Day
The 007 franchise is a tricky one. It’s the kind that, thanks to its constant change of actors donning the James Bond mantra, will have its nadirs and apexes. There have
probably been a few times when the franchise was sullied, and then saved.
For the former, one of those times was certainly Pierce Brosnan’s last act as our alluring assassin. Die Another Day was an impressive entry into the major film world for Rosamund Pike, but asides that, there was little else to write home about.
Thankfully, its next instalment, with a new
face, would jolt it back to life.
Spider-Man 3
The third Spider-Man movie from Sam Raimi had arguably its best villain . In the sense that Venom was as much Peter
Parker as it was Eddie Brock, Parker’s co-worker/competition, it worked.
But other than that, little else did. If the reflection of Venom was good, the act wasn’t. And at this point, even Tobey
Maguire didn’t seem arsed about the role, like everyone else, frankly.
Charlie’s Angels
After Full Throttle in 2003 proved to be a bust, the Charlie’s Angels franchise had two options: call it, or try to jolt it back to life. For a while, it looked like they settled with Option A, which seemed like smart call.
But 16 years later, they chose Option B, which, frankly, made Option A seem like an even smarter call. Charlie’s Angels in 2019 tried to be fun, and to an extent, it was. But it was also so shallow and desperate that you knew that this has to be the final nail in the coffin for the franchise.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon
Emperor
The elephant in the room with this franchise and the third film is that; there was no Rachel Weisz. Weisz refused to return for the third film due to scripting issues, and while a replacement for her wasn’t a bad idea, it showed a franchise that was down in the dumps. And the film itself cemented that.
Perhaps what’s makes this franchise all the more galling is that this third film mishap, and the even more horrendous
failure in 2017, left the first two films as the only good ones.
And given that the second film was basically a semi-imitation of the first, this is a franchise not judged kindly by history. https://sodasandpopcorn.ng/franchise-fatality-11-movies-that-ruined-their-franchise/ |
