Which franchises do we actually need?

I was out with two of the critics who write for my site last, who each write separately as well as jointly with each other, as what has historically been called "The ReelGood Christmas Party." This is actually a thing that has only happened about four of the 11 years I have been associated with the site, five at the very most, and at some point I think it happened another time of the year entirely, but was still called that. We used to record a podcast and then we would go out for many libations, but my new house is by a main road and not advantageous from a sound perspective, plus I'd have to remind myself how to work the recording technology. 

To give you some idea of the scarcity of these parties, this was our first since 2020. Yes, we did have one during the pandemic, when that might have been hard, though that summer (it's summer in Australia) we were essentially COVID-free for a blissful couple of months. And then we have not had one since, when it would have been easier. In fact, we almost cancelled this one when one of the two guys couldn't make the original date, which was next Friday. Instead of delaying it until an unspecified time early in 2025 (which would likely mean it would never happen), we pushed it forward a week and had it last night. I had the guys over for drinks and BBQ in my back yard (even though it was lightly raining) and then we went out for drinks afterward. 

I'm telling you all this because of course we talked about movies almost non-stop. In fact, it was one of those conversations where when you get to the end of it, you think of all things you might have discussed that just never came up. Always better that way than running out of things to say halfway through the evening.

And as inevitably happens, we talked about franchise fatigue, about how many intellectual properties had completely run their course, but Hollywood was too risk averse to abandon them in favor of new ideas. And believe me, I get that. New ideas often fail spectacularly, and Hollywood is not a business that can afford to fail with any regularity.

And then this question occurred to me:

"Well, we have to have some franchises. Which are the ones we actually need?"

No one had a satisfying answer to this question.

And if you are reading this piece in the hopes that I have come up with the answers in the 14 hours since this conversation occurred, many of which have been spent sleeping and severely hungover, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

One of the guys ventured that some of the horror franchises had continued to sustain interest, a theory I did not openly disagree with, though I do sort of disagree with it. But I countered that horror franchises were always going to be a different story because although they appealed to a passionate subsection of the moviegoing populace that's eager and willing to spend their money, they were never going to rake in $300 or $400 million at the box office. For that you need something that can appeal to everyone in the family.

And no one could think of an example.

We didn't linger on the topic very long. In movie conversations, there's always another fruitful tangent to be followed. 

But I've lingered on it in my mind, a bit, at least enough to write this post. I still don't really have answers, but I have a few ideas. 

What you're really looking for, here, is an intellectual property that's new enough to not have exhausted us through a half-dozen or more cinematic incarnations, but reliable enough to be an easy green light for a studio. Dune was one idea I had. We're not sick of Dune yet, and I think this version of the franchise with these characters could sustain at least two more features before we reach that point. But Dune is also a bit of an anomaly, a fundamentally sort of inaccessible text that was matched up with a director who could really enthrall us. Dune is not your everyday reliable IP.

Using recency bias, I suggested Wicked. But immediately kind of ate my own words. There will only be one more Wicked, though if it's as big of a hit as this one, I could see spinoffs like Scarecrow: From the World of Wicked. Still, in trying to produce answers to this question, we're not talking about something that is fresh and new (even if its origins go back some 30 years to the publication of the novel), we're talking about something we already knew was viable a month ago. Then again, I guess Wizard of Oz is really the franchise here, so that's been going on a lot longer. 

I have no idea if they're making a Barbie sequel -- I'd be surprised if someone wouldn't want to do it, even if that person is not Greta Gerwig. But a single sequel is almost guaranteed to be the most more we could take of the concept without really turning on it, and it's far more likely to be a creative failure than a success.

If you try to look for guidance from the biggest franchise in movie history -- Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, Jurassic Park, etc. -- it's really hard to find one that has been relatively judicious in its engagement with the cinematic landscape, enough not to wear us out by the year 2024. It doesn't mean we, especially I as a critic and a completist, won't see these movies. It just means we won't be enthusiastic about the prospect, and will grouse about them at film website Christmas parties when given the chance.

There's one franchise, though, that I specifically excluded from the list in the previous paragraph. Because we were also talking about this as a continuation of a discussion in a message thread earlier in the week, I proposed that I would really look forward to another Star Wars movie. It's been five years now, and as I sit here, I don't actually know if any of the proposed plans for future trilogies is actually going forward at this point. I know the Patty Jenkins movie was scrapped, and I think the various creative teams who had been assigned an idea -- like the Game of Thrones guys -- are also in some sort of turnaround. I suspect we'll get something before 2030, but I don't know what it will be.

And when I realized that made me sad, it also made me realize that I do, in fact, have an answer to this. We need Star Wars.

These guys are younger than I am -- one 12 years younger, one 17 -- so I had the opportunity to regale them (not for the first time) with the story about how I had seen the original Star Wars in the theater on its initial release. But instead of that just being another rehashed story, not unlike the franchises themselves -- and we had a talk about rehashed personal stories too last night, though not related to this -- it was an opportunity for me to lay the groundwork for why I will give Star Wars an unlimited number of additional chances to wow me. Any time I see a new character activating a lightsaber in a setting I've never seen before, it will stir the excitement of that child who saw the first lightsaber ever extended. 

And it's not the same to see it in a TV show. I think Disney ultimately knows this. In fact, I have only watched one episode total from the most recent two Star Wars series.

We all know that the movies are where franchises truly live, truly exceed the limitations of the small screen to exist in all their glory and grandeur.

And I don't know about the rest of you, but I need Star Wars to prop up my personal cinematic landscape.