In 2015 alone, movie goers will be blasted with at least 30 films that can be classified as a sequel/prequel, reboot or shared universe builder (looking at you, Marvel). That's almost 20 percent of the entire movie roster set to hit theatres this year. Soon, the English language will have to invent new tenses for the word Taken so Liam Neeson can continue to justify blowing up half of Europe. If that proves too difficult, I'm sure the Avengers can swoop in to save the day. But if worst comes to worst, we can always ship off to a galaxy far, far away. The point is, similar to the dinosaurs in the upcoming Jurassic World, original ideas have started to go extinct in today's Hollywood landscape. In their place stand massive blockbuster film franchises.
I'm not sipping superhero Hateorade. I like capes and cowls, T-1000s and lightsabers just as much as the next nerd. But the movie market's saturation with this type of material begs some very important questions.
Are film franchises good or bad for Hollywood? Has the movie industry become unoriginal?
According to The-Numbers.com, ticket sales are down in recent years. From 2005-14, 13.62 billion movie tickets were sold. But from 1995-2004, that number was 14.23 billion. Movie theatres of today simply cannot compete with the wide array of viewing options that are available. As a result, major studios are clinging to the last remnant of bankability - film franchises - like Tom Hanks clinging to his raft for dear life in Cast Away. In that regard, film franchises are keeping Hollywood alive. Without the monetary success of X-Men: Days of Future Past, maybe Fox couldn't distribute Birdman. If Sony didn't push a new Spider-Man on us over the last couple years, maybe we never get Whiplash. Who knows?
Audiences are shrinking at an alarming rate and Hollywood's thinking is reacting in kind. The approach to movie making is shifting from substance to sustenance. To ensure financial survival, Hollywood is force-feeding us cotton candy films. They may taste really good, but they aren't truly filling. The zeitgeist of entertainment these days is just a regurgitation of older material that is broken up into a two-part finale in an obvious dash for cash.
In all fairness, the gluttony of franchises isn't entirely the work of evil, mustache-twirling executives who are hell-bent on destroying originality. That role is reserved for NBC. In football, if a particular play is working, you keep running it until it doesn't. The same can be said for Hollywood. Until the movie-going public declares once and for all that they are suffering from franchise fatigue - something that isn't happening anytime soon based on Marvel's recent box office performances - studios are going to keep churning out these all sugar-no nutrient movies.
Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly wrote recently that "Nostalgia can gild anything into a masterpiece." Audiences love the comic books, movie characters and novel protagonists they grew up with because they are familiar and enjoyable and easily digestible. There's nothing wrong with that. But those audiences have grown up. Aren't we reaching a point where Hollywood should grow up too?
While I thoroughly enjoy most of these mega movie series, I find it disconcerting that the mark of a young up-and-coming actor "making it" is when he or she snags their own franchise. It used to be that the interesting supporting roles -- like Edward Norton in Primal Fear or Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction -- announced an actor's arrival on the Hollywood scene. Now, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan are about to be crowned bona fide movie stars just because they went and got superpowers.
Yes, turning a profit in the movie industry is harder than ever these days. But shouldn't that obstacle inspire a few brave souls to abandon the worn formula of cookie-cutter tent-poles and instead reach for the stars with something original and unique? Shouldn't the over-abundance of film franchises push filmmakers in the opposite direction, prompting them to make something that is completely their own?
For all its issues and over complications, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar was one of my favorite films of 2014. It had the big-scale spectacle of your atypical blockbuster but the high-minded concept and inventiveness of something you don't normally see these days. It was an original idea meant to stand-alone and it wasn't based on preexisting material. Studios don't need to constantly rehash the same content, lock themselves into one-way narratives and stretch single ideas for as many movies as they can to be successful. They just need to empower creative storytellers to bring new and unique ideas to the table. Look at Gareth Evans and The Raid series or Rian Johnson with Looper. If you have an innovative idea, a market will follow.
Not all directors get the free reign that Nolan does, of course, but Interstellar's $670-plus million at the worldwide box office should at least catch the attention of a few open-minded studio executives.The same goes for Edge of Tomorrow, which put a fresh and comedic spin on the usually profitable sci-fi genre yet still disappointed on American soil due to poor marketing. The point is, these films stood out in a silver screen world of monotony because they were something new.
If movies are supposed to be visual representations of our imaginations, then how come Hollywood's recent offerings have been so unimaginative? We've seen Katniss Everdeen and other young adult protagonists pout their way into revolution multiple times now. We're all too familiar with the disastrous effects of meddling with evolution or artificial intelligence. Never before has the end of the world felt so stale and mundane.
Maybe I'm being provincial and overly critical, but I guess I'd rather watch someone aim high and miss (Chappie) than shoot for the middle and hit mediocrity (Iron Man 3, Mockingjay-Part 1). All of this adapted material seems to be sapping the intrigue out of storytelling. It's hard to be a visionary when we all know which side The Vision is going to end up on. It's difficult to be an auteur when studios require you to be a content-recycler.
I'm not suggesting that we abandon film franchises all together. I mean, where would modern American cinema be without The Godfather trilogy or the Rocky series? But perhaps it's time we start getting back to original ideas. Not every movie needs to support a multi-pronged revenue stream. Sometimes, less really is more.
I guarantee that I will be one of the first patrons in line for Avengers: Age of Ultron and I'm pretty confident that I will enjoy it immensely.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, I'll be yearning for something else. Something new. Something different.
