Fans usually have a rough idea of what to expect from movie franchises, but some franchises are forced to abandon their original premises to sustain themselves. This is often the case when a franchise unexpectedly springs out of a great standalone movie. To develop these movies into long-running franchises, filmmakers sometimes have to come up with completely new ideas.
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Popularity and box office success often dictate whether a movie gets a sequel or not, even if there was originally no intention of expanding the story. In these cases, many franchises conform to pre-established genre tropes, becoming more generic action or sci-fi franchises, because this offers more potential for varied storytelling. It’s not always easy to do this without betraying the spirit of the franchise, but it can be done.
10 Fast & Furious
Fast & Furious Moved From Street Racing To International Espionage And Huge Heists
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The Fast and Furious franchise quickly spun out of control, but it’s worth remembering that it started out as a relatively grounded story of an undercover cop infiltrating a group of street racers. Ultimately, the success of the first movie meant that there was plenty of franchise potential. 2 Fast 2 Furious actually continues with the same premise, with Brian going undercover with Roman.
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After
2 Fast 2 Furious,
the franchise started to pull away from the idea of undercover police work.
After 2 Fast 2 Furious, the franchise started to pull away from the idea of undercover police work. Brian and Dom teamed up for real in 2009’s Fast and Furious, and before long they were pulling heists together. Eventually, Dom’s crew started to dabble in international espionage too, and the idea of Brian as a cop was forgotten entirely. The franchise managed to continue after Paul Walker’s death, showing that Brian’s story became secondary. Fast and Furious 11 could be the biggest and most explosive movie yet, and this wouldn’t have been possible if the franchise had stuck with its original idea.
9 Alien
Alien Was Forced To Change After Exhausting Its Premise
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The Alien franchise started with a brilliant sci-fi horror movie, and it followed this up with a more action-heavy sequel. The first two movies are still the best in the Alien franchise, but they created a problem for the future. Alien gets a lot of its intrigue from the mystery of the constantly evolving nature of the xenomorph, from a facehugger to a chestburster to a fully-formed being. Once the xenomorph can be understood and viewed in the cold light of day, the mystery starts to evaporate.
The first two movies are still the best in the
Alien
franchise, but they created a problem for the future.
Aliens dealt with this problem by shifting gears. The sequel is filled with much more gun-toting action than its predecessor. It still has some chilling moments of horror, but a lot of these are built on dramatic irony, since Ripley and the audience are the only ones with knowledge of the destructive potential of the aliens. Further sequels and the prequel movies have pulled further and further from the initial concept, right until Alien: Romulus tried to bring things back to basics.
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8 The Pink Panther
The First Movie Has Little To Do With The Rest Of The Franchise
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1963’s The Pink Panther is a hilarious crime caper which focuses on the battle of wits between a debonair jewel thief and a bumbling detective. It doesn’t immediately warrant a sequel, but it eventually grew into one of the longest-running comedy movie franchises of all time, and there are reports that it’s being revived once more with Eddie Murphy taking over the role of Inspector Clouseau.
The first movie doesn’t immediately warrant a sequel, but it eventually grew into one of the longest-running comedy movie franchises of all time.
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To create a viable future, the Pink Panther franchise left David Niven’s thief behind and decided to focus solely on Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau character. The first sequel, A Shot in the Dark, is an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit which has no mention of jewel heists. Subsequent sequels returned to the story of the rare diamond known as the Pink Panther, but this wasn’t always the case, and the real essence of the franchise became Sellers’ performances as the oafish detective.
7 John Wick
John Wick Has Evolved Its Premise In Some Surprising Ways
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John Wick represented a breath of fresh air when the first movie was released in 2014. It provided a jolt to the action genre which has been imitated many times over. Rather than trying to recapture the magic of this explosive first outing, the John Wick franchise has changed a lot over the years, and 2023’s Chapter 4 highlights just how far it has come. Comparing the latest movie to the first one underlines how the franchise has evolved from an initially small-scale premise.
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John Wick is a fairly simple revenge thriller about a retired assassin who returns to the criminal underworld when his fragile peace is disturbed by a group of thugs. What makes the movie so unique is the subtle worldbuilding, with elements like The Continental and the mysterious gold coins hinting at a wider world of assassins. The franchise’s sequels dive headfirst into this world, and John tries to take down an unjust system. The action gets more stylistic, the characters become more eccentric, and the grounded, gritty appeal of the first movie is almost entirely abandoned. The premise isn’t totally forgotten, but it evolves in unexpected ways.
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6 The Hangover
Comedy Franchises Often Run Out Of Room Quite Quickly
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The Hangover is built around the premise that four friends have the wildest night of their lives during a bachelor party in Las Vegas, and three of them wake up the next day struggling to piece together what happened while trying to locate their missing friend. Most comedy movies are built around a singular premise that can’t be repeated, and The Hangover is especially unique, because the idea is that the events of the movie are remarkably unlikely.
The franchise suffered a drastic downward trajectory, since it never managed to come up with another premise as fun and exciting as the first.
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The Hangover‘s immense success led to a sequel, but rather than innovating on the premise, it tried to repeat it. The idea that such a bizarre event would happen twice isn’t so funny. For the threequel, The Hangover ditched its original premise entirely, with the friends being kidnapped by a crime lord. The franchise suffered a drastic downward trajectory, since it never managed to come up with another premise as fun and exciting as the first.
5 Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park Was Forced To Expand On Its Premise
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The change in the Jurassic Park franchise is best illustrated by the change in its name. The Jurassic World movies seek to expand the scope of the originals. To do so, they have to bring back another dinosaur-themed amusement park as if nobody learned anything from the many deaths of the original trilogy. This conceit generally works out just fine, since it relates to the theme of hubris.
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By moving beyond the confines of the park, the Jurassic Park franchise has abandoned the haunted house-style horror that gives Steven Spielberg’s original movie so many of its memorable moments. There are still plenty of scares in the Jurassic World franchise, but the newer movies also have more of a focus on spectacular big-screen action. Jurassic World Rebirth promises a new dawn for the franchise, but it will likely continue this trend.
4 Rocky
The Rocky Franchise Managed To Switch Protagonists While Still Feeling Authentic
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Rocky is the ultimate underdog story, following the exploits of an amateur boxer trying to make it big in Philadelphia. As the franchise produced more and more sequels, it became a more generic sports movie franchise. After 2006’s Rocky Balboa, the franchise was considered over, but it came roaring back with Creed. The Creed era of the franchise has gradually shifted further and further from the blueprint of the Rocky movies.
The
Creed
era of the franchise has gradually shifted further and further from the blueprint of the
Rocky
movies.
The first Creed movie follows many of the same story beats as Rocky, ending with a loss in the ring that still feels like a victory. The sequels don’t have the same adherence to the history of the franchise. Eventually, the only thing that truly unites Rocky and Creed is the sport of boxing, as Donnie’s journey evolves in a natural way that deviates from Rocky’s story. It’s as if there are two separate boxing franchises under the same name.
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3 Mission: Impossible
The Spy Thriller Became A More Generic Action Franchise
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Looking back at the original Mission: Impossible movie highlights just how much the franchise has changed. It says a lot about the movie’s priorities that the most gripping and iconic scene is the Langley heist, in which Ethan is suspended from the ceiling by wires. Mission: Impossible is a tense spy thriller that doesn’t lean into explosive action until the final chase scene, which presents a stark contrast to the rest of the franchise.
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As the Mission: Impossible franchise has continued, it has ditched its original premise in favor of spectacular action set pieces. There are some movies which still trade in the kind of nerve-shredding tension of the original, but Mission: Impossible‘s stunts have become a central part of its appeal. Ethan Hunt’s most important skill in the first movie is his intelligence, not his ability to absorb hits and pull off remarkable daredevil stunts.
2 Planet Of The Apes
The Prequel Series Has Shifted The Focus Of The Franchise
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The original Planet of the Apes hinges on a brilliant twist, and this forced the franchise to continue by finding new paths to pursue. Once the reveal that the planet was Earth had been exhausted, the sequels delved into time travel, mutants and other sci-fi conceits to see what would stick. The original franchise has an uneven reputation, and it never quite recaptured the power of the first movie.
The
Planet of the Apes
prequel series has reinvigorated the franchise, mainly because it has found an interesting avenue worth exploring without retreading the same ground as the original.
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The Planet of the Apes prequel series has reinvigorated the franchise, mainly because it has found an interesting avenue worth exploring without retreading the same ground as the original. The prequels focus more on the perspective of the apes with each entry. There are still humans in supporting roles, but they are no longer the main characters, like George Taylor in the original. The future of the Planet of the Apes franchise might look to balance human and ape stories a little more.
1 Die Hard
Die Hard’s Initial Idea Could Only Last For One More Sequel
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There are a few things which make Die Hard stand out from similar action movies of the era. Alan Rickman’s villain role is a big positive, the Christmas setting has made it a cult holiday classic, and the action scenes are relentlessly exciting. The most important factor is Bruce Willis’ performance as John McClane, however. John has become one of the greatest action heroes ever, and the franchise managed to pull away from its original concept by focusing on him.
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Subsequent
Die Hard
movies tell all kinds of different stories, with John McClane being the only factor holding them all together.
Die Hard 2 plays it safe by repeating a similar story to the original. Once again, John McClane is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he is forced to take out a team of terrorists before tragedy strikes. Die Hard 2 just about gets away with telling a similar story, but it probably wouldn’t have been sustainable without some new ideas in the sequels. Subsequent Die Hard movies tell all kinds of different stories, with John McClane being the only factor holding them all together.
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