Chronos forwarded an interesting hypothesis on a different thread. Namely, that successful movie franchises usually end with two final bad movies: a first bad movie where audiences watch it based purely on the reputational quality of its successful predecessor(s), before they realize it, in fact, sucked but because the movie actually managed to turn a modest profit, studio execs green light the next sequel which not only sucks but also loses money. End of successful franchise.
Can anyone cite examples of where this dynamic played out?
Why is there such a high percentage of new films that are sequels? Has that percentage ever been as high or even higher historically?
It’s not a great example but MGM’s That’s Entertainment trilogy popped into my head. For those unfamiliar the first one was made to coincide with the studios 50th anniversary and featured the greatest numbers from the studios best musicals. The second one had some notable numbers and sprinkled in some comedy bits. The third one was down to B-movie level stuff and stars who had started at MGM but found success and fame somewhere else.
As for a more on point exa.ple, did a yone rally need three editions of Men in Black?
I generally agree with the premise of the OP, but harking back to the thread from which this one was spawned, I would argue that the Star Trek movie franchise started with a pretty bad movie. I did not care for it at all. That fact did not keep me from seeing the sequel, however, or the rest of the movies based on TOS. Since I never got into the other ST TV series, I haven’t seen any of those movies, either.
I think many long-running movie franchises generally tend to decrease in quality over time (as the concept loses freshness), in which case it would be expected for the final two to be on the worse end of the spectrum.
Some years back Warner Bros. released a series of disk sets, Looney Tunes Golden Collection with six volumes of four DVDs each, fifteen cartoons per disks plus some extra material. In total it was about a third of the Termite Palace’s output and by the final release it was becoming apparent they were running low on everyone’s favorites.
I would have loved it had they continued but am pretty satisfied with what I got.
I think the general consensus is that concerning the original trilogy (Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, and Matrix Revolutions) they got progressively weaker. I haven’t seen the reboot (Matrix Resurrections), but I think for the purposes of this thread we can treat re-boots made more than 15 years later as being a different phenomenon, subject to separate/different evaluation.