Just How Long can a Franchise Really Last

How long can a long running film series rely on its bag of tricks to keep working for an audience before it starts to run thin?

These are fairly fundamental questions the first one in particular has been running through my mind in the last little while and I have been very tempted to put it all into a column (good thing I decided to do so now.)

This also became reinforced in my mind with the recent announcement of a 5th Indiana Jones film to be made with Harrison Ford as Indy once more (despite his age) and Steven Spielberg once more in the director's chair.

And all I could think was reading that announcement was "This just feels like a merchandise grab by Disney as the Star Wars stuff has been selling like Hotcakes" and also what doesn't help things was that the last Indiana Jones film 2008's Kingdom of the Plastic Prop sorry Crystal Skull (bit of a memory lapse there for a split second) was just bleh and boring and all it did for me was remind me of how good Raiders of the Lost Ark really was.

The other primary thought I had was "This was done after the Last Crusade" which I thought ended the series beautifully with the 4 heroes riding off into the sunset (Indeed originally "The End" was going to appear on screen after that moment but that idea was abandoned.)

Indeed Franchises in the old days pretty much went to 3 films and then came to a stop as for the most part the 2 sequels that followed would suffer diminishing returns at the box office as traditionally the quality of those sequels sank with the 2nd and 3rd films (sometimes the 2nd would be good as was the case with Lethal Weapon but then the third would just ruin it completely.)

And I can't help but feel that that rule in terms of "3 films and done" when it comes to a franchise was in place for a reason as so many franchises now (Jurassic Park, The Terminator, Alien, Indy to name a few examples) are trying desperately to mount a comeback much in the same way that Batman, James Bond and the X-Men have done.

The key difference with those 3 franchises however is that each of those told a story that had yet to be told in that franchise and they just happen to be reboots or in the case of X-Men a semi reset using time travel in Days of Future Past.

Batman and Bond meanwhile told the origin stories of those characters, Batman Begins in 2005 showed us on film how Bruce Wayne became Batman which we had never seen done before as a feature film (and it was not wanted to be done by Tim Burton and his team on the first Batman film in 1989) while Bond finally brought Casino Royale the very first 007 novel to the big screen properly after not having had the rights to that book until the year 2000 when Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson were able to win them back through a court case.

The other franchises I mentioned above meanwhile just tried to dip into the same bag of tricks that had been dipped into before and had worn thin with the audience during the heyday of that respective franchise indeed both Alien and Terminator had to deal with filling in the hole left behind by James Cameron with Aliens and Terminator 2 and its fair to say that since then it has been nothing but failure in attempts at doing so at least to me.

Another example I have is franchises that have iconic first entries and then just end up creating entries that follow them that are nothing more but pale shadows of the originals and 2 examples I have here are Star Wars and James Bond.

The original Star Wars trilogy are 3 of the greatest movies of all time for me and it's not because of the landmark advancements in special effects that they pioneered but it was also in the way that the storytelling was done, the characters were realized and the myth was built and watching them all over again in their unaltered form I realized just how special those original 3 films really are and just how much the Force Awakens just feels hollow and empty and really nothing more than a remake of the original film.

Bond meanwhile had the first 4 Sean Connery films which were very well done and since then has left an enormous hole that has been very hit and miss in terms of trying to fill it, I liked Tim Dalton and Daniel Craig but their tenures in the role pretty much came to a dead end with weak entries, Bond is a fantastic hero in my mind and while he is a loner character who struggles to build a domestic home life in terms of a home and a wife his loneliness to me makes him very well equipped to defend the earth against all the odds (and Bond is very good at finding a way through no matter how bad things get.)

This was something I felt Dalton's interpretation tried to hook into and I hope that if Craig decides to leave the series whoever replaces him taps into that idea as its one ripe for telling on screen but I'm getting off track at this point.

Some franchises unfortunately tend to run out of gas with the first sequel out of the bank and a classic case of this for me is Paul Hogan's Crocodile Dundee, the first film I thought was fun and clever in equal measure while its sequel was decent but is easily where Hogan should've called it quits with the series instead of trying his luck with a pretty limp 3rd film set in LA in 2001.

But with the Marvel Cinematic Universe formula of franchise filmmaking seemingly ruling Hollywood with an Iron Fist at the moment it does really feel like franchise overload as many other film series like the ones I've mentioned above have been encouraged to try their hand at this sort of series filmmaking but unfortunately all it seems to do for me is just remind me of those days when a series was just 2-3 films and then that was it at least for a fair few years before a revival attempt came along.

So to answer the question I posed as the title of this column "Just how long can a franchise really last?" well for me its I think 2-3 films as I feel that that is how long the bag of tricks can work itself on its audience before it either runs thin or audiences just get fatigued with it all and crave something else (a craving I myself have felt on a few occasions) and it's something the MCU formula is also going to have to contend with I feel in the next 3 years for while the Comic Book fans will be loving it I feel that the non fans the folks who go to these films for popcorn entertainment will soon start to feel the fatigue of them coming so much at once and crave something new to fill that gap.

But as in all things we wait and we see.

Film Review - My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 sees Nia Vardalos back planning another Big Fat Greek Wedding but this time it it's for her parents as it turns out the Priest did not sign their original wedding License and so it's time to get the Windex out again and rally the family.

A lot of the humour in this film for me was very awkward and it's also how I feel overall about this movie as there were numerous times where the audience I saw the film with were laughing their heads off whilst I sat there thinking "What did that mean" and/or "I don't think I want to know what that means" and indeed when I think about this movie I feel very very similar to how I felt when I saw Pitch Perfect 2 last year.

In that whilst I felt the film was okay and it is I also felt that it was primarily not for me but there were occasions throughout the film where I did laugh and I also did enjoy some of the family scenes as well as well as some of the substance behind those scenes.

So all in all the 2nd Big Fat Greek Wedding is fun if a little awkward but wasn't for me overall, 1.5 out of 5.

Film Review - Zootopia (2016)

Zootopia is the latest Disney Animation production and concerns a young Bunny named Judy Hopps (Gennifer Goodwin) who dreams of becoming a Policeman Officer in Zootopia a big Metropolis where Predators and Prey live together in Peace but this Bunny will face more than a fair few hurdles in the big city, not least a Sly Fox who knows how to Hustle (Jason Bateman.)

I really enjoyed Zootopia, it was fun, exciting and gorgeous to look at, numerous times I kept thinking about the visual design of the film and in each corner of the film there's a really great gag or reference or just another animal around the corner that made me go "That looks really neat."

The film is also very funny for a lot of its runtime, the Sloth moment that was one of the previews for this film is hilarious and that whole scene had me laughing my head off in the cinema, some of the references in the film also made me laugh, some of the messages in the film did feel a little too overdone at times but it didn't bother me as much as it has in a lot of other animated films particularly in recent years.

And lastly there is some great voice acting here, Goodwin is a likeable ol' Bunny as Judy and Bateman is great as the Hustling Fox, I also loved seeing Idris Elba as the Captain of the ZPD and I also loved JK Simmons as Mayor Lionheart he did remind me a little bit of Mufasa from the Lion King.

And so that was Zootopia, great fun for young and old and easily my favourite of the post Toy Story 3 pack of animated films, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice (2016)

Batman V Superman takes place after the events of 2013's Man of Steel and Superman (Henry Cavill) finds himself on trial by the US Senate over his actions regarding the destruction of Metropolis, meanwhile Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) and Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) are conflicted over Superman's role in the world but both could have far more common goals regarding the Man of Steel then they realize.

I was very very mixed going into this movie as I have not been a big fan of Zack Snyder's work as a director since 300 in 2007 as I find it to be pompous, over blown and so over the top that it rivals Michael Bay's work in terms of subtlety and also the previews for this film showed too much for my liking and didn't inspire a lot of confidence but could Justice Dawn and win me over or was the power of the Dark Side too strong to resist?

Surprisingly it was neither of those things for while I think the film is fine it is also very VERY predictable to sit through as scenes would play out in my mind and I would sit there thinking "That's gonna happen" and it did, the script (by Chris Terrio Affleck's writer on Argo) also feels like its cobbled together from 3 separate films:

- The true sequel to Man of Steel
- A new Batman film
- The origins of the Justice League

As for Snyder's direction well frankly its awful, so much of the film looks dark and in your face and VERY CGI heavy especially during the climax and at times it throws so much at you that you find yourself struggling to keep up with it all and when you come out of the film you start to feel dizzy.

Which leads me to my next point which is the score by Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL and it is so bombastic and over the top that it feels like every note is pounding into your skull and part of me just kept thinking "Please Stop" as it just got too much.

And now I come to the performances, Ben I thought was a pretty weak Batman as he just didn't have that personal drive that Christian Bale's Batman had when you came to understand why it was he became and needed to be the Batman, this 1 just feels like a Brute in a Batsuit and in that same boring way Michael Shannon's General Zod felt like, Gal Gadot barely appears as Wonder Woman and really only appears here to help set up Justice League and Eisenberg feels like he's come from an entirely different film and after a while I just kept thinking "PLEASE SHUT UP."

But there were some things I did like primarily Jeremy Irons as Alfred he stole every scene he was in and some of the films moments did make me laugh from time to time.

And so that was Batman V Superman, it's a fine film but it's also one that feels very predictable and flat and overblown to watch, it also made me so much more keen for another Dragon Ball movie as well as Bryan Singer's X-Men Apocalypse in May, 2 out of 5.

On the Air Season 3 Episode 4 - Shining a Light on the Stars

Well folks here it is,

The first Radio show I've done for March and on it I talked about the following:

- The Lady in the Van
- Hail Caesar
- Spotlight
- How to be Single

As always you can listen to the show on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/abclocalradio_sa/friday-flicks-march-11

Film Review - The Lady in the Van (2016)

The Lady in the Van tells the tale of Mary (Maggie Smith) a lady who lives in her van much to her annoyance of her neighbours, one year Alan (Alex Jennings) offers her to park her Van in his drive way and while it was meant to be for 3 months it becomes 15 years.

The Lady in the Van is a fine film but it's also one that once you've seen it you will want to forget all about it, that doesn't make it a bad film not at all but it's also one that for me at least just felt like another "Eccentric Old Lady" movie and once you've seen one of those it can be very difficult to see another that does something a little bit different from the others.

The main thing this film does have going for it is a terrific performance by Smith, she gives Mary so much personality and depth that you find it hard to take your eyes off her the entire time she's on screen, Jennings is fine as Alan but his voice does get a little grating after a while Jim Broadbent and David Calder do well in small roles.

And so that was the Lady in the Van, it's not a bad film just a forgettable one for me, 2 out of 5.