Franchise Burnout
Hey, did you hear they’re making a new Lord of the Rings movie? Yeah, this time it’s about Gollum! Specifically the hunt for Gollum. Oh you know, just some stuff that happened before Fellowship. I’m sure it’s very important.
What, you’re not excited?
When I was a teen, it was easy to get me hyped about sequels, or prequels, or spinoffs. You could just take a movie I like, announce a new movie related to it in some way, and without question I would be like “HECK YEAHHHHH.”
Part of it, I think, comes from making fandom a piece of your identity. “I am a Lord of the Rings fan because I am very cool,” I used to say every single day (probably). You feel an obligation to get excited whenever a new variation of it is dangled in front of your face. Wouldn’t be a true fan if you didn’t care, right?
I remember when I saw the first trailer for the first of Warner Brothers’ Hobbit movies, which had all this nostalgia for Fellowship of the Ring baked into it, and I was like “WOOOOO!”
And well, long story short, those movies were not anywhere close to as good as Lord of the Rings.
Honestly, shouldn’t I have learned my lesson about getting excited for things based on name alone from The Last Airbender? Yeah, let me pretend it’s 2010 for a second—there’s a live-action Avatar movie coming out soon, and as a huge fan of the show, I’m looking forward to it. I don’t know much about movies, and to be honest, in the back of my mind, I know the trailers for this one don’t even really excite me. But it’s Avatar, and I’m a fan of Avatar. So won’t this probably be good?
Hm, actually, I can’t seem to remember how that turned out. Maybe I was hallucinating the existence of an Avatar: the Last Airbender movie.
Marvel Fatigue
Throughout the 2010s, many, many people enjoyed a little something called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the beginning (2008), you had Iron Man, which was a good movie. But, well, I probably don’t need to explain that unlike previous superhero movies, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man and Hulk and Captain America all exist within the same continuity. And I gotta tell you, even as someone who never really had the chance to get into comics, watching The Avengers in 2012 was one of my favorite theater experiences of all time. Years later, millions watched the storyline come to a greater climax than ever before with Avengers: Infinity War, and finally, the next year Avengers: Endgame wrapped up a story a decade in the making.
But Marvel wasn’t just gonna call it quits. There are endless possibilities within this universe, aren’t there?
Yet Marvel hasn’t been able to make people care as much ever since Endgame. It has its moments. Everybody will show up for Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy Part 3 was one of the best movies in the whole MCU to be honest. Shang-chi was good and people liked it, yet Marvel has just let the property rest since the movie’s release in 2021.
The thing is, they’ve also been doing TV shows on Disney+ and apparently, they tie into the movies’ stories too. Except treating TV shows as equal to movies just feels weird somehow! Am I wrong? The MCU was easy to keep up with when it was a couple movies a year. You go, you enjoy the movie, you see a teaser for something else during the credits. They weren’t adding like three TV series in addition to that. There were TV series, but they didn’t really matter for the overall storyline. But now it’s like, you gotta watch Ms. Marvel to be ready for The Marvels. And I don’t know if the show is good or not. But considering The Marvels’ lack of box office success, I don’t think the public is super down for this new structure for the MCU.
A big reason the MCU succeeded early on is that it focused almost entirely on establishing its characters, and for the most part, it did a good job of it. People loved Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, so they became invested in these characters’ journeys over multiple films. Sadly, this recent phase of the MCU has been less successful when it comes to introducing new heroes. I mean, I didn’t really like Eternals. And it kind of feels like Marvel is giving up on them after just one movie.
I don’t know where Marvel will go from here, but as for me, I’m really only going to bother watching their movies if I hear they’re good. I can’t see myself caring like I did pre-Endgame again.
Star Wars Fatigue
There’s another property Disney owns and has made me stop caring about, though. Yes, you know what I’m talking about. Indiana Jones. Well, no, I mean, I was actually talking about Star Wars.
The idea of Star Wars sequels to follow Episode VI excited me a decade ago, but now I’m old and jaded.
Truthfully, I found Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi to be quite a fun movie. It was surprising, creative, and had a level of thematic richness many Star Wars stories lack. Unfortunately, thousands of uptight Star Wars fans found the movie terribly upsetting.
I guess Disney felt they needed to appease some of those fans, which leads us to the story-by-committee mess that is The Rise of Skywalker. A movie so fast-paced that you kind of forget how nonsensical the story is until afterwards—which is my way of saying: yeah it was fun to watch once, but I never want to look at it again.
Of course, there was a movie before Last Jedi, but even though it’s well-made, Rise of Skywalker retroactively makes Force Awakens feel pointless.
To be honest though, the sequel trilogy is not primarily to blame for killing my enthusiasm for Star Wars. The breaking point for me was The Mandalorian season 2. I enjoyed The Mandalorian in the beginning because it was about a guy going around to various planets and doing cool space-dude stuff, alongside the cute Baby Yoda. By the end of season 2, I realized the show was turning into a vehicle for displaying references to other Star Wars stories. Hey, you guys like The Clone Wars? Here’s Ahsoka. You guys like Luke Skywalker? Wow, we can make Luke Skywalker show up.
Too much of this type of stuff can make it feel like a show cares more about fanservice than just telling an original story, and that’s when you lose me. (And I’m not talking about the other kind of fanservice, though that statement would still be true if I was).
Legacy Sequels
For many years, we’ve had remakes, where someone would make a movie based on a movie from decades ago. We also have the similar concept of reboots. The difference with reboots is that you keep similar elements as the old versions, but make significant changes to the story, tone, and/or characters, whereas a remake is usually a similar story to the original. Right now it seems like what Hollywood wants to do is sequels to older movies that never got sequels.
They’re making a sequel to Twister. It’s called Twisters. What?
Obviously Top Gun: Maverick was a huge success. But man. You can’t just do the same thing for every single popular movie from the past! Right?
Why are we depending on nostalgia to tell us what movies to watch? Why can’t we just give new stuff a chance! Yeah, yeah, I know, the studios want safe bets and aren’t going to pour millions of dollars into truly original ideas. All my complaining isn’t going to magically change that.
I’m just trying to explain how, at some point, I started finding myself extremely skeptical about any announcements of new entries in franchises I once loved.
Why do we need franchises? I understand why studios need them, but do we really want to see the same characters, hear the same music, and experience the same plot beats again and again? Everyone’s gonna get bored of that eventually, right?
I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’ve sworn off franchise stuff entirely, not by a longshot—especially when you factor in video games, because you bet I’m looking forward to the next 3D Mario game, whenever that will be. Godzilla Minus One was like my favorite movie last year, and undeniably Godzilla is a franchise.
But when Warner Bros. is trying to milk both Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, I just feel disgust rather than the excitement I probably would’ve felt as a teenager.
There are so many stories in the world—more books, movies, video games than you could ever go through in a lifetime. It’s rewarding to explore beyond the biggest names, beyond the stuff you’ve known since you were a kid. You’ll see the world differently, you’ll consider perspectives you never had before. There can be so much more to art than simply being entertained for a couple hours.
So, unless this hunt for Gollum movie turns out to be a masterpiece, I really do not plan on seeing it. Because the reason it exists is probably not because someone had a really deep desire to tell this story, but because some studio guys were like, “Hey, Lord of the Rings is dormant when it should be printing us money. We gotta remedy this.” And that’s just not encouraging. Could a great piece of art be made out of it anyway? Of course! I just wouldn’t expect it by default.