As the year draws to a close, it’s as good of a time as any to take a look back at this year’s most successful blockbusters. Topping the charts include movies like Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Despicable Me 4, and Moana 2. Now, you might have realized something: all of these movies are sequels or part of a greater franchise. Truthfully, this is nothing new. A similar story occurred in 2022, with movies like Avatar: The Way of Water and Jurassic World: Dominion being the highest-grossing movies. What’s going on? Why are there so many sequels?
The simplest answer is probably the most accurate: because it’s easy. When you already have a successful film franchise, you don’t have to worry nearly as much about the inherent risks of making a movie. The fact that it’s part of a franchise or a sequel guarantees that a sizeable number of people will watch the film. Sure, ratings may decline, but ratings don’t necessarily mean that your movie will do badly.
The result? Franchises that have gone on for far too long. Consider the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What was once a unique rendezvous of various superhero icons has turned into a deluge of movies with hardly distinguishable plots and characters. Movies like The Marvels (2023) have failed spectacularly, something that was once unimaginable for such a cultural juggernaut.
The excessive longevity of franchises doesn’t just apply to movies, as TV shows have also been dragged on for far too long. The most prominent example of this is The Simpsons, now in its 36th season (and just a few days ago celebrating its 35th anniversary). Anyone over the age of 30 can tell you that The Simpsons was once the most influential show on television, but it’s now been zombified past the point of relevancy. Ratings have essentially been halved, and viewership has dropped from its high of 15 million to around 1.5 million.
The effects of dragging a franchise on for far too long have retroactive effects. Now that new people are working on these projects, they have taken these projects in new directions. But these directions can make audiences reconsider how they previously viewed older episodes and movies. As the characters are altered and given new personalities, this can make the older depictions of them seem… awkward.
Even if movies aren’t necessarily turned into franchises, subsequent sequels can be of much lower quality. Moana 2 has received noticeably lower reviews than the original film, and Inside Out 2 is slightly less well-received than the first one (although it did make much more at the box office). It’s not surprising that these movies were given sequels: having a new and very successful IP is the Hollywood equivalent of striking gold, and when you strike gold, you don’t just stop mining. But this tendency to automatically give any movie a sequel once it reaches a threshold (plus spin-offs, if the executives are feeling like it) means that movies are decisively less creative. Take Moana, for example. Part of the reason why it was so successful is that it had a vibrant atmosphere and interesting world-building. For many, it might have been their first depiction of Polynesia. It should not be surprising that when you simply rehash that environment and do little to build upon it, you get a movie that is much less exciting.
For now, it seems unlikely that sequels and franchises will ever stop being produced. It would take a lot for Marvel movies or The Simpsons to stop being produced, and it would take even more for sequels to giant successes not being made. But we should realize the predicament we’re in, and we should support movies that explore novel ideas.
