A-List: Top Five Movie Franchises
By J. Don Birnam
May 7, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The rules today are rather straightforward. First, to be considered a franchise, the movies must have at least three entries. Sorry, Legally Blond and Scooby-Doo. Moreover, remakes don’t count. Godzilla and King Kong, to give examples, have each been remade countless times. But neither really has sequels to speak of, and are still really standalone movies.
Once a movie has reached the threshold of two sequels, however, then all other movies in the series — including unrelated prequels or remakes — have to be considered together in evaluating the franchise. Thus, Prometheus is part of the Alien franchise, and the two newest Planet of the Apes are part of the old franchise that began in the 1960s.
Importantly, I’m evaluating the movies as a whole. This arguably hurts a lot of franchises that feature superb installments. Halloween, for example, is perhaps the best horror movie of all time, but some of the entries in the middle life of the franchise are so horrid (no pun intended) that they unfortunately knock the franchise from the top five. Indeed, the same can be said for most horror movie franchises, from Friday the 13th to the Final Destination and Saw series. All will have to settle for honorable mentions.
I’ll add one final rule: straight-up trilogies are ineligible. As I was drafting my top five, I found myself drawn to trilogies like Back to the Future, Iron Man, The Matrix, and The Godfather. The reality is that it is a lot easier to not screw up a franchise if the entries are limited to three. It is when the filmmakers venture beyond three that things really tend to go south if they haven’t already. Thus, listing five franchises without counting strict trilogies will be more fun.
Aside from the franchises I have already listed, a couple of others are worthy of honorable mentions. Jaws changed our relationship with the ocean forever, and gave us the culturally omnipresent haunting theme song. But some of the sequels, including Jaws 3-D, set, ridiculously, in Sea World, are so bad that they truly destroy the value of the franchise as a whole.
I’ll also list the Scream franchise (four movies total) as an honorable mention that just missed the cut. The first movie in the series is nothing short of brilliant — it revived the by then dormant slasher genre and it did so by brilliantly referencing beloved horror films from the recent past (most notably, Halloween) in its construction of horror film “rules.” Indeed, the opening sequence in which Drew Barrymore bites it is by now iconic. The sequels were no slouches either, but unfortunately featured many of the same plot twists and surprises as the first, truly original in 1996 when the first movie came out, but not as much by the time the fourth movie rolled around some 15 odd years later.
Finally, a shout-out goes to another personal favorite, the Terminator series, which will add another entry to its list this summer. Perhaps it is my affinity for dystopian, end of the world stories and my easy acceptance of time travel as a plot-furthering device, or perhaps it is the fact that at least the first two movies are expertly directed by James Cameron, but I’ve always been a big fan of this series. The last entry was arguably the weakest, with the main characters acting in ways that raised a lot of continuity issues for the franchise and made no sense given what we knew of them. Thus, this franchise doesn’t quite make the cut.
As for the top five, here we go.
5. The Batman franchise
From Michael Keaton to George Clooney and Christian Bale, the Batman franchise is one of the most beloved and most successful of all time. It was between this and Terminator for the fifth slot, only because some of the entries in the Batman series (let’s forget Val Kilmer was ever Batman, shall we?) really pull it down. Ultimately, however, Christopher Nolan’s reinvention of the franchise over the last decade was so brilliant that he pushed the whole group into the top five despite some weaker entries. What Nolan did was redefine the comic book and superhero movie from something that appealed simply to a particular fan-boy niche into something that all audiences could and did enjoy.
Indeed, after the franchise seemed dead given the debacles of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, it is no small feat that Nolan was able to revive it to such worldwide success that the franchise will continue despite Bale and Nolan’s bowing out of the projects. We shall see whether the newer films add or subtract from the quality of the group as a whole but, as it stands today, at least five of the seven movies in this franchise are solid to great films.
4. The Lord of the Rings/Hobbit series
Landing at number four is another franchise that is hurt by the weaker elements within the group. To be sure, the Lord of the Rings franchise is one of the most commercially and critically successful of all time. Its first three entries received Best Picture nominations, a feat that only The Godfather trilogy has achieved, and one of the films won 11 Oscars, the most in history. Moreover, the series, to date constituting six films, has grossed billions of dollars worldwide.
The original trilogy is arguably one of the best trilogies ever made. Unfortunately for the group as a whole, greed and hubris likely caused individuals involved with the project to make the foolish decision to add three more movies into the mix by adapting the single novel The Hobbit into a disjointed narrative across three movies. The Hobbit would have made a fantastic four hour film, but as a series of three movies it simply does not work. Each movie simply fails to stand alone - the plot seems uneven, nonsensical, or disconnected, depending on which of the three one is looking at.
Still, the original Lord of the Rings series is so strong, beloved, and brilliant, that even with the dead weight of The Hobbit movies, it lands at least at the fourth spot of the list. It likely would have been higher if The Hobbit had been a single movie. Instead, that third spot goes to…
3. The James Bond franchise Speaking of successful and all-time, the 22-plus James Bond movies, from Sean Connery’s Dr. No to Daniel Craig’s Skyfall, are pieces of one of the most beloved and recognized franchises of all time, spanning nearly five decades.
The movies are, of course, based on the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. They provide solid entertainment each time around - with enough familiar elements to constitute a pleasant and expected viewing experience (you know bond will have his gadgets and his women and his tricky relationship with M) combined with enough ingenuity and creativity to surprise at every turn. The latest entry of the bunch, Skyfall, is arguably one of the best ever, and Daniel Craig has proved to be a solid Bond, stepping into shoes previously worn by the likes of Roger Moore, Connery, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan.
Unlike some of the other franchises discussed today, what is remarkable about 007 is that the series will likely endure for years and decades to come, long after the studios have run out of ideas to milk every last dollar out of some of the other franchises listed here. I, for one, always welcome a Bond flick as solid and thoughtful entertainment.
2. The Star Wars franchise
I can hear the groans of the non-Star Wars fans, including other Box Office Prophets writers. Alas, to me personally, the Star Wars movies are some of the best of all time, and the franchise one of the most noteworthy ever. Accuse me of drinking the kool-aid if you will, and I will not be able to argue with you.
For one, the original movie, now known as Episode IV, forever altered the course of film history by creating the concept of a blockbuster movie to begin with. Perhaps Jaws had tapped that concept two summers before it, but when Star Wars become the cultural phenomenon it did, there would never be any turning back for the way Big Hollywood approaches moneymaking.
Then, when Lucas and Co. decided to make The Phantom Menace in 1999, they again affected film history indelibly. Now, prequels, remakes, and reboots proved a success, and a cascade of such films has flowed endlessly since. One can rightfully question the merits of the over-commercialization of film, and the prequel/remake culture, for the art of film. Regardless of one’s view on the matter however, the simple fact is that Star Wars is responsible for these trends - whether we like them or not - and is thus infinitely influential.
Finally, the movies themselves are solid, if not amazing, and always entertaining. Sure, Attack of the Clones is a sappy disaster, but I don’t mind The Phantom Menace and really liked Revenge of the Sith, not to mention the original three. Add the timeless John Williams theme, and what you get is a series whose movies have touched our collective consciousness and imaginations in ways that few other pop cultural phenomena ever have.
The question, of course, now that Disney owns the franchise and is preparing three more entries, is whether any more damage will be done to the original three, or whether the new direction that J.J. Abrams is taking, along with the reappearance of much of the original cast, will increase or decrease the value of this film series.
1. The Harry Potter Series
Were it not for the crappy Clones, Star Wars may have landed the top spot on my list. Instead, another movie series driven in no small part by a powerful John Williams score takes the spot.
The eight Harry Potter movies make up my favorite film franchise of all time. Note, first, that there is not a false note in any of the movies. Some are better than others, but all are good. This should not be particularly surprising given some of the names that Warner Bros. obtained to helm the movies. Chris Columbus was perfectly selected to direct the first two entries - more innocent and childish by nature, right up Columbus’ alley; Alfonso Cuarón then took over for the transitional Azkaban movie, and David Yates directed the complex and pivotal Goblet of Fire. The rest is history.
Impressive, too, is the cast of respectable characters that made appearances in the series. From Alan Rickman in his exact portrayal of Snape, to Maggie Smith as the stone-faced Professor McGonagall, to Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gambon, Imelda Staunton, Helena-Bonham Carter, Gary Oldman, and Ralph Fiennes, it is hard to find a single actor who did not pull his or her weight entirely. The series is simply an enjoyable spectacle of acting to behold.
It’s also amazing that the people behind the movies managed to find three young actors who aged well into their roles and who agreed to stay on - remember that they only signed up for four movies to start.
Commercially, of course, the movies were phenomenal box office hits. As we saw last week, the first movie opened to box office records, and all eight occupy top fields in all-time lists.
To me, however, the bottom line value of the Harry Potter franchise lies in the fact that the people behind it achieved something truly extraordinary: they took a known quantity, a beloved book franchise, and turned it into a smash, worldwide success movie series. Don’t take this for granted. By the time the first Harry Potter movie was released in 2001, four of the seven books had been widely read. People had opinions about how the characters/places/people should look, be, and behave. To turn that into a setting that most fans were satisfied with (and there are a lot of Harry Potter fans) was a gargantuan task. If you don’t buy it, ask the people who unsuccessfully tried to adapt the Golden Compass or the Narnia series. It doesn’t always work out that easily.
But here, the Warner Bros. version of how Harry Potter’s world should look is the definitive account of it now and for posterity. It has spawned amusement parks, dolls, and videogames. The entire franchise netted a grand total of zero Academy Awards, by the way, but no matter - its lasting value, I posit, will be seen in the coupled embrace of the books with the movies that generations to come will exhibit.