Fight Club, Se7en, The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, No Country For Old Men. Each has made a lasting impact on the culture and the world of film despite being released 15 years ago at the most recent. Their sticking powers speak to the impact of memorable and decisive endings, an art I am afraid has been lost in popular culture storytelling.
The macro factors at work in the entertainment industry have created an environment which discourages stories from ever coming to a conclusion. Studios have begun to rely on cheap emotional connections offered by reboots and sequels to entice viewers. Their strategy has worked, as audiences continue to pay to see their favorite characters appear across multiple films and television shows. In turn, studios have an incentive to train audiences to expect and want this never-ending stream of content from their favorite series.
Of the top 10 movies at the domestic box office in 2022, every single one was a sequel or reboot. Every film ranked in the top 10 for lifetime grosses at the worldwide box office, except Avatar and Titanic, is a sequel, spinoff, remake, or reboot. Clearly, sequels pay.
As a result, in pursuit of ever-bigger franchises and box office returns, studios have decided that any successful original film that might possibly be continued, will continue indefinitely. A Quiet Place and Knives Out, recent critically and commercially successful films, are notable examples. Part of what made each special was the fact that it refreshed an established and at times stale genre while telling a complete and contained story that satisfactorily closed its characters’ arcs and resolved the conflicts and questions at its core. Neither ending left the audience begging for more, and offering more would risk compromising each film’s legacy. Yet shortly after the release of both films, sequels were announced.
(For the record, I loved both sequels. The Knives Out sequel Glass Onion is one of my favorite films of last year.)
To take matters farther, not content to simply follow up successful movies with sequels, studios are now intentionally producing films from the ground up with “franchise potential,” announcing sequels before the first is even released and developing movies specifically to ensure they leave the door open for spin-offs, etc. For an extreme example, see the Russo Brothers’ — directors of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame — production company, which they are marketing with a particular competitive advantage: “they know not only how to make a hit movie but how to do it within a larger creative landscape that could spawn an ecosystem of sequels and spinoffs.” (Emphasis mine.)
This strategy of intentionally crafting intellectual property is one major way Hollywood has gone wrong in recent years. Rather than simply trying to tell good stories that entertain people and connect with audiences, studios are dumping money into an effort to artificially build ongoing franchises. I find it interesting that so far there are no successful examples of movies produced with an intentional effort towards launching a major franchise from scratch. It’s difficult to make a good film when you view it solely as a product to be used to launch other products.
Popular films have always had sequels, but it wasn’t until the Marvel Cinematic Universe pioneered a new template for a shared universe that the current wave of franchise-mania took off. So far, none has been able to replicate the MCU’s success with its 39 films and shows. It was a daunting experiment that has paid off: over $26 billion in box office sales, in addition to Disney+ subscriptions driven by its content there.
With that experiment has come a genuinely fascinating and enjoyable new form of storytelling: an interconnected universe of movies, shows, and “special features,” told over the course of almost 15 years, with no end in sight. However, it has also led at least partially to the current state of affairs, where franchises and intellectual property are the “endgame,” and successful movies can’t just be movies. The approach is even starting to wear on the MCU itself. It is now difficult to leave the theater after an MCU films feeling truly satisfied, because the story is never complete.
We lose something when we don’t allow stories to have real conclusions. We lose the emotional impact of complete character arcs. We lose the intangible satisfaction of seeing a story from start to finish. We lose the resonance of a loud and powerful exclamation point at the end of a great journey.
We also lose the ability to tell new stories, when so much of our resources and attention are focused on continuing existing ones. I don’t believe that culture thrives when new ideas aren’t being developed. Filmmakers like Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) are incredibly gifted at making big movies that resonate with big audiences. I don’t want them tied up in developing films and shows set in just one world for the next ten or more years. I want to see what they can do when they’re allowed to use their gifts to create something entirely new. Maybe they’d even wind up creating the next great cultural phenomenon.
Eliminating a sense of conclusion hurts the art form of cinema and the culture at large. I agree with The Atlantic’s David Sims (and Knives Out/Glass Onion director Rian Johnson) that “people crave endings.” Life is full of endless uncertainty. We should, at the very least, allow the art we create and enjoy to let us experience a sense of finality within itself.
More than anything, I just love a good ending. I want to see more of them, and I hope we can move beyond this current moment where no good story is allowed to sit on the shelf completed.
Other Stuff
”After hanging up his wrestling tights, Dave Bautista could’ve made an easy living cranking out one brainless, explosion-happy blockbuster after another. Instead, he’s improbably emerged as a serious thespian trapped in an action hero’s body, and the who’s-who of Hollywood auteurs—from Glass Onion's Rian Johnson to Dune's Denis Villeneuve—keep lining up to work with him”
Changes are coming as studios cut spending on their streaming services
Shows suffer from this as well. Eventually they become uncompelling and stale. It was refreshing to watch Defending Jacob. That show actually ends on an ambiguity, but it ends nonetheless.
Thanks for this! Matt Damon said the lack of DVD sales to fall back (for secure revenue stream after initial release) drove some of the push to create movies that would succeed. The one-off, “big gamble”, emotional movies of the 90s and 00s were dwindling. Franchises are a great way to keep the money going because they are heavy hitters on release. You make back the investment.
It is sad thought that we don’t get the closure of a complete story. There are so many great singular movies that hit hard and endure that we don’t get to have now.
What do you think would have to change for less franchises to be made?