We hear about the shortcomings of films all too often these days. It feels like sometimes a movie’s fate can be sealed even before the lights have started to dim in the cinema. Like it or loath it, the Internet has given everyone a voice and it seems that everyone has chosen to use that voice to bad mouth movies as soon as they hear absolutely anything about them. On the flip side of the coin, praise for good movies can be all too rare. Riding a wave of word-of-mouth buzz can literally make a decent film transform regular old film frames into statuette gold come awards season but what happens when a film becomes too successful for its own good?

The immensely successful Harry Potter franchise is a perfect case in point. Under the careful guidance of Producer David Heyman, a handful of talented and distinctly different directors and most importantly of all, series author J.K Rowling, the team pulled off a near impossible feat in fully realising a totally immersive Wizarding world. For eight movies, we lost ourselves on the big screen in a richly populated universe full of colourful characters and the money rolled in faster than a Snitch on a mission. And then it came to an end. With the story told, Rowling’s Potter anthology wrapped up naturally, leaving a nice neat package for us to enjoy and fondly revisit for decades to come. 

At least that was the plan. Despite raking it in at the box office, spawning a bespoke studio tour, multiple merchandise offshoots and its very own theme park, franchise owners seem reluctant to let it retire that easily. What followed was Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, a spin-off tale set in the same universe that, while still canon, left our original hero’s story untouched. Successful, a sequel was soon announced and as we get our first looks at Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald, it’s hard not to think that it’s the beginning of the end for yet another beloved franchise. 

It seems like whenever a film does marginally well, a sequel (or trilogy) is all but inevitable. For some these seem warranted - Back To The Future kept the fun going for three movies (for the most part) and cemented itself into cinematic lore. The Godfather undeniably improved itself in part two, even if it did get a little shaky in its lackluster third feature. However more often than not it feels like studios act too quickly, dooming a successful film to a fate of watered down future instalments, making you forget why you even tuned in in the first place. 

Bear in mind that while we may have only just met Newt Scamander and his magic briefcase, Warner Bros has already planned five (yep) sequels for the character. Proof, if you ever needed it, that can be a double edged sword. Newt’s certainly not the boy who lived but seen has he’s not going anywhere in a hurry, we better hope he’s the bloke who survives. 

Do you think sequels can improve films? Let me know in the comments section below!

It’s official. No one alive today will ever live to see the Star Wars franchise ride off into the golden Bespin sunset. Seriously. All this drama with the Skywalker family may very well wrap up once JJ Abrams releases Episode IX onto audiences but today’s die-hard Star Wars fans will likely never get to see their beloved franchise come to a natural and official conclusion. News came this week that Disney and Lucasfilm are so happy with Director Rian Johnson’s middle-trilogy-movie The Last Jedi that they’ve offered him his very own galaxy to play by spearheading his own separate bespoke trilogy. Impressive - but does that also mean we’re destined to see the chronic watering down of a series we all seem to hold so dear? 

The transition has already begun. Beyond the realms of the canon Skywalker arc we’ve also seen ‘Star Wars Stories’ within the same universe with Rogue One and next year we’ll have a young Han Solo to deal with while we wait for the conclusion of the trilogy kicked off by The Force Awakens. Then there’s 2020’s as-yet-untitled anthology film (cough cough… Boba Fett) that slipped through the grasp of Director Josh Trank, a rumoured Obi Wan Kenobi stand-alone feature and even a Jabba The Hutt spin-off being considered by the powers that be. Throw Johnson’s brand new trilogy into the mix and our visits to a galaxy far, far away are going to rapidly increase over the next couple of decades.

That’s a long time time to hope to hold onto people’s attention, especially when the original heroes that got us hooked in the first place are thin on the ground. At this rate, the only hope for the future of the franchise could be to adopt a revolving-door cast approach, similar to the one used in AMC’s sometimes-good-sometimes-bad zombie show The Walking Dead. You know the score - it’s where you suddenly find yourself caring about background players who then conveniently step up to the plate whenever a main star takes a bow, carrying the show forward in the process, with you along for the ride. This focus-shift technique has helped keep audience attention even on a show where heroes become food quicker than you can swing a bat.

Odds are, we’ll start to see new faces slowly becoming main features as the likes of Luke, Vader and Obi Wan drift off into the distance. If we truly are going to be spending the better part of our collective future in a brand new galaxy populated with any number of brand new faces, we better get use to this type of narrative tool taking place. Or not - it probably doesn't matter much. While all the intergalactic credits continue to roll in the series will power on regardless and with so many ideas in the pipeline, you’ll likely never see the final end credits roll anyway. Like the force itself, Star Wars has officially become omnipresent.
​
Are you looking forward to living with Star Wars for the rest of your life? Let me know in the comments below!

Xenomorphs weren’t the only extraterrestrial terror hunting humans throughout the eighties. Not long after James Cameron pulled the trigger on his testosterone-charged sequel Aliens, Director John McTiernan introduced us to a new intergalactic hunter with Predator in 1987. Two war movies, two alien franchises, two very different legacies. However as Predator closes in on its thirtieth birthday, it’s hard not to think the series somehow failed to capitalise on its full potential. With Shane Black’s upcoming retooling The Predator all that could change - but what went wrong during those intervening years that set the Predator so off course?

Maybe it can all be traced back to one single event: the mishandling of the film’s original sequel. The late eighties were good for John McTiernan. Having unleashed Predator onto audiences he doubled-down on the machismo theme with Die Hard a year later. However when the time came to follow up his alien movie with a sequel in 1990 his asking salary had doubled, pricing him out of Predator 2’s scant budget. To make matters worse, star Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped out too, due to either a salary dispute, clashing schedules or an unsatisfactory script. The exact reasons are still up for debate but one thing remains concrete: audiences were denied the continuation of Dutch’s story. 

Had the pair signed on for another round, their combined presence may have given the Predator franchise a lease of life worthy of challenging Sigourney Weaver’s still-developing Alien anthology. Salvage attempts were reignited throughout the 90s with ideas for a proposed third movie entitled Predator 3: Deadlier of the Species reintroducing us to Dutch in a blizzard-ravaged New York City for another space-invader scuffle. Then there was The Zoo, an amalgamation threequel that bundled Dutch with Danny Glover’s Predator 2 hero Harrigan and shipped them both off for a stint in the wilds of the Predator's home planet. Both intriguing concepts that unfortunately never saw the light of day.

Instead, the Predator found itself relegated to bargain-bin adventures. There was ‘meh’ crossover cash-in Alien Vs Predator in 2004 and its equally tedious 2007 sequel AVP: Requiem. Then Robert Rodriguez took a stab in 2010’s Predators, a stand-alone sequel that felt more like a Friday night popcorn movie than a worthy continuation. While new directors certainly don’t spell doom for a franchise, stripping Predator of both its original helmer and star so early on seems to have inflicted wounds that are difficult to heal. Perhaps the key to Alien’s continued success is down to the lynchpin figure of Ripley, tying things together either in person or in spirit. With the Predator currently lacking a concrete foe to face, it could be some time before it emerges from the wilderness and into a worthy battle arena.

Where do you think the Predator franchise went wrong? Let me know in the comments section below!