5 Awful Film Franchises That Are Inexplicably Successful

I will begin this article with the classic disclaimer that I understand all art is subjective. Just because one person may like something and one person may not does not make it have any less artistic merit. You can like what you like. Also, if I manage to insult you, or a franchise you like this, with article, too bad. See, that is how film critique works. We get paid to talk about what we think about movies. This also means that we do not always have to say nice things. While I normally really like to say nice things when I talk about movies, I thought it might be fun to take a moment and dissect some movies and franchises that I just don't understand the success of. You see, as much as art is subjective, there IS such a thing as bad art. There really is. Even if Glenda from the midwest likes the painting of the horse that looks like it has three legs instead of four, that does not mean it is a good painting. That just means Glenda likes a piece of bad art. Do you see what I am getting at here? Some movies are just that. Bad art hanging among masterpieces. So, on that note, here are 5 film franchises that I just can't understand the successes of. Maybe you can help me a bit with that by yelling at me in the comments section about how Michael Bay is a golden God who spits out almond milk he then uses to sustain third world countries. Yes, that will help. You should totally do that at the end of this article. For now, though, get to reading.... 1) The Fast and the Furious Okay, so this is one of the first franchises that I want to put under the microscope here. The Fast and The Furious has spawned (and continues to spawn) more and more movies. They somehow even manage to add bigger stars the later they get into the series. The thing is, though, the franchise just isn't very good. I am sorry. It really isn't. It is filled with C-grade actors (the late Paul Walker being the best of the lot) delivering C-grade monologues and a lot of proverbial car masturbation. But wait, that is the very draw of this series, isn't it? There are not a lot of car-centric movies made anymore. In the seventies, you could not go one movie without a car chase, and now we never see them anymore. So maybe the success of this franchise make a little bit of sense to me. Car hounds who want to watch car porn. Okay. But they know the movies are still not very good, right? I mean, a couple of really cool car segment aside, they know that these films are silly and one-dimensional, don't they? The Fast and The Furious films are basically what watching a real life cartoon is like. Speaking of a real life cartoons.... Transformers Michael Bay likes to search your room for things you adored from your childhood and then slowly rape them to death in front of you. That may seem intense, but can you sum up what he does better than that? Get ready, as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are about the get the Bay treatment as well, but before I hurl massive stone insults at that film's inevitable suckiness, I have to take apart the first cartoon he raped. The Transformers. First of all, yes. I went and saw the first Transformers movie on opening night. Why? I grew up with the series and loved the original animated movie, so I had some hope. Unfortunately, I walked out confused as fuck. First off, all the robots looked too similar, so I couldn't tell who was who and who was winning or who was getting killed at any point. Just shiny metal and sparks is all I recall. Props for keeping Optimus as original voice actor, but that was the ONLY win from that series. Honestly. Then, you add in sickeningly archaic racial stereotypes, Shia LeBeouf, and a plot so convoluted it makes kids get bloody noses, and you have an orgiastic mess of a movie that should never have spawned so many sequels. That comes back on you, people. Twilight I know, many of you were living your lives just like me, hoping to never have to even think about this abortion of a film series again. Well, I cannot write a rant about shitty movie franchises and not include this sparkly, stinking turd of a film, bobbing in the toilet of modern cinema. From the syphoning of everything cool out of the vampire mythos to the wooden acting and awful writing and dialogue, this is a movie series that I hate so much that I actually once made a bunch of special need kids turn it off. True story. I know the whole point of these films was to fill seats with teenage girls and make sure those seats were oddly moist when they left the theater. So it not working for me makes sense, actually. But what about the grown ass woman who were into this series, which is CLEARLY actually about a broken teen girl who gets fucked and fucked over by a hundred year old pedophile? What kind of adult can enjoy that shit? Poor, lonely housewives and single moms, maybe? Damn, that line is definitely gonna land me in some shit. Grown-Ups On paper, Grown Ups may have sounded like a good idea. I can understand that. "Hey, let's get a bunch of comedians who were huge in the nineties and make a movie about them now, as adults (who still perpetually act like children)," sounds like a solid premise, right? You hear the first half of the cast and you actually think there might be potential. Chris Rock and Adam Sandler. Okay, maybe. Then you hear the second half of the cast and it hits you. David Spade, Rob Schneider, and Kevin James. What? Then, you toss them into the most generic, awful, boring, trite, contrived comedy ever. I mean, so awful it is painful to try to sit through. So what happens? Apparently enough of YOU like it that we get a sequel. Awesome. Thanks for that. The best part is, Grown Ups 2 ends up making the abysmal original look better. Resident Evil I love horror movies. I love video games. I love zombies. I love Milla Jovovich. So if you add all that up, you have someone who should be a fan of this film franchise, right? WRONG. The Resident Evil movies have gotten so bad that I look at them on par with movies that the SyFy network produces. Hell, at least those know how to not take themselves seriously and have some fun. These films though are pure shit. All they had to do was copy the first game (cheese and all) and make a fun little B-movie about a house filled with zombies. Instead, they decided to get all futuristic and focus on the boring and most contrived stories from the game, turning the movies into an incoherent mess. Like, really. Those films are incoherent messes. The moment I saw Milla run and jump off a wall to kick a zombie dog in the face (and taking itself seriously in the process), I knew this franchise was going to be shit. And wouldn't you know it, they just get shittier and shittier. Stupider and stupider. Oh, and someone just please TRY and explain that plot to me now. I bet no one could. Clones and zombies and hooded axe men (who are NEVER explained). Nope, doesn't make much sense at all. The saddest part about this one is, just like the Transformers, Resident Evil had some great source material to mine. Yet still, even with all the great games that were around, they have managed to make a miscarriage of a shepherd's pie. It is meat, potatoes, and corn, people. You don't need to add onions and broccoli and cheese and bread crumbs. When will filmmakers realize that doing all that shit just ruins the pie? All they had to do was make Resident Evil 4 into a movie, story for story, and they would have won. I'm so sad it did not turn out that way. In closing, don't try to act all cool now and act like everyone hates these movies. You don't. You really don't. If you did, they would have never made it past a first film (see Eragon for a prime example of how that business model works). Some of you saw saw each entry in the above mentioned franchises, and some of you loved them, or they would all be dead, like they deserve to be. So seriously, stop liking shitty movies, okay?