Franchise Fatigue
Story by Joseph Stranger | Design by Emma Stark
“Star Wars,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Harry Potter,” James Bond and Marvel. These names are associated with some of the highest-grossing movie franchises of all time, each of them amassing well over five billion dollars in revenue. You've seen the films in theaters, you’ve rewatched them at home and maybe you’ve even bought physical copies of your favorites.
But, have you gotten tired of seeing the same characters, settings and storylines? Or are you thirsty for more?
Franchise fatigue is a term that describes the frustration some audiences feel with the increasing number of sequels, reboots, remakes and cinematic universes. But does this fatigue really make a difference when the films making the biggest bucks in Hollywood are almost always connected to a franchise?
Money is the Driver
"Studios are driven by a desire to make money,” Senior Film Lecturer Michael Caldwell says. “If they think that audiences will pay money to see content, they will evaluate how much money they think they can make from a certain film. Based on how much money they think they can make they will determine how much it is worth to spend making that film so that at the end of the day they have a profit.”
Caldwell is known for working on the production of films like “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” and “Hard Candy.” The former is the first sequel in a popular franchise, while the latter is an independent film based on an original screenplay.
“The goal in making ‘Austin Powers’ was to make money,” Caldwell says. “The goal in making ‘Hard Candy’ was, fingers crossed, to make money, but it was an independent film, incredibly risky, first-time director. It turned out to be a success because the movie is just really damn good, but it was a huge risk.”
While both films would be considered a success, “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” made over $206 million on a budget of $33 million, and “Hard Candy” made only $8.2 million on a budget of $950,000.
“Independent film chronically seems to be on life support,” Caldwell says. “It seemed to be on life support ever since I started in this business. It's just an incredibly fragile, risky business.”
Familiarity is the Key
Familiarity plays an important role when trying to sell a product, whether it be a t-shirt, a bag of chips or a blockbuster release. Terri Wilson, associate professor of management and marketing, says familiarity makes selling a product less expensive to do.
“Anytime that something is familiar it’s way easier,” Wilson says. “It requires less customer education. Marketing is expensive, so the less customer education you have to give on any product, the less money you have to spend on marketing.”
Wilson says the marketing of a familiar brand is called a cognitive shortcut. Major Hollywood studios use this strategy often, hence why, in the last 20 years, moviegoers have seen three completely different iterations of Spider-man.
“When I say Spider-Man, if you know the Spider-Man comics, that’s a cognitive shortcut,” Wilson says. “You can see the outfit, you know what it stands for, you know what the concept is.”
While familiarity makes a film more easily recognizable to audiences, the over-usage of a particular brand or franchise leads to what Wilson calls brand dilution. When a brand is returned to over and over and undergoes changes in order to adapt to the market, it changes the meaning of that brand.
“I think I was 13 or 14, I saw the very first ‘Star Wars’ in the theater and I thought it was the greatest thing ever,” Wilson says. “But now, it’s been 30 or 40 years they’ve been using that franchise and it ages, and some things age better than others. [A brand] is nice because people know what it means, but you’re also now getting all the baggage as the brand gets diluted over time.”
In recent years, Hollywood realized that the cognitive shortcut strategy doesn’t just work for domestic audiences, but for international audiences too.
“You look at this past weekend, the biggest box office went to a sequel to [‘Venom’],” Caldwell says. “It's a franchise that is part of Marvel Comics’ world. So, I think the answer is no, especially when you look at films as an international business. A concept like [‘Venom’] kind of to a large degree transcends language and individual cultures because it's just a fantasy comic book movie.”
Is Film Still an Art?
With the dominant players in the industry so focused on making money by rehashing characters and stories, is there still artistry in blockbuster releases? Caldwell says that there is, but it’s mostly reserved for directors who have a substantial amount of clout, like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan.
“One of the reasons those filmmakers have the freedom to do so is their past films have been financially successful,” says Caldwell. “This is an industry that is driven by money. I’m talking about Hollywood, not independent film. Independent film is its own separate thing, but Hollywood is driven by money.”
Caldwell stressed the bifurcation of the film industry: on one side is big studios prioritizing tentpole blockbusters, on the other is independent film making art and original stories. Tomato-meter-approved Independent Entertainment Journalist Rendy Jones says that franchises aren’t going anywhere, but that it doesn’t necessarily mean cinema is stale.
“Franchises are just kind of here to stay, unfortunately,” Jones says. “Fortunately, and unfortunately. It just always depends on how a film is executed at the end of the day despite the capitalistic form of what cinema is now. What blockbuster cinema is today.”
The idea of art and marketability working hand in hand may seem contradictory, but Wilson says the two do together.
“There’s plenty of room for art in marketing,” Wilson says. “And usually, the best marketing has good art. We’ve all seen examples of bad marketing, it happens all the time. But the best marketing usually has, at its core, really good art. I think the artificial walls that we create between these things doesn’t end up helping in the long run.”
Is Franchise Fatigue a Farce?
If films that are connected to pre-established franchises have the ability to be both artistically exciting and financially successful, does that mean franchise fatigue is a real thing? Senior Film Major Thomas Hinkle says it depends on who you ask.
“I mean, I feel like the Marvel franchise is over-fatigued. I feel like they kind of hit their high mark with ‘Endgame’, and now they’re in this awkward gray area where they don’t know what they want the franchise to be anymore,” Hinkle says. “So, me personally, I’m tired of that specific franchise. But there’s a whole flock of people around the world that are still tuning in to any Marvel teaser trailer, main trailer, any leaked information ... But, I don’t see the Marvel universe going away. I don’t think people are going to be tired of that, just because either they’re nostalgic or they love that material, they love getting lost in that universe. And that really depends on the person and why they watch a movie.”
Jones shared a similar perspective saying, “It always depends on the mode of a franchise and how that film, whether it be a reboot, adaptation of whatever or a comical adaptation, it depends on how it's executed. Like the MCU, they’re just stuck with different phases. After ‘Endgame’ they were like, ‘I don’t think we have a game plan anymore. We’re just doing whatever we can to see what we can make audiences go apeshit over.’”
Caldwell says that the fatigue isn’t real, and that the sentiment might stem from poor entries in franchises rather than from the franchises themselves.
“If those franchises include a dud, I'm thinking of the Han Solo movie in Star Wars, I forget the name of it ... Solo? OK, that was a dud,” Caldwell says. “People didn't watch it because it didn't meet their expectations, but did it kill the franchise? Hell no.”
Until audiences vote with their dollar for something other than franchises, sequels, spinoffs, reboots and remakes will continue to be made, regardless of their artistic merit.
Source: (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross/?area=XWW)
Web Sources:
https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchises
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3343025665/
https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Hard-Candy#tab=summary
