THE GREAT DEBATE: Is Every Franchise Done?

The strange suicide of the whole of Western Civilisation is curious and troubling to those of us living through it. Nowhere is more emblematic of this self-imposed collapse than current year Hollywood.

Look at it. I mean, just look at it. In the whole of human history, has there ever been such a mass killing of the goose that laid the golden eggs than in Hollywood since about 2010? Thinking about this, I picked my head out of my hands and suddenly I felt a debate coming on.

Sure, arthouse and independent movies are great, but they don’t pay the bills. Recognized IP with the power to get butts in movie theater seats have long been the fuel that sustains Hollywood, providing the funding for creatives to then fill in the gaps with more specialist fare.

Now think of the great movie franchises, past and present, and run down the list.

It really is a desperate picture.

Star Wars. Dead. Gone. Killed by Lucasfilm and sequels. No matter what they do, they had the opportunity to get the original crew back together for one last adventure and fucked it. There is no coming back from that. It’s dead now. Gone.

Indiana Jones. Similarly finished. The chance to go for immortality was in the early-mid-90s and if Harrison Ford didn’t want to do it, re-cast it like Bond and strike while Spielberg still had his balls. Too late now. It’s Ford and only Ford and the franchise was given a definite end.

Terminator. It takes real talent at sucking to leave a franchise based on time travel with absolutely no way back, but somehow you managed it. Excellent job.

Star Trek has boldly flushed itself where no-one has flushed before.

Harry Potter. Finished at the movies. Those continuation films had to be prematurely aborted despite the creative team direct from the Potterverse behind them. The Wizarding World is Dead.

The DCEU was put down by sheer idiocy. The MCU collapsed under its own legend as people involved with it suddenly started to believe their shit didn’t stink. The DCU hasn’t even launched yet and it’s already ten years too late.

The Unversal Monsters Dark Universe exploded before it had even cleared the tower. Transformers never raised itself about depressingly average at its absolute best and was mostly far worse.

Avatar is like the Creeper out of Jeepers Creepers, or Pennywise in IT, completely disappears and is so forgotten about as to be just a myth. When it does appear, instead of killing kids it just makes money, then vanishes again without a ripple, or witnesses.

Pirates Of The Caribbean seems trapped between the literal shitting of the bed and some kind of gender studies nightmare. Mission: Impossible got too expensively repetitive and is based purely on the size of an aging star’s balls.

Even the producers of the previously unsinkable James Bond franchise seem to be paralyzed by confusion about what to do next, despite having a sixty-year most open of open goals to aim at.

In short, even the reliable mega-franchises feel done. Completely played out. Pepper this with the usual smattering of remakes, reimaginings, and reboots, and in the cold, harsh light of day it seems difficult to imagine just where Hollywood goes next. Remember, as we said upfront, this is all self-inflicted.

So for today’s Great Debate here at Last Movie Outpost we ask you, our beloved Outposters, is this really it?