“Shut up and take my money” couldn't apply any to any situation better than the casual person supporting
entertainment industry with sequels with the exact intent to take your cash and
leave you with an inferior product and buyers remorse. Still with that many people find themselves saying, “damn, last Madden
and Call of Duty were trash but I’m still pre-ordering both of their collector’s
edition for next year’s release.” But why are we caught up in this cycle? We
aren’t promoting innovation within in the field in actuality we’re begging they
give us back options and feature that were praised in years’ prior but got
taken away with no improvement yet we’re still charged the same price. When
will we say enough is enough to entertainment industry and stop supporting the
obvious cash grabs attempts aimed at us?
In all honesty there’s too many examples
to pull from so I’ll use a few pieces as evidence of cash grabs. Exhibit A should be none other than Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise.
For argument’s sake moving forward we’re just going to say the original 2007
film was received by critics as a decent but flawed film. The original with a
budget of $150 went onto gross over 4.5 times of that from box office alone,
you can then add in the merchandise that followed, dvd sales, video game sales,
tie-in product placement revenue ect, a sequel was without a doubt going to be
made. Revenge of the Fallen came out in 2009 and met with generally awful
reviews from critics but out of the popularity of the first film this sequel
earned around 836 million in the box office, allowing Michael Bay to come back
for another summer to “conclude” the trilogy as he planned.
Star actress Meagan Fox would not go onto reprise her role in the final film as planned due to conflict with director Bay
saying he was a nightmare to work with and comparing him to the likes of Hitler
& Napoleon Bonaparte but her co-star from the other films Shia LaBeouf as
on board and that was enough for Paramount Pictures to move on with production.
Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon was TRASHED through reviews from uninspired
performances, just an action packed film shell of the original movie yet still
this was not enough for the film to gross in the box-office –get ready- $1.124 billion. Quality is dropping but
you know Paramount will not want to stop because of that, who cares about the
end of the original trilogy when billions are on the line! Let’s try to bring
the band back together and cash out on a few more and if not we’re in the era
of reboots. Michael Bay sold his soul long ago so he was onboard, but main
protagonist of the original trilogy, Shia LaBeouf decided not to renew his
contract for more potential sequels explaining the experience of work
"Transformers" felt like having a "a finger up your ass"
and didn’t encourage creative freedom as he and others were being constantly
micro-managed. Shia was ultimately replaced by New Kid’s on the Block alum ‘Marky’
Mark Wahlberg. The new series is grossing billions now and the next film is
planned for 2017 and without a doubt will maintain the mark of $1 billion as
well regardless of the quality.
Moving onto Exhibit B we’ll shift platforms a bit and move to a popular video game
title, Halo. Halo could be argued as
the biggest published release from Microsoft and the most important for the new Xbox console
on the market at the time. Similar to the Transformers franchise there was initially
planned to be a trilogy story of games but with this series there was acclaim
for all of the original games. Strictly looking at the three original games
they were setting records never seen before such as Halo 2 was able to sell 2.38
million copies in first day sales and the conclusion to the trilogy grossing $170
million in first day sales. The idea Microsoft would just let the brand end
with Halo 3 just wouldn’t be good business sense so they tried altering the
style of the game and producing the strategy game Halo Wars which was a success
selling well over a million copies. Microsoft has sense purred off a new saga
of the game more in the likeness of the original trilogy allowing their most
popular title to now be used as a bargaining chip for the consumer to go out
and purchase their newest console the Xbox One. It doesn’t just stop right
there Microsoft has secured a deal to let Showtime produce an original series
with Steven Spielberg. How that product develops is still up in the air as
little details have emerged and the project could still fade out much like
feature film idea for the series in the mid-2000’s when the product was at the
peak of its hype.
The final Exhibit let’s look at the industry
that prides itself on producing sequels to well-known events and pieces of work
knowing fans and collectors will flock to the product only to be let down that
the sequel is (in most cases) nowhere near the quality of the original piece of
work, the comic book industry. The specific series I want to analyze as Exhibit C is Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight trilogy. I honestly believe if I did
not touch on DC Comics and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight graphic novels, it
would be an injustice to this editorial piece. The Dark Knight Returns, the
first of the series was a revolutionary piece for the Batman character and all of
DC comics. Frank Miller brought a dark bruiting tone and an abstract bulky art
style to the character that was greatly appreciated and has since influenced
many other comic related works. The problem comes 15 years after the original,
the forced sequel to the originally planned-to-be contained story "The
Dark Knight Strikes Again." The art unlike the first book is borderline
atrocious and the plot appeared to be thrown together at the notice of a check
being written to Frank. Just as the other exhibits it never just stops at two
we must have a third, The Dark Knight III: The Master Race. DK3 is currently
being released by DC Comics since November and is serving as hype material that
has inspired the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice film Spring 2016.
Ending note I want to leave this piece
on is its unfortunate how projects can be released solely to pull a dollar from
you even though that isn’t the attempt of every sequel project released onto the
public it’s important for us to instead of telling these companies to rob you to the point you're blindly throwing them your money with low expectations of lackluster products as the norm.
Written by: Stephen Fowler
Twitter: @intjWallyWest
Don't support these fuckers. Simple as that, keep your money.
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