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Reagen Sulewski: Relative to box office, I don't think there is a worse franchise out there, though I can at least somewhat understand why people would like the immersion in explosions and action, even if it's totally incoherent. The nomination of the Fockers franchise is a good one, although that seems to have been killed off, and had one of its stars openly mocking it while receiving a lifetime achievement award, which would be a pretty big nail in its coffin.

Supposedly the latest Twilight films have improved from the first one, which they'd have to, but they also have the handicap of terrible, terrible starting material that its own stars again mock, and also has the side effect of setting back feminism about two decades.

Matthew Huntley: Everyone on this thread is a film buff after my own heart. Well said all around. But if I had to add other franchises to the mix, I would say The Hangover and Cars, which, with the level of quality of their sequels, should now be put to bed.

David Mumpower: I believe this thread emphatically exemplifies the disconnect between what we like as a group and what mainstream cinema would be described as being. Most of the people I know who have seen the new Transformers film love it. This is a perfect example of a populist movie, one that may as well skip critics screenings altogether. Sometimes, most movie-goers want to watch stuff blow up and that happens to be the ONLY thing Michael Bay does well as a director. I think that as much as we wish this were not the case, the evidence suggests that the movie calendar could use more popcorn cinema. That's the most logical explanation for the divide between critics and consumers over the past two months.

Kim Hollis: I certainly agree that Transformers is a lousy film franchise. The films are loud, over-long, and frequently a garbled mess (I think that Bay "cleverly" disguises some of the effects so that you can't tell how crappy some of the Transformer fight scenes are). I don't know that I think it's the absolute worst (Twilight surely is a franchise with few redeeming qualities) but it's not anything I ever look forward to.

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