Old Movie Franchises Find New Life This Summer

Final Destination 5 didn’t open at #1 at the box office this past weekend. In fact, the movie finished a distant third behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Help despite 3D ticket prices. Since it is in its fifth installment, people can ask if the Final Destination franchise is getting too old and worn out. Yet several aging franchises- including the Planet of the Apes- have proven over the last several months that old series can still get new life.

Some of the biggest and most well liked films of the summer have been from franchises that seemed to be on their last legs. Yet the Fast and Furious, X-Men and Planet of the Apes series have been brought back to life after all- while the biggest hit of the year was the eighth and final film in the Harry Potter franchise. Even Final Destination 5 was close to being fresh on Rotten Tomatoes in spite of not having a huge opening weekend.

By the time a movie series has gotten to five or six films or beyond, it would normally be devoid of all creativity. Harry Potter has been the biggest exception to that rule, which was proven for the last time when Deathly Hallows Part 2 had the best reviews and box office of the saga. Movie franchises aren’t supposed to keep getting bigger and better by the eighth installment- but since the Harry Potter books did the same thing, the films were bound to do it as well.

No one was really shocked when Deathly Hallows Part 2 made out as well as it did. But it was a shock to see the fifth Fast and the Furious movie open huge on the last week of spring. Fast Five wasn’t technically the first movie of the summer, although it wound up being bigger than many summer blockbusters. It was the first Fast and Furious film to make over $200 million, and it even had the best reviews of the series to go with it. For a franchise that never had extremely good reviews and seemed to be running out of steam, this was a surprising resurgence.

It was nearly as unlikely as Rise of the Planet of the Apes bringing a 40+ year franchise back from the dead. The last time a Planet of the Apes reboot came out in 2001, Tim Burton let down both critics and fans, which seemed to finish off the talking apes once and for all. Even the original franchise lost its way by its fifth installment in the 70’s, so a seventh Apes movie and a second reboot looked like a certain failure. Instead, WETA technology and Andy Serkis won rave reviews and helped make Rise rise to two straight box office wins.

Going back to the beginning also helped X-Men: First Class revive a dying series. The X-Men were on the ropes with the poor performances of The Last Stand and Wolverine, so a fifth try looked likely to be the final straw. Instead, First Class was the best reviewed installment since Bryan Singer’s first two movies, and gave the series new life by focusing on a younger Professor X and Magneto. It wasn’t as big a hit as Deathly Hallows or Fast Five- and it wasn’t even the biggest superhero hit of the summer- but it showed that the X-Men could still be powerful despite their recent disappointments.

When one thinks of aging movie franchises, it is easy to get frustrated with how they become repetitive and lazy, and how they betray the legacy of the earlier films. Yet reinvention, new blood and fresh ideas can help revive any series, as has been proven several times this summer.

Fast Five had Dwayne Johnson, all the stars from the earlier films and even bigger crashes. X-Men: First Class let Professor X and Magneto star for the first time, gave them new hot actors in Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, and added 60’s homages for good measure. Rise of the Planet of the Apes took motion capture technology to the next level and gave audiences a reason to see apes overthrow humanity again. Deathly Hallows Part 2 delivered the grand finale that every Harry Potter fan had dreamed of for a decade- and became the rare franchise to make its ending fully pay off.

It takes real creativity, focus and fresh approaches to bring an aging series back to life and better than ever. Most people can’t even do that for the first film in a saga, let alone a fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth. But the revival of Fast and the Furious, X-Men and Planet of the Apes, as well as the climax of Harry Potter, prove that age is just a state of mind in movie franchises- if the right tools are actually being used.


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