Top 5 – Movie Franchises That Need To Die
Want to hear something insane? The Ice Age franchise is still pushing out movies. That’s right, the D-grade animated series about a sabertooth tiger, a sloth, and a wooly mammoth doing whacky shenanigans during the prehistoric era is releasing it’s fifth, that’s right, FIFTH movie this Friday with Ice Age: Collision Course. Does anybody care? I know I don’t. The characters are tired, the movies get dumber, and they keep making less money. Why do they continue to put these movies out? So in honor this useless movie coming out, here are five other movie franchises that need to die immediately.
5 – MINIONS
These yellow creatures busted onto the cinematic scene in 2010 in Despicable Me and they were great. They were cute, funny, and just the right amount of weird that it was enjoyable. After that movie made an obscene amount of money, they appeared in the not-so-surprising sequel Despicable Me 2 (2013), where they were again, cute, funny, weird, but were wearing out their welcome. Then, they got their own movie, and that was the last straw. This movie was so dumb and annoying and, due to the Minions lack of vocabulary, was basically the worst kind of foreign language film. This movie exists just because the studio wanted to cash in on minor characters five year olds loved. No more Minions, ever!
4 – PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN
For my money, there is only one good Pirates of the Caribbean movie and that is the 2003 original, Curse of the Black Pearl. It was fresh, fun, exciting, and gave us one of the most unique characters in cinematic history in Jack Sparrow, played by the brilliant Johnny Depp. However, three sequels followed, including the absolutely dreadful third chapter, At World’s End (2007). And even worse, there is a fifth one coming out next year called Dead Men Tell No Tails. Why? All the originality and coolness of the original is gone and Jack Sparrow is now a gimmick of himself.
3 – ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS
They’ve made four of these movies. FOUR! And the last one, The Road Chip, just came out last year. The first two films, I’ll admit, I enjoyed. They were filled with childish humor, fun versions of pop songs, and were just overall entertaining. However, and looking at the series’ box office, I’m not the only one who thinks this, the Chipmunks are a dead franchise. The third installment, Chipwrecked (2011), made almost half as much money as The Squeakquel (2009), and The Road Chip didn’t even cross $100 million domestically. The jokes and shenanigans are running really thin, and how many other words associating with chipmunks are there? As much as Alvin, Simon, and Theodor are childhood legends to me, their movies need to go.
2 – JURASSIC PARK/WORLD
Jurassic Park (1993) is almost a sacred film to me. My favorite Steven Spielberg movie of all-time is one I grew up with and one that just gets better with age. The Lost World (1997) had the impossible task of following a masterpiece, but ended up being pretty entertaining and isn’t horrible. Jurassic Park III (2001) features a talking velociraptor, so take that for what you will. You would have thought that the series was done. Well, we thought wrong. Jurassic World came out last year and, even though it made all sorts of money, it was very underwhelming and very unnecessary. And, no matter how much you may like Jurassic World, you can’t help but wonder how many times a park of dinosaurs needs to fail for someone to say, “Hey, that’s a bad idea!”. It is now just redundant, and it makes Spielberg’s classic seem like a joke now. This franchise needs to be shut down before it completely ruins the majestic nature of the original.
1 – TERMINATOR
Oh, Terminator. The first two films, both directed by James Cameron, are sci-fi/action masterpieces, especially Judgement Day (1992), which is an all-timer. Even the third outing, Rise of the Machines (2001) was decent entertainment for what is was. But man, your last two outings have been horrendous. First, you tried to mix it up and go the prequel route with Terminator Salvation (2009). Good idea, poor execution, especially with a decent cast. And finally, the absolute shit storm that was Terminator Genisys (2015) came out and put the final nail in the coffin. Filled with lame action, wooden performances, and a ridiculously stupid plot, the movie is simply dreadful. It tried to restart the franchise by using time travel, i.e. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and failed miserably. Instead of trying to continue this franchise and this story, just end it and do what Hollywood usually does best; remake it and hope for the best. In my best Arnold voice, “Don’t come back.”
What franchises do you think need to die? Comment below or hit me up on Twitter @kevflix or on Facebook at Kevflix.