Your top 5 franchises?
- Thread starter The Borgified Corpse
- Start date
Imho, it's heartening to see that we have so many members here who enjoy Star Trek but for whom it's not their top franchise. Yet you still invest time to keep discussions alive. 
(In my case, for any of my "secondary" franchises, I'm in the Facebook groups but not a member of dedicated messaging boards).
(In my case, for any of my "secondary" franchises, I'm in the Facebook groups but not a member of dedicated messaging boards).
Nice to see someone else who's this big a fan of these franchises. I've understood the level of hate The Hobbit movies and the second two Matrix movies get, sure, they're not as good as the first movies, but I still really enjoy them.
So what exactly is our criteria for "franchise" here? I've been seeing a few things I'm not sure I'd consider franchises, so I was just looking for some clarification.
I would define a franchise as either something that has gone 10 seasons or more (Doctor Who) or has more than two shows associated with it (Star Trek, Stargate). Single shows that only have 2-4 seasons to it aren't really considered franchises, even though if we include books then maybe you can (The Expanse). Still, I don't consider The Expanse a franchise, but a series based on novels.
OK, that is pretty close to what I was thinking, basically I was thinking of anything with either multiple series, or with more than one type of media. So even though Firefly only had one single season show, since it's had the movie, and a ton of comics, books, and other things it counts.
I too enjoy X-Men Origins: Wolverine more than most people seem to. I think they did an excellent job of surrounding Jackman with some stellar supporting actors-- Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, etc.
X-Men: Apocalypse isn't bad but it is aggressively mediocre. Which is a real shame considering First Class & Days of Future Past were such high points in the series. The big difference between Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix is that the actors were still trying in Apocalypse.
I have a long-standing resentment toward ER because of what they did to George Clooney. See, around that time, one of my guilty pleasures was the prime time soap opera Sisters, where George Clooney played the cop fiance of Teddy, the 2nd oldest sister. They had just gotten married when Clooney got the ER gig, causing him to be unceremoniously killed in a car bomb.
Teddy deserved better than that!Alongside Star Trek & Back to the Future, The Simpsons is one of the key formative shows of my childhood. Hardly a day goes by without me quoting it at some point. But few shows have worn out their welcome quite this badly, to the point where the bad seasons outnumber the good ones by a 2:1 ratio.
Never heard of this before. Sounds kinda girly for me (says the guy who just confessed to being a Sisters fan
). But I do like mermaids...... Oh, what the heck, I'll add it to my Amazon list and get around to it sometime. 
(BTW, I was looking it up on Wikipedia and saw that they did tie-in books. I nearly died when I saw the title "Sequins for Sea Queens"!
)The voiceover immediately gives Veronica Mars its own flavor. But I always felt like there were other characters that had a bit of the Buffy cast in them. Mac always reminded me of early Willow. I kept waiting for Veronica/Wallace/Mac to turn into the Buffy/Xander/Willow triumvirate that I always knew that they could be. And it seemed like both Logan & Weevil were competing to be Spike of the show.
Imho, it's heartening to see that we have so many members here who enjoy Star Trek but for whom it's not their top franchise. Yet you still invest time to keep discussions alive.
(In my case, for any of my "secondary" franchises, I'm in the Facebook groups but not a member of dedicated messaging boards).
I think that some of it comes from Star Trek being such an early, formative fandom for me that I end up looking at most everything through that lens, which can make it hard to get into the fan forums that are centered around some of the other franchises. In my experience, a lot of the Buffy fandom, at least back in the day, was centered on Buffy/Angel vs. Buffy/Spike 'shipping. The Lost Girl Facebook page will outright call you a homophobe if you think that Bo/Dyson make a better couple than Bo/Lauren. And I've heard some horror stories about the crazy censorship that goes on at Gallifrey Base. (From what I was told, back in 2013 when there were rumors that some missing Doctor Who episodes might have been rediscovered, they banned anyone from speculating on which episodes they were or where they might have come from. So.... what was there left to say besides "OMG, new episodes!"?
)Eh. I didn't think about that too hard. If it's more than 1 thing, I'd consider it a franchise. I mostly just said "franchise" in the title because there's such a mix of things, between movies, TV shows, novels, comics, etc. I figure "franchise" covers pretty much any of those but also prevents there from being duplication in your top 5. For example, no picking both TNG AND DS9. You may like both or you may like one more than the other and it's fine to specify, but it's all just Star Trek for the purposes of this thread.
If I may go off the beaten path for a moment, another Honorable Mention of mine is The Red Dragon Inn. It's not a movie or a TV show or any of those. Rather, it's a brilliant series of fantasy themed card games where a bunch of D&D-style adventurers have gathered at the tavern after the adventure and then proceed to cheat, gamble, & swindle away each other's gold or else get them so drunk that they pass out and the remaining players loot their unconscious pockets. It's known as the gamer's party game because it's rules are relatively light & simple but there's still enough strategy involved to keep seasoned gamers engaged. It started out with just 4 playable characters but has since ballooned up to 51 characters, plus a series of gambling mini-games, a spin-off cooperative deck-building game called Battle for Greyport, and a Pathfinder-compatible RPG sourcebook in case you want to create your own taverns.
@The Borgified Corpse, H2O: Just Add Water is an Australian fantasy show about teenagers who turn into mermaids. Mako Mermaids is a spin-off.
I too enjoy X-Men Origins: Wolverine more than most people seem to. I think they did an excellent job of surrounding Jackman with some stellar supporting actors-- Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, etc.
X-Men: Apocalypse isn't bad but it is aggressively mediocre. Which is a real shame considering First Class & Days of Future Past were such high points in the series. The big difference between Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix is that the actors were still trying in Apocalypse.
I have a long-standing resentment toward ER because of what they did to George Clooney. See, around that time, one of my guilty pleasures was the prime time soap opera Sisters, where George Clooney played the cop fiance of Teddy, the 2nd oldest sister. They had just gotten married when Clooney got the ER gig, causing him to be unceremoniously killed in a car bomb.
Alongside Star Trek & Back to the Future, The Simpsons is one of the key formative shows of my childhood. Hardly a day goes by without me quoting it at some point. But few shows have worn out their welcome quite this badly, to the point where the bad seasons outnumber the good ones by a 2:1 ratio.
Never heard of this before. Sounds kinda girly for me (says the guy who just confessed to being a Sisters fan
The voiceover immediately gives Veronica Mars its own flavor. But I always felt like there were other characters that had a bit of the Buffy cast in them. Mac always reminded me of early Willow. I kept waiting for Veronica/Wallace/Mac to turn into the Buffy/Xander/Willow triumvirate that I always knew that they could be. And it seemed like both Logan & Weevil were competing to be Spike of the show.
I think that some of it comes from Star Trek being such an early, formative fandom for me that I end up looking at most everything through that lens, which can make it hard to get into the fan forums that are centered around some of the other franchises. In my experience, a lot of the Buffy fandom, at least back in the day, was centered on Buffy/Angel vs. Buffy/Spike 'shipping. The Lost Girl Facebook page will outright call you a homophobe if you think that Bo/Dyson make a better couple than Bo/Lauren. And I've heard some horror stories about the crazy censorship that goes on at Gallifrey Base. (From what I was told, back in 2013 when there were rumors that some missing Doctor Who episodes might have been rediscovered, they banned anyone from speculating on which episodes they were or where they might have come from. So.... what was there left to say besides "OMG, new episodes!"?
Eh. I didn't think about that too hard. If it's more than 1 thing, I'd consider it a franchise. I mostly just said "franchise" in the title because there's such a mix of things, between movies, TV shows, novels, comics, etc. I figure "franchise" covers pretty much any of those but also prevents there from being duplication in your top 5. For example, no picking both TNG AND DS9. You may like both or you may like one more than the other and it's fine to specify, but it's all just Star Trek for the purposes of this thread.
If I may go off the beaten path for a moment, another Honorable Mention of mine is The Red Dragon Inn. It's not a movie or a TV show or any of those. Rather, it's a brilliant series of fantasy themed card games where a bunch of D&D-style adventurers have gathered at the tavern after the adventure and then proceed to cheat, gamble, & swindle away each other's gold or else get them so drunk that they pass out and the remaining players loot their unconscious pockets. It's known as the gamer's party game because it's rules are relatively light & simple but there's still enough strategy involved to keep seasoned gamers engaged. It started out with just 4 playable characters but has since ballooned up to 51 characters, plus a series of gambling mini-games, a spin-off cooperative deck-building game called Battle for Greyport, and a Pathfinder-compatible RPG sourcebook in case you want to create your own taverns.
2 of the three Mermaids in H2O went on to supporting Roles in Vampire Diaries and the Originals.
Janeways Girl made me watch the show.
I grew accustomed to it.
The sequel series, is about a Merman (boy, 16ish) who went on to become Monkey in the New Adventures of Monkey more recently.
Sisters is Superb.
About 5 years ago I marathoned season one in one night.
Huge Bond fan here (the first 20 films at least). It's never been as intense as my revolving door of geek obsessions (currently Superman), but it's been more consistent. I've been a Bond fan since I discovered my dad's The Incredible World of James Bond LP, after which I saw Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die (and got the soundtracks), and bought Fleming's novels in the old Signet paperback editions (I remember my mom reading ahead of me in Casino Royale to make sure it was okay -- honestly not sure why she let me continue). I love the pre-Craig EON films, and still enjoy the occasional Blu-ray marathon.
3 things:
1. That video is hilarious!
2. What with any exposure to water causing the transformations, I'm getting some major Ranma 1/2 vibes here.
3. I may or may not be able to tolerate all of the Australian accents there. There are some Australian accents that I really like--mostly the ones that sound more like just twangy British--and others that I don't--mostly the ones that sound like they're coming from so far back in their throats that I don't know how they talk without gagging on every other word.
Imho, it's heartening to see that we have so many members here who enjoy Star Trek but for whom it's not their top franchise. Yet you still invest time to keep discussions alive.
(In my case, for any of my "secondary" franchises, I'm in the Facebook groups but not a member of dedicated messaging boards).
Honestly at this point I come here as much or more for this board as for Star Trek. Over 2 decades of trying out internet forums, I've found more than anything else that it's extremely hard to find a forum that isn't either a total ghost town or overrun with trolls or flame wars or saddled with terrible moderators or unusable infrastructure. In all that time I've really only found five including TrekBBS that would qualify. One of them was closed more than a decade ago (which, since it was the original Firefly forum and someone had managed to convince Fox to keep paying for it for almost 7 or 8 years after Firefly ended was actually a rather miraculous run), one I drifted away from for reasons I can't really remember anymore (it was a Stargate forum, don't recall the name anymore). The other two I still visit, but they're so large and fragmented that TrekBBS is still the better experience. One could even argue that coming here and getting involved in some random discussions is part of what kept me more involved in Star Trek than I might otherwise have been in the past decade.
Star Trek will always be a number one for me.
Stargate - love the movie and SG1 and SGA.
Star Wars - movies, cartoons, random books from time to time, and that Mando series was awesome.
MCU - AoS ending, and I'm two years behind, but the movies and Netflix and Hulu shows are kind of awesome.
Batman - not DC as a whole, but Bat specific stuff every since I was a kid, has been among my favorites.
Stargate - love the movie and SG1 and SGA.
Star Wars - movies, cartoons, random books from time to time, and that Mando series was awesome.
MCU - AoS ending, and I'm two years behind, but the movies and Netflix and Hulu shows are kind of awesome.
Batman - not DC as a whole, but Bat specific stuff every since I was a kid, has been among my favorites.
For me, the term "franchise" is a synonym for "Intellectual Property" when it pertains to media.
I don't see any difference in quality, overall, between any of the Matrix films or between the Hobbit and LotR films.
Another reason I love the Hobbit Trilogy is that I'm really impressed with the fact that two scripts - both of which had to be reconfigured 'on the fly' - yielded enough filmed material to make 2 fully complete 3-hours-plus movies and most of a third.
1 Star Trek
2 Star Wars
3 MCU
4 Doctor Who
5 Stargate
Honourable mentions :
The Terminator
Aliens
The Expanse
Babylon 5
The X-Files
Firefly
Harry Potter
Bond
Blakes 7
Game Of Thrones
The Chicago Franchise
I'm not sure if Tolkien adaptations count as a franchise yet, but I'm hoping that they will shortly.
2 Star Wars
3 MCU
4 Doctor Who
5 Stargate
Honourable mentions :
The Terminator
Aliens
The Expanse
Babylon 5
The X-Files
Firefly
Harry Potter
Bond
Blakes 7
Game Of Thrones
The Chicago Franchise
I'm not sure if Tolkien adaptations count as a franchise yet, but I'm hoping that they will shortly.
^The way I see it, any movie series with more than 1 entry constitutes a franchise, so the Middle Earth stuff totally counts.
As far as the Matrix movies go, I was never THAT impressed with the first one. I really liked it when I first saw it at the theater but I never felt any need to revisit it during the 4 years after that. As a result, I had no expectations for the sequels, therefore couldn't be disappointed. Although, I can kinda see what people are talking about. Some of that just has to do with how different the cinematic landscape was in 2003 vs. 1999. In the 1990s, The Matrix was one of only a few major SF/F films to strike that balance between fan-pleasing spectacle and serious high concept sci-fi. By 2003, there was a lot more competition for straight-faced SF/F cinema thanks to stuff like X-Men, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Spider-Man. Also, while there is SOME philosophy in the first Matrix, it's mostly just a side tangent, briefly touching on some of the larger philosophical implications of the premise, while the main focus is on being a cool cyberpunk action movie with people in nifty leather jackets. The sequels double down on the philosophy, which takes screentime away from the cool factor.
As for The Hobbit vs. The Lord of the Rings, they're very similar on the surface. But while The Lord of the Rings was a decade-long labor of love, The Hobbit was rushed into production before MGM & New Line Cinema lost the rights. And while I can't put my finger on any specific parts that illustrate this, I think that the finished products do, on some deep down level, reflect the two very different intentions that went into making them.
As far as the Matrix movies go, I was never THAT impressed with the first one. I really liked it when I first saw it at the theater but I never felt any need to revisit it during the 4 years after that. As a result, I had no expectations for the sequels, therefore couldn't be disappointed. Although, I can kinda see what people are talking about. Some of that just has to do with how different the cinematic landscape was in 2003 vs. 1999. In the 1990s, The Matrix was one of only a few major SF/F films to strike that balance between fan-pleasing spectacle and serious high concept sci-fi. By 2003, there was a lot more competition for straight-faced SF/F cinema thanks to stuff like X-Men, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Spider-Man. Also, while there is SOME philosophy in the first Matrix, it's mostly just a side tangent, briefly touching on some of the larger philosophical implications of the premise, while the main focus is on being a cool cyberpunk action movie with people in nifty leather jackets. The sequels double down on the philosophy, which takes screentime away from the cool factor.
As for The Hobbit vs. The Lord of the Rings, they're very similar on the surface. But while The Lord of the Rings was a decade-long labor of love, The Hobbit was rushed into production before MGM & New Line Cinema lost the rights. And while I can't put my finger on any specific parts that illustrate this, I think that the finished products do, on some deep down level, reflect the two very different intentions that went into making them.
This is a tough question for me.
Buffy is my favorite series of all time, but I don't think I'd count it. I barely consider it a "franchise" and I can pretty much take or leave Angel.
I like some Marvel movies and lukewarm about others. Same with DC, even though I do consider myself much more of a DC fan. Plus I don't read comics, so I don't even know if I could count them. And in either case, I don't think I'd be too upset if one just poofed out of existence.
So really I guess it's just the two Stars for me.
I'd like to through Potter in there, but JoAnne can fuck right off.
I guess maybe Forgotten Realms too?
Buffy is my favorite series of all time, but I don't think I'd count it. I barely consider it a "franchise" and I can pretty much take or leave Angel.
I like some Marvel movies and lukewarm about others. Same with DC, even though I do consider myself much more of a DC fan. Plus I don't read comics, so I don't even know if I could count them. And in either case, I don't think I'd be too upset if one just poofed out of existence.
So really I guess it's just the two Stars for me.
I'd like to through Potter in there, but JoAnne can fuck right off.
I guess maybe Forgotten Realms too?
Difficult keeping it to 5. No particular order:
- Star Trek (all Star Trek, everything has been good)
- Doctor Who (classic and nu)
- Red Dwarf (more British than anything)
- Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (radio, books, TV, movie, more radio, upcoming Hulu series)
- Orphan Black (nothing like it before, or after)
- Star Trek (all Star Trek, everything has been good)
- Doctor Who (classic and nu)
- Red Dwarf (more British than anything)
- Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (radio, books, TV, movie, more radio, upcoming Hulu series)
- Orphan Black (nothing like it before, or after)
*Also, I'm assuming we're not counting the Double-Oh English Secret Service guy from England as Skiffy?
I watched the first few episodes of H2O after I found out that the two girls from The Originals were in it. The Originals is one of my favorite shows, so I just couldn't resist seeing them working together in such different roles.3 things:
1. That video is hilarious!
2. What with any exposure to water causing the transformations, I'm getting some major Ranma 1/2 vibes here.
3. I may or may not be able to tolerate all of the Australian accents there. There are some Australian accents that I really like--mostly the ones that sound more like just twangy British--and others that I don't--mostly the ones that sound like they're coming from so far back in their throats that I don't know how they talk without gagging on every other word.
I thought it was pretty fun, it's a kids show, so it's obviously not the deepest or darkest show out there, but I thought most of the episodes were enjoyable. I haven't seen any Mako Mermaids yet, but from the bits I have seen, it looks like it goes a bit deeper into the world's mermaid mythology than H2O did.
I watch tons of stuff with Aussies and Brits, so at this point I'm almost as used to their accents as American accents.
I'm pretty much the same way, I first came here because of the Star Trek books, but as time has gone on I've spent more time in the non-Trek sections of the board. I've been coming here for over a decade and I don't I've ever even gone into the sections for the old shows. I have been going into the episode threads for the new shows as their airing, but that's it for the shows.
I'd say there's more than enough content for it to count, even if you're counting the movie universe.
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