You’d think that with the release of three major superhero films – Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America: Civil War and X-Men: Apocalypse - earlier this year, the summer of sequels is behind us, but nope. Hollywood loves to convert successful films into a franchise, no matter how unwarranted.
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Despite a significant slump in box office numbers, Hollywood’s fixation with ‘the sequel’ continues.
You’d think that with the release of three major superhero films – Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America: Civil War and X-Men: Apocalypse - earlier this year, the summer of sequels is behind us, but nope. Hollywood loves to convert successful films into a franchise, no matter how unwarranted.
The result can be marvelous as was the case with Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy or Marvel’s Avenger series or it can be a disastrous monster like DC Comics’ Batman/Superman films that were supposed to serve as the foundation for the Justice League films but ended up reminding fans of Mordor from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy instead.
In 2016, several sequels have bombed with both the audience and critics looking elsewhere. The underwhelming return of films like Now You See Me 2, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Zoolander 2 and The Huntsman: Winter’s War is a glaring signal that follow-up films need to be replaced with originality.
“This year’s sequel slump reveals Hollywood is in a creative funk,” box-office analyst Jeff Bock told The Hollywood Repoter recently. “You could argue that sequel fatigue is feeding this; however, audiences still purchase tickets in droves to [some] continuing sagas. It’s all about forging new territory and sometimes waiting until significant momentum and interest is built up again, something Hollywood isn’t consistently good at.”
Box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian, echoing a similar sentiment, told THR: “Sequels of late have fallen on rough times. The tried-and-true formulas and familiar characters and themes that are the cornerstone of the modern sequel have acted as a de facto life insurance policy against box-office failure. However, 2016 has proven to be a very tough battleground, and the landscape has been littered with a series of sequels that have come up short, and thus call into question the entire notion of the inherent appeal of non-original, franchise-based content.”
The only optimistic piece of news is that not all sequels are unwelcome. Conjuring 2 has broken the curse of the sequel felt strongly this year with solid numbers on the American box office, and Disney’s upcoming film, Finding Dory – the sequel to the endearing and enduring Finding Nemo – has a global audience waiting to see how the story unfolds.
In the coming months ahead, several sequels will roll out such as Ice Age: Collision Course, Jason Bourne, Star Trek Beyond, The Purge: Election Year, Bridget Jones’s Baby, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Ouija 2, Underworld: Blood Wars, and Bad Santa 2.
While we wait for Hollywood to embrace some sense of originality, these films will just have to do.
