Welcome to the age of franchise filmmaking. That’s the statement of someone in the media who is obviously late to the party. I’m old enough to recall when the main conversation talking points revolved around the blockbuster mentality that came to dominate movie culture and gave birth to the rise and dependence on the multiplex as the destination for audiences. Jaws and Star Wars were seen as the twin markers of the decline of narrative storytelling.
The big screens were never the same, and yet that new phase didn’t lead to the major collapse everyone anticipated. But we did enter a period of new releases with high-wattage stars and stories tailor-made to continue with serialized installments that had viewers begging for more. By the time I graduated from high school, there were three Rocky movies, two Beverly Hills Cop movies, and Top Gun was taking us into the danger zone. Nothing and no one would ever be the same again.
The titles I’ve mentioned thus far offer a glimpse into a larger and more dynamic set of questions about the impact and power of narrative storytelling. We were eager to revisit characters and plots in a plug-and-play scenario. Rocky Balboa and Axel Foley could keep popping up and we welcomed them back like old friends, even if they didn’t exactly tell us anything truly new and exciting about their lives. In fact, their familiarity was comforting.
In a way, the next meaningful stage in this evolution demanded that filmmakers step up and take greater control of the stories. Wouldn’t a single visionary be better positioned to develop and shepherd these sequels that we were now ready to deem franchises rather than the installment-driven model that merely plugged in directors-for-hire (which smacked of television with its director of the week format)?
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And then, once the franchise model established itself as the new flavor of the moment, with a seemingly endless stream of sequels, horror/slasher movies cashed in big time with Halloween/Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street iterations that proliferated to the extent that the only place for them to go was to enter into each other’s worlds. Where was the next event on the horizon?
Prequels became the new wave. Going back before the beginning created a new time line; one that moved and reset as much as necessary. And audiences didn’t seem to care about spending time with characters and in worlds that led to a definable fixed point that was already ordained.
I’m intrigued by what all of this says about audiences — and here I truly include myself, because at the end of the day, every critic is the ultimate viewer. Not only do we want to watch these stories, but we spend most of our time challenging the reflections they provide on the real world. That’s why the notion of the singular visionary matters so much. They, like the novelists who explore the lives of recurring protagonists, maintain the greatest degree of control over their worlds and the intricacies of characters we continue to want to spend time with.
Francis Ford Coppola, the Godfather trilogy
I’ve written about The Godfather films as the signature franchise that defines and defies all expectations. Film historians have written about the behind-the-scenes saga to even bring the first film to the screen. No one trusted Coppola to be the right person to helm the project. There were countless questions about the cast he put together. Who believed, at the time, that a film about the inner workings of the Mafia would be anything other than a societal black eye for Italian Americans?
And yet, Coppola soldiered on. He worked with and employed members of his own family to assist in ushering the Mario Puzo adaptation to the big screen. Seemingly without pause, he turned around, after creating a cultural and critical touchstone, and figured out a way to return to the world and expand it in a revolutionary way by juxtaposing the main storyline of its protagonist (Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone) with the rise of Michael’s father (swapping out Marlon Brando for Robert De Niro). That alone was the first epic prequel move.
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What’s even harder to consider is how Coppola was able to circle back again, 16 years later, to conclude the story of Michael Corleone in a way that still feels organic and fitting to the narrative that began at the start of the 1970s. It’s an academic question: Could anyone (or any committee of filmmakers) have crafted as cohesive a franchise over two decades that inspires debates usually reserved for sports talk?
Sam Raimi, the Evil Dead/Spider-Man trilogies
Raimi lands as high on this list as he does because over the course of his extensive career, he’s birthed two trilogies of note. The Evil Dead series (beginning with the lowest of low budget exercises in 1981, settling in for what amounts to a larger budget remake of the first film in 1987, before capping things off with a true sequel — Army of Darkness — in 1992) features a young film geek with a wild love of horror and offbeat comedy that quite often punched through the frame. Raimi didn’t merely want to impress audiences with his imagination; he longed to poke our eyes out while tickling us to death. It is worth noting that several remakes/re-imaginings of Evil Dead have emerged, without coming close to approaching his delirious genius.
And then, someone at Sony figured, why not give this guy the chance to render everyone’s favorite teenage superhero next door into a live action phenom? Between 2002 and 2007, Raimi, working with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst (each at the height of their charismatic power), made us believe in a boy receiving powers from a radioactive spider bite by shrewdly leaning into some of the same nerdy wizardry he employed in Evil Dead. For the sake of spurring on another great movie debate, let’s say that Spider-Man II might be the greatest comic book adaptation of all time. Even when, in the final installment, everything comes close to completely jumping off track, the demented silliness of the enterprise feels like Raimi being Raimi, which is nothing less than everyone wanted.
Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight trilogy
It is fitting to follow up with Nolan’s grounded rendition of the Batman mythos, because, if Raimi’s Spider-Man II isn’t the greatest comic book adaptation of all time, then maybe it’s The Dark Knight. Without wasting much time on Bruce Wayne losing his parents in the alley when he was a young boy, Nolan zeroes in on how such a moment would compel said young boy to grow up, seek to train himself to right that wrong, start wearing a costume inspired by bats, and become the symbol for a city under siege. Nolan’s filmography is full of decidedly quirky protagonists who challenge the notion of what makes someone heroic, but his Batman (and more importantly, Heath Ledger’s Joker) belong to him more so than the DC Comics imprint that spawned him decades ago.
James Cameron, the Terminator/Avatar trilogies
The inclusion of Cameron’s first two Terminator movies directly speaks to what a visionary filmmaker means to a franchise. The first film plays like a down and dirty (and quite humorless) version of the Sam Raimi school of storytelling. Cameron shoots the movie like the nigh-indestructible robot from the future, ignoring any and all of the time travel complications that would come to derail so many of the sequels. By the second installment — again much like Raimi — Cameron earned the right to operate on a much larger canvas and his fierce intelligence wouldn’t quit. By the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he found a way to stop short of the doomed future that might be but left the door tantalizingly open and no one that followed has been able to capture the spark he triggered, whether embracing the dystopian future or seeking to travel back to some ill-defined starting line that’s never quite capable of bringing us back to his entry point.
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Leaving The Terminator behind, Cameron built upon the technical creativity that obviously inspired him along the way to imagine never-before seen worlds and render them with a precision that would develop tools for other filmmakers to use to bring their own vivid dreams to life. Avatar, as an ongoing franchise, is not anywhere near the height of critical storytelling, but the movies that have emerged thus far are distinctly visions that belong to Cameron and no one else. I still remember watching the first Avatar movie on an IMAX screen with 3D glasses and having to stop myself from attempting to reach out to touch the flora and fauna of Pandora, which is exactly what Cameron wanted.
George Miller, the Mad Max franchise
There would be no point in having this conversation without featuring Miller’s Mad Max movies, especially the last two. In a post-apocalyptic world (imagine this in the classic trailer guy voice) that puts a premium on water, gas and vehicular mayhem of an order that shouldn’t be possible in the kind of wasteland this is supposed to be, we’ve been indoctrinated into (and mesmerized by) the cultish, gang warfare vibe that exists when nothing else matters, not even survival. It’s a completely bleak and utterly wanton landscape, but Miller envisions action and movement as the only reason to live. It’s ride-or-die taken to the nihilistic extreme.
Mad Max, which came out in 1979, introduced us to Miller’s fever dream of heaven-less afterlife on Earth and made Mel Gibson the antihero of the realm. There was a propulsive energy, in the brief moments between the action, that kept audiences on edge. After three Gibson iterations (Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior in 1981 and Mad Max Beyond Thuderdome in 1985), Miller left the wasteland in the rearview, but returned with an epic prequel of sorts in 2015 with Mad Max: Fury Road that put the spotlight on someone other than Max. Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, the leader of a group of women rebels in search of an Eden-esque homeland ignites the screen with her intense glare and her gritty determination. How did such a woman erupt from these dry sands?
The backstory Miller and Theron used to give this character meaning and depth has now been transformed into Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga with Anya Taylor-Joy stepping in as Theron’s younger self. Miller has created, quite curiously, the reverse of the initial two movies in classic trilogies. If Fury Road is part two of this new prequel series, then it is in the same league as The Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Knight and The Godfather Part II (with the critical acclaim of 10 Academy Award nominations and six wins along with more than healthy box office returns), then Furiosa is the definitely solid first film that allows the host to introduce us to the life of the party.
Miller’s real trick (and treat) in Furiosa is giving us the backstory without us worrying about the temporal gymnastics of knowing what Furiosa’s future looks like. The dusty landscape is the perfect mirage that entices us to forget what we know will be. True visionaries, when given the chance, have a way of making that effortless.
