Today, I want to know what you think was the weirdest live action film franchise.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
Throughout film history, there have been many film franchises (meaning film series of at least three LIVE ACTION films that were released as wide releases), and some of them have been pretty unusual. It is typically that third or fourth film that makes things weird. Like a film might have enough story to support a sequel, but that third or fourth film is just one too many.
So I want to know what you think is the weirdest film franchise, defined, again, as three live action theatrical films where each film was given a wide release (basically, I’m trying to avoid A. straight to video releases, B. TV films and C. “Adult” movies, as a number of adult movies got film series back in the day, and obviously most of them are quite weird. So no “Adult” movie franchises, people!).
For me, I am going with the “Dear” film series, which launched with the hit 1947 film, Dear Ruth (about a woman whose teenage sister catfishes a soldier into falling in love with what he BELIEVES to be the woman herself. They eventually fall in love for real), was followed by 1949’s Dear Wife, about more antics involving the teenage sister (Mona Freeman) trying to get her now-brother-in-law to run for Senate, despite her father (Eddie Arnold) ALSO running for senate. William Holden played the soldier, and Joan Caulfield played Ruth.
Well, then then decided to keep going in 1951, only now Holden and Caulfield were out, so it was all about the teenage sister, Freeman, and her father, and it was called Dear Brat. Yikes.
Okay, that’s my pick! How about you?
And feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at brian@poprefs.com!
I know Dear Ruth. Had no idea about the sequels.
There’s a good case for Fast and Furious. Starts out as a simple story about fast cars, sexy women and a cop torn between Duty and The Bro Code (will he do his duty and turn over Found Brother Vin Diesel to the law?). Then by the fifth installment they’re car-driving superheroes dragging a crimelord’s money vault away from him through the streets (https://atomicjunkshop.com/fast-furious-successful-the-fast-and-furious-franchise/). Then they turn into super-spies working for Kurt Russell and in one film successfully attack a Russian nuclear submarine base. I like the series (well, most of it), but it’s fricking loonie
I think many horror film franchises reach this level once they go on too far. “FRIDAY THE 13TH” started as a series about a vengeful camp mom wanting to avenge her drowned kid and evolved into featuring a male, adult serial killer, then a copycat, then a ZOMBIE male adult serial killer who eventually goes to space and becomes a zombie-cyborg. And then has a stalemate battle with a dream demon (Freddy Krueger).
The “HALLOWEEN” franchise has been fairly dubbed “The Choose-Your-Own Adventure Of Horror” since it’s had a string of sequels which also brought it to weird places, one sequel (“HALLOWEEN 3”) which has nothing to do with the series, and various relaunches that still act as sequels to the original from the 1970s. And that doesn’t get into bits where Michael Myers starts as a normal serial killer who then becomes some immortal cult-empowered zombie and, like I said, all the relaunch-sequels that go on different paths.
While I loved them as a kid, an outsider might find the ERNEST movies weird. I don’t mean the direct to video ones, I mean the five which were theatrical from the 80s into the 90s. For someone who never saw the commercials or even the brief CBS TV show, they might not know why this loveable redneck went from a camp counselor to saving Christmas to getting super-powers and multiple personalities in various movies to killing trolls and finding the lost Crown Jewels of England (“ERNEST RIDES AGAIN”).
They may have been TV movies, but Disney’s Dexter Riley TV movies from the 60s and 70s were kind of weird.
Fast & Furious definitely got weird., but most of the time if you ask a fan of the series “Didn’t this series used to be about street racing?” they’ll tell you, “No. It’s about family.”
Some I can think of just got kind of hard to follow for the average layperson.
Like the Highlander movies, which kind of contradict one another, then fold in characters from the TV series, which also contradicts the movies and events of the show.
The Terminator movies ran more or less a consecutive story for 4 movies, then did a weird reboot, then another weird reboot. The first weird reboot could be chalked up to time-travel shenanigans, but the second one just directly contradicts the story of any and everything that came after the second movie.
Not to mention Sarah Connor Chronicles, which was terrific but definitely not in the main timeline. I tried figuring it all out: https://atomicjunkshop.com/terminator-trying-to-sort-out-the-timelines/
The way the Terminator franchise moved between “time is fixed” and “history can be changed” was always a little bonkers.