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

[Gaith]

^ Temis was talking about black-and-white serials, and he was quite right.

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.

And we ought to remember that, in a very real sense, every episode of these shows are sequels/part of a larger franchise.

 

[Python Trek]

I thought Temis was a she?

 

[pookha]

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..

really most people dont watch black and white much any more.
one reason acm went to almost totally color.
you used to be able to see some of the more obscure classics of the period there.. now no.

but when i was a kid the tarzan and a lot of the other serial movies were on all the time.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

And we ought to remember that, in a very real sense, every episode of these shows are sequels/part of a larger franchise.

Well, they are now. The point is that outlets like HBO invest money and resources in original material which succeeds on its own terms, and that such shows are heavily reliant on storytelling to build and hold an audience.

The story in Transformers makes not one bit of difference to whether it succeeds or fails. This is why preproduction on the second film in the series - the one that everyone hates but that made an immense pile of money because the world paid to see it anyway - could proceed with barely a hitch during the writers' strike before they had a script.

 

[Greg Cox]

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..

really most people dont watch black and white much any more.
one reason acm went to almost totally color.
you used to be able to see some of the more obscure classics of the period there.. now no.

but when i was a kid the tarzan and a lot of the other serial movies were on all the time.

Thank God for TCM. I love those old b/w b-movies. Just the other night, I was watching "The Circus Queen Murder" with Adophe Menjou and Dwight Frye. Which, yes, was part of a series of low-budget mysteries featuring a detective named Thatcher Colt . . . .

Hollywood is just giving the audience what it wants. It always has.

 

[I Grok Spock]

Good, bookmark-worthy article. It certainly makes it's basic point as to why there are so many sequels and adaptations in theaters:

"Fear has descended," says James Schamus, the screenwriter-producer who also heads the profitable indie company Focus Features, "and nobody in Hollywood wants to be the person who green-lit a movie that not only crashes but about which you can't protect yourself by saying, 'But at least it was based on a comic book!"

Harris also observes that mature drama is happening on cable, in part because the risks there aren't at the same magnitude. However, if compelling moving pictures for grown-ups are still being produced, but distributed via alternative means, has anything really been lost? In 2011, what is the indefinable quality that a movie released in theaters has that a movie released in another medium does not? Better production values? Communal experience? Earning opportunities? Or is this complaint just the nostalgia of a latter-day Norma Desmond?

(Not to mention that HBO is owned by Time Warner. One of those, you know, Hollywood Studios.)

Harris' conclusion seems to be that movies aren't dead, moviegoing is. Except he states, "movie ticket sales may be reasonably strong." Okay, he then clarifies, what's dead specifically, is moviegoing involving mature adult drama. With the exception of The Town, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Social Network, True Grit, The Hurt Locker, Inception, etc. The argument kind of falls apart here, for me.

Maybe if the local multiplex sold subscriptions, the underlying economics wouldn't make weekly blockbusters their last defensible position.

In other news, I for one am looking forward to Coca-Cola: The Movie!

 

[Dick Whitman]

I don't disagree with the overall point of that article. But on the issue of which films will be remembered, how many Oscar nominated and winning films are truly remembered years later? Maybe a hand full at best.

With our internet driven obsession with films of the past, everything has some kind of audience. But its very fragmented. Will there really be as many movies deemed "classics" by a larger group of people, that holds that honor for generations like some of the films of the Golden Age of Hollywood have? I seriously doubt it.

 

[Professor Zoom]

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?

What about the Thin Man series produced by MGM, that's not a small studio.
Frankenstein was Universal.
The Johnny Weismuller films were also MGM.
20th Century Fox produced 15 Charlie Chan films.
Universal made the Abbott and Costello movies.

These were films that brought in a LOT of money for these "small studios".

 

[T.Geiger]

I recently saw a much more convincing argument that the reason so many movies are listless, lifeless, and limp are due to the international market. To make a movie play well in all the large foreign markets, all of the culture-specific references have to be removed leaving a Michael Bay explosion-fest interspersed with fart jokes.

 

[Gaith]

Was it this?

http://www.cracked.com/article_19012_5-hollywood-secrets-that-explain-why-so-many-movies-suck.html

 

[mswood]

But a lot of this is also adapted material. And in general film has been using adapted material for some of its greatest works.

I mean they talk about the golden age of Hollywood and how many classics are adaptions. Now I have to admit I in general am not fond of sequels, unless the original is based off of material that is serial based.

I don't mind in principal multiple movies on Batman as its based on serial story telling. I don't mind seeing a series that has the Hobbit and LOTR, because well that universe was already created in print. BUt I don't think we need to see a Hangover II (just as an example).

 

[Harvey]

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?

What about the Thin Man series produced by MGM, that's not a small studio.
Frankenstein was Universal.
The Johnny Weismuller films were also MGM.
20th Century Fox produced 15 Charlie Chan films.
Universal made the Abbott and Costello movies.

These were films that brought in a LOT of money for these "small studios".

I think you'll find a lot of those films were being produced by the B-movie divisions of those studios, with advertising expenses to match the low production budgets. What's happening today is quite different.

 

[Greg Cox]

I think you'll find a lot of those films were being produced by the B-movie divisions of those studios, with advertising expenses to match the low production budgets. What's happening today is quite different.

Perhaps, but it often seems to me that those old b-movies have a trashy, pulp vitality that can be lacking in the "prestige" pictures.

To cite CIRCUS QUEEN MURDERS again, there's a great bit where Colt notices that there's one less sideshow "cannibal" than there was before.

"They're cannibals," somebody retorts. "You figure it out."

I wish I'd written that line!

 

[Professor Zoom]

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?

What about the Thin Man series produced by MGM, that's not a small studio.
Frankenstein was Universal.
The Johnny Weismuller films were also MGM.
20th Century Fox produced 15 Charlie Chan films.
Universal made the Abbott and Costello movies.

These were films that brought in a LOT of money for these "small studios".

I think you'll find a lot of those films were being produced by the B-movie divisions of those studios, with advertising expenses to match the low production budgets. What's happening today is quite different.

Absolutely it's different. I agree. I was just more saying it wasn't small studios and they weren't sequels for a tiny amount of money. William Powell and Myrna Loy were HUGE stars, as well as Abbott and Costello.

Today is different, and that's why to many comparisons start to fall apart.

You don't risk 100 to 200 million dollars on a movie unless you know you have a built in audience and something that can play world wide. And that means franchise, specifically ACTION franchise.

 

[Nerys Myk]

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?

What about the Thin Man series produced by MGM, that's not a small studio.
Frankenstein was Universal.
The Johnny Weismuller films were also MGM.
20th Century Fox produced 15 Charlie Chan films.
Universal made the Abbott and Costello movies.

These were films that brought in a LOT of money for these "small studios".

I dont think Dennis was saying that all were produced by small studios, rather the small studio were more likely to produce series/sequel films and they formed a larger portion of the small studio's product.

 

[Professor Zoom]

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?

What about the Thin Man series produced by MGM, that's not a small studio.
Frankenstein was Universal.
The Johnny Weismuller films were also MGM.
20th Century Fox produced 15 Charlie Chan films.
Universal made the Abbott and Costello movies.

These were films that brought in a LOT of money for these "small studios".

I dont think Dennis was saying that all were produced by small studios, rather the small studio were more likely to produce series/sequel films and they formed a larger portion of the small studio's product.

Except the examples provided were by major studios... so, I don't know if that's what Dennis was saying. Major studios, like the ones previously suggested, and the ones that I suggested, produced quite a few series and sequel films.

Ultimately my point, the studios then and now, are in the business of trying to make money and sequels and series aren't a new thing.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Every so often, one of these clowns comes along and tries to look kewl by denigrating franchises and sequels-- they're all fools. They should really spend less time on movies and more time reading.

Then they'd learn about all the "sequels" in "franchises" like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, John Carter, Miss Marple, Hopalong Cassidy, Foundation, Philip Marlowe, Odyssey, Spenser and so on, ad infinitum.

If I read about a character or characters that I like, you better believe I want the writer to write more about them.

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

What a coincidence-- I just found that out yesterday when I found a scan of a cover image.

really most people dont watch black and white much any more.
one reason acm went to almost totally color.
you used to be able to see some of the more obscure classics of the period there.. now no.

Turner Classic shows old B&W movies from the 30s and 40s all the time. Only tragically hip airheads refuse to watch B&W movies.

Perhaps, but it often seems to me that those old b-movies have a trashy, pulp vitality that can be lacking in the "prestige" pictures.

I'll agree with this, too. One of the reasons the mainstream is boring is that all the vibrancy has been streamlined out of it. I prefer art that has that hand-made feel to it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The story in Transformers makes not one bit of difference to whether it succeeds or fails. This is why preproduction on the second film in the series - the one that everyone hates but that made an immense pile of money because the world paid to see it anyway - could proceed with barely a hitch during the writers' strike before they had a script.