Franchise Nation
They came slowly, the franchise films, the grandchildren of the serials. The other night I was in the theater trying to see The Green Hornet for the second time (the first time, the theater started to burn down 30 minutes in, so I had to, like, evacuate (evacuate the theater, I mean, not like, in my pants), and then the next day sit through act one twice, which wasn't really the worst thing), and there was the omnipresent trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides. And it suddenly occurred to me that we were on the fourth movie of a franchise built around a really rather terrifically lame amusement park ride. There is also a Pirates of the Caribbean version of Monopoly, you know. (The Amazon reviews note that "the Jail should have been changed to the Brig and Free Parking should have been changed to Free Docking." Which, God, really, are companies that lazy now that they won't even rename Free Parking for us?) Despite how enjoyable Johnny Depp nearly always is (The Tourist excepted), this is a really strange state of cultural affairs.
Pirates of the Caribbean, even more than Harry Potter, which you know, is a long multi-volume yarn about growing up and wrestling with the demons of our parents, rests on the inherent magic of formula and familiarity: there's nothing more soothing than old friends, back again. It's why people used to read books that weren't Harry Potter that had recurring characters! (Or at least why they used to read the Narnia books; now you can watch the increasingly more terrible movies—an extremely pure example of the evil of franchisedom, where each movie must continue to exist for its payday and yet should never have been made at all.) A franchise in general is good business, it's good psychology and it's good marketing. It's certainly a deeper draw than 3D, which, Jesus, let the 3D stop now.
And that the Internet is literally aflame today with the news that Anne Hathaway and Tom Hardy signed on for the next Batman movie, Christopher Nolan's third/last of that franchise, truly shows our deep devotion to running stories. (I mean, you knew this: among the top five films in the 2010 box office: Toy Story 3, Iron Man 2, Twilight: Eclipse. Poor Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1 came in at #6.) And there's a weird line down the middle of these franchises: some are fantastic (I mean, there is nothing wrong with Iron Man) and some are garbage. That's why Christopher Nolan isn't necessarily just big-budget-whoring with the Batman films, although there's questions about what Nolan is doing in general, to be sure, but: he's trying to make real movies about a man who fights crime.
What's going on though, what's a little unnerving about the whole thing, is that all this success means the hunt has been on, and hard, for future franchises. That means we live in a world where Peter Berg is directing a $200-million budget film, starring Rihanna, based on the game Battleship. (Her acting debut!) It is called Battleship! ("OMG, like, Rihanna, you sunk my battleship!) Also there are film versions coming of games including: Risk, Asteroids, Missile Command and oh so many more. They are all trials for franchisedom. That is what the shit-pile that is the Transformers franchise has brought to the entertainment industry.
That being said, The Green Hornet: Too Fast Too Furious is going to be kind of awesome though. I will attend its sequel! Jay Chou needs to get famous in America, he is awesome. Maybe America is ready for a three-film series of The Atom?
Sequel map time! http://boxofficequant.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Sequel-Map-1-4.png
Interesting thing I have learned from this chart: the original house party has a better rotten tomatoes score (95) than ghostbusters (94), animal house (90) or caddyshack (75!?!?!?!?!?!)
Oh la oh la ay!
I can't wait till the Farmville and Angry Birds movies start coming out.
Angry Birds would be kind of fun.
I hadn't even heard about the Battleship movie, and man does that ever sound terrible. Someday someone is going to make a movie based on a game that doesn't completely suck, but (say it with me, Aragorn) THAT IS NOT THIS DAY.
(Side note: the game narrative of Missile Command is actually really interesting as a model for expressing a story purely through mechanics. Watch this video if you're curious why. But of course we all know the Hollywood version will be a godawful nuclear riff on 2012.)
Although I am not sure franchise-chasing is really all that new. I mean, the big boom in it started with Star Wars. The main difference these days is that studios are trying to build franchises around intellectual property rather than specific filmmakers or actors. (Probably because IPs are more financially predictable and easy to control.)
I sort of expect the battleship movie will just be a harmless ripoff of Hunt For Red October. The board game thing isn't so bad, because there aren't stories or characters in place that a movie producer has to wreck. They can just do whatever they want (which is what they do anyway), and the rest of us can just read a fucking book or something.
I'm waiting for Claymation Stratego.
I'm waiting for the Connect Four rom-com.
Or Connect Four slasher flick. "Pretty sneaky … sis." [stab]
I think "Pretty sneaky, sis" works much better in a really, really great 70s Danish porno.
"Someday someone is going to make a movie based on a game that doesn't completely suck, but (say it with me, Aragorn) THAT IS NOT THIS DAY."
"Clue"
That is all.
Operation seems like the perfect fit for a slasher movie.
Quick, get me on the phone to someone in Hollywood!
Touché! Other than "Clue."
My great-grandmother used to bitch like this about the Crosby/Hope "Road To" franchise.
You are descended from a prophetess.
Or this franchise based on rip-offs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_That_Time_Forgot_(novel)
This is nothing. My gym just licensed Pilates of the Caribbean.
And Crate + Barrel is weighing in with Pieplates of the Caribbean.
The church across the street from me calls their hell house Pontius Pilates of the Caribbean.
In theory.
A couple years ago, when Disney bought the rights to Marvel for 4 billion dollars some people thought that was a lot of money, but not when you consider that their business is all about owning the rights to characters that can be re-purposed and re-packaged in different properties. Many franchise films are to come as a result of that deal im sure.
the only board game i want to see turned into a movie is class struggle.
Rambling OT-ish, but who else just wants to shake Christopher Nolan!? I often refer to Anne Hathaway as the one with the "plunger up her poop chute" face. Tom Hardy sorta rectifies the decision. But only sort of. (Cillian Murphy will be back too, hopefully?)
Also, Battleship for $200M? What?!
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Casting Anne Hathaway as Bane is a genius move.
I want to make out with you so hard right now.
I was trying to come up with some kind of Slate-ish counterintuitive take on this and thought of Attic drama, of all things. You know, when the ancient Greeks went to the theater, they very much did not expect or want new plots or characters; they wanted to see interesting takes on the stories they already knew by heart. What is Euripides' Orestes if not an "edgier" reboot of Aeschylus' Oresteia? And there are other examples, too: did Shakespeare really need to pad out Henry IV into two plays? Did the Merry Wives of Windsor for any other reason than to cash in on Falstaff's popularity?
My main franchise complaint is that the reboots are just coming too fast and too furiously. I find the upcoming Spider-Man reboot — one that dispenses with a series of films that were produced and released comfortably within the timeframe of my full-on adulthood — particularly harrowing. Though I honestly can't tell if the lead time is actually getting more compressed or if I'm just getting old (the first Tim Burton Batman came out when I was sill in high school, so Batman Begins didn't inspire the same sense of dread).
Ha ha, on that note, here is an amusing anecdote from Wikipedia:
"Due to the popularity of Sophocles's Antigone, the ending of Seven against Thebes was rewritten about fifty years after Aeschylus' death.[2] Where the play was meant to end with somber mourning for the dead brothers, it instead contains an ending that serves as a lead-in of sorts to Sophocles' play: a messenger appears, announcing a prohibition against burying Polynices; Antigone, however, announces her intention to defy this edict."
I'm about the same age but already was very anxious about the Batman reboot. But, yeah, I think if you look at it more like covers of songs it's not so bad. Gal Costa may not have written Baby Blue but after this(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A30rcGsNV3w) I think you'll agree there's nothing wrong with it. A lot of subjects have a lot of different ways of being told or have a lot that can be said about them, no problem. Look at war/cowboy/monster/romance movies, most very similar, really, but some clearly superior.
On the other hand the source and content of these issues might give us some pause. Can a movie based on Battleship ever be any good? Can it illuminate or interrogate the human condition or can it elevate mere entertainment to sheer ecstasy? In the hands of an artist? (Roman Polanski's Battleship) Certainly. In the hands of Peter Berg and a 200mil studio machine? Maybe not. So it really comes down, as usual, to the means of production.
I'm sorry, did someone greenlight a $200 million Bob Dylan cover?
Soon, perhaps, re-makes of sequels?
I still CANNOT wrap my head around the fact that they're ALREADY REBOOTING SPIDERMAN.
I LITERALLY CANNOT QUITE FULLY GRASP THIS IS AS A CONCRETE CONCEPT. IT IS RATHER LIKE LOOKING AT A SOLAR ECLIPSE.
Give it up old man. You're already washed up. Time to put on your Underoo Depends.
This is making the Police Academy franchise look downright totemic.
Stop using that hanging "which." While trendy at the moment you will look back on the overuse ruefully.
Again, sorry to keep picking on you, but didn't Choire invent the which-comma?
No problem. I could never be angry at Mr. Whipple.
And also, no.