Brilliant GQ article on why franchises and sequels suck...

[Admiral Buzzkill]

...even when they're good.

Harris is completely right, of course.

Link

For the studios, a good new idea has become just too scary a road to travel. Inception, they will tell you, is an exceptional movie. And movies that need to be exceptional to succeed are bad business. "The scab you're picking at is called execution," says legendary producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network, True Grit). "Studios are hardwired not to bet on execution, and the terrible thing is, they're right. Because in terms of execution, most movies disappoint."

With that in mind, let's look ahead to what's on the menu for this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children's book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

For every Inception style risk that succeeds, how many flop? Or on TV, you can see the same thing: for every Walking Dead or Lost, how many risky ideas flop?

So much safer to do the comic book character movie and the ten millionth iteration of a cop show. Hollywood is not a bunch of soulless cretins; they're playing the best odds. Well, ok, they're both but the latter is why they keep churning out uninspired crap.

"Studios are hardwired not to bet on execution, and the terrible thing is, they're right. Because in terms of execution, most movies disappoint."

And that's because execution is the risk. Take the concepts behind Inception, The Walking Dead and Lost - the odds are, the execution will be bad and the results will be wretched. It's a minor miracle when such "non standard" ideas turn out so well. The bean counters hate things they can't control like creative execution. The situation sucks, but it's easy to see why the situation exists, and there's no clear path to overcoming it.

 

[Gaith]

Welcome to 2003, GQ. Now get those kids off your lawn!

 

[Greg Cox]

And this is different from the Golden Age of Hollywood when the studios churned out film after film about Tarzan, Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, Ma and Pa Kettle, and Francis the Talking Mule?

Audiences like series. They always have.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Welcome to 1933, GQ. There have always been sequels. How many Andy Hardy movies were there? Flash Gordon? Tarzan? Nobody remembers them because they were disposable cheesy crap. Just like most movies today.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

And this is different from the Golden Age of Hollywood when the studios churned out film after film about Tarzan, Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, Ma and Pa Kettle, and Francis the Talking Mule?

Audiences like series. They always have.

ARGH! Buttinsky!

Just because I was looking up the correct spelling of Andy Hardy.

 

[23skidoo]

Welcome to 1933, GQ. There have always been sequels. How many Andy Hardy movies were there? Flash Gordon? Tarzan? Nobody remembers them because they were disposable cheesy crap. Just like most movies today.

Actually, you're incorrect. Many of those films are fondly remembered and are cult favorites. No different than Star Trek or Doctor Who or Star Wars.

The big difference, though, is in the 1930s there was a class system in place for movies. We still use the term B-movie to denote low-budget, "lesser" films. Back in the 1930s you had the major releases, and you had the B-films that usually were shown in double bills on Saturday afternoon and would have been weekly television series had there been weekly television. Andy Hardy, Buck Rogers, Tarzan -- every one of those would have been a TV series had network TV existed in any formalized way back then.

But look at the A-films. The big budget films. The ones that won the Oscars. Try to find any that fall into the "franchise" or "sequel" category. One or two, that's about it.

That said, what you had instead were films based upon novels and plays: Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Wizard of Oz, All Quiet on the Western Front, etc. Even Fritz Lang's Metropolis was based on a novel. So maybe people bitched back then about Hollywood not having original ideas because they took them all from books and plays?

Alex

 

[Count Zero]

As far as I know, the Metropolis novel is more a byproduct of the script, pretty much like the novelisations of movies and tv episodes today. Thea von Harbou had a penchant for doing that. I think there's also a novel for Woman in the Moon.

 

[Greg Cox]

That said, what you had instead were films based upon novels and plays: Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Wizard of Oz, All Quiet on the Western Front, etc. Even Fritz Lang's Metropolis was based on a novel. So maybe people bitched back then about Hollywood not having original ideas because they took them all from books and plays?

Alex

Yep! And they also bitched that the movies were nowhere near as good as the original plays and books!

I remember reading some contemporary reviews of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Nowadays, it's a beloved movie classic, but, at the time, critics condemned it as a vulgar, musical-comedy bastardization of Baum's book--which had already been filmed many times before. Bert Lahr's vaudevillian, Brooklyn-accented take on The Cowardly Lion was particularly villified--almost as though he was the 1939 equivalent of Jar Jar Binks!

The more things change . . . .

Incidentally, movie novelizations date back to the silents as well. There was a novelization of Douglas Fairbanks' THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD as well as a novelization of one of Harry Houdini's early thrillers. Just a few years ago, at an antiquarian bookshop, I saw a novelization of Al Jolson's THE JAZZ SINGER that actually used the word "novelisation" on the dust jacket. ("The novelisation of the hit movie!") So the concept was familiar to people as early as 1930 or so.

There was also a novelization of the original KING KONG . . . .

 

[Caliburn24]

Just to be fair, franchises and sequels do not suck because they are franchises or sequels. They suck when executed poorly just like any original idea based movie sucks when executed poorly.

What Hollywood needs to be looking at is how to ensure movies are executed well.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

And this is different from the Golden Age of Hollywood when the studios churned out film after film about Tarzan, Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, Ma and Pa Kettle, and Francis the Talking Mule?

Most of those, of course, were series made on limited - in many case very spare - budgets as programmers. They didn't represent the main output of any but the smallest studios, and they weren't given the budgets nor assigned the major talent in the business.

I mean, Francis The Talking Mule is the rebuttal? Really?

The Harry Potter movies are probably the only series in recent times that haven't been drained of all content and imagination simply by the process of becoming a series, and that's likely because of the nature of the source material.

But look at the A-films. The big budget films. The ones that won the Oscars. Try to find any that fall into the "franchise" or "sequel" category. One or two, that's about it.

Exactly so. The simple fact that people are defending the notion that commercial filmmaking isn't in creative decline by comparing the most successful, highly promoted films being released now with the cheap stuff the studios churned out with their left hands in the 30s and 40s supports Harris's thesis rather than refutes it.

"...The days of having five companies chase you for a movie that needs to be good in order to work are over...Marketers revere the idea of brands, because a brand means that somebody, somewhere, once bought the thing they're now trying to sell."

Franchise films don't have to be good to work...they simply have to be sellable. Transformers and half the comic book films made so far demonstrate that, never mind Lucas turning everything that he did cleverly three decades ago into a disease. The fact that sometimes bad franchise films fail is irrelevant to the debate when so many succeed.

He's right about something else, too: of all the "demographic groups" of people in the world who have their own money to spend, young men are the easiest to sell crap to.

 

[Bishop76]

never mind Lucas turning everything that he did cleverly three decades ago into a disease.

Brilliant.

Yeah, there have always been franchises or sequels or series, but I really do think it has hit epidemic levels at this point. I've been wondering why I really just don't go to the movies any more and I have to say, I think this article really nailed it. They don't tell stories any more.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Actually, they tell one relatively simple story with many variations in the details.

As Harris points out, most of the grown-up attention is focused on cable television.

 

[Bishop76]

As it should be. With shows like Mad Men, Justified, Dexter, etc. there really isn't much of a reason to pay to be disappointed.

 

[Saga]

He's right about something else, too: of all the "demographic groups" of people in the world who have their own money to spend, young men are the easiest to sell crap to.

nonsense. i consider myself young and i've never bought 'crap'. now, if you'll excuse me, i have to break into my Spider-Man bank so i can buy beer.

 

[Kelthaz]

But I like franchises.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

So what are we supposed to compare 2011 to in terms of its decline? Just because of a lot of paraphrased ideas of how people felt about Inception?

I see interesting project on the horizon:
The Adjustment Bureau
Sucker Punch
The Tree of Life
Real Steel
Hugo Cabret
Adventures of Tintin

And these are just the ones somewhat genre related and going on the shaky notion that all sequels and remakes (except True Grit, natch) are inherently bad.

 

[Caliburn24]

Tintin is based on some books. There are millions of Tintin fanboys just waiting for the movie and toy-line to come out.

I don't know any, but they must exist.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Many of those films are fondly remembered and are cult favorites. No different than Star Trek or Doctor Who or Star Wars.

Except that hardly anyone watches them anymore. They're not exactly in the same league as Citizen Kane. However, I also wouldn't say they're any worse than the Star Wars PT. They were made as middlebrow entertainment fare, nothing more.

But look at the A-films. The big budget films. The ones that won the Oscars. Try to find any that fall into the "franchise" or "sequel" category. One or two, that's about it.

That was my point: the movies that are remembered as classics weren't the franchises and sequels. It's no different than today, with a few prestige films that may stand the test of time, and a lot of garbage that won't, and with rare exceptions, the franchise/sequels are in the garbage category.

Nowadays, it's a beloved movie classic, but, at the time, critics condemned it as a vulgar, musical-comedy bastardization of Baum's book--which had already been filmed many times before.

And that still happens today as well - people bitching that this or that movie isn't true to the source material or to the original movie that it's a remake of. Just another example of how none of this is actually new.

Franchise films don't have to be good to work...they simply have to be sellable.

Well sure. That means that nobody has a motive to change the situation, so there's no point in writing articles about it.

 

[Sci]

Many of those films are fondly remembered and are cult favorites. No different than Star Trek or Doctor Who or Star Wars.

Except that hardly anyone watches them anymore.

False. Doctor Who is a huge hit in its home market -- it's the third most-watched television program in Great Britain. The Star Wars prequels were huge box office successes. Star Trek can be accurately said to have been in decline from 1996 to 2005, but the 2009 film was also a major box office success.