So when I say “all blockbuster franchise movies are boring” know that I am talking about the collective, not the singular. All blockbuster franchise movies are boring, you know that I am right about this. But this is not to say that all of them are bad. Captain America: Civil War is a good movie: well-written, well-executed, exciting; good stuff. And, you know, boring.
Why is it boring? Because no matter what happens, no conflict raises to a degree of life or death. All blockbuster franchise movies have become boring because no one in a blockbuster movie can die. The business model simply does not allow it. This might not seem like much of a revelation, but the affect of this near universally accepted premise needs to be recognized. The lack of death as a threat for heroes has created a landscape of popular cinema without consequence. That the audience accepts this reality before entering the theater limits the range of experiences for the characters in the story, and for the audience. It has dulled the experience of watching movies because we know what it means to make franchise films: the franchise stars cannot die.
Pick any active franchise to see this problem in action.
Last month it was Star Trek Beyond. The 13th, and latest entry in the Star Trek series, has audiences watch as the crew abandons the Enterprise in escape hatches, watch the Enterprise destroyed, watch Captain Kirk face-off with a villain planning to kill millions of Federation citizens. All of which leads to exactly zero moments of suspense because the principle cast of Star Trek are all required to make Star Trek 14 (the tragic death of Anton Yelchin might force the creators hands on this).
The same goes for all superheroes. Marvel’s litany of Avengers have faced personal betrayals and planetary cosmic threats. The cost of these numerous dangers has been the death of countless nameless civilians, and one named hero, Quicksilver, who was a villain working for Ultron only one hour prior to his overwrought death. Every other hero, somehow, miraculously, lives to fight another day.
Even movies that do have the ‘courage’ to actually kill off their heroes cannot overcome the franchise motivations. Batman v Superman {SPOILER ALERT} had the temerity to kill Superman. That is a bold decision, one that DC/WB surely did not make lightly. But BVS couldn’t even make it to the credits without cuing audiences that Supes death will not last.
Which audiences fully understood, even without the hint. The idea that DC could allow the death of it’s most famous hero is unrealistic, and who could blame them for bringing him back? He’s Superman. We all know how death works in comic-books. Death is always temporary.
Fox tried to get away with a bunch of dead mutants in X Men: Last Stand. A decision that was poorly considered and even more poorly executed. The only death that lasted past the credits was that of Cyclops, who is killed off-screen in the film’s opening scenes. But that franchise is in full reboot so, none of that matters anyway.
One way around the lack of consequences for the good guys is the hero-death fake-out. Audiences are led to believe a character is dead, thus providing a modicum of potential emotional release while also providing writers a MOMENT: bring back a beloved hero and retain character continuity all in one dramatically scored scene.
We were told Nick Fury was dead for a little while, even though no one could possibly have believed that Sam Jackson had made his last appearance. More believable was the death of Agent Coulson in The Avengers. Little cause did audiences have to believe that the just-happy-to-be-there human Coulson’s death was impermanent. But the opportunity to resurrect him for a TV spinoff was just too appealing, and must have made great financial sense (it certainly didn’t serve the story of Agents of SHIELD).
If you wanted to refine this problem to single entity, one need only look at the recent career of Jeremy Renner, the man who just can’t own a franchise.
Poor Jeremy Renner has perhaps suffered more from the boring no-death rules of Hollywood than any other actor. He had two potential franchise roles taken from his grasp. And he has a third one, as Hawkeye in the Marvel films, that he just can’t get killed.
Jason Bourne is back, returning to the series that left him behind. It was teased, for a moment or two at the end of Bourne Supremacy that perhaps Jason Bourne died. He didn’t, of course, he just disappeared. And when he did, Matt Damon scooted off the franchise, leaving Bourne in the hands of Jeremy Renner. But Renner’s version of Bourne (as Aaron Cross, problem #1) failed to pull in the dollars. So Universal went back to what worked, enticing Damon once more for a completely unnecessary continuation of what previously was a great, and complete, franchise.
The same problem popped up in the Mission Impossible series, as Ethan Hunt planned to move on (via death or retirement, in Hollywood is there a difference?). Once again, Renner was the plan to replace Tom Cruise, brought in for the transition in Ghost Protocol. But that plan was scrapped, and Renner was left to suffer the fate of franchise second-man, this time to Tom Cruise. Because Ethan Hunt can’t die. Ethan Hunt can’t even age, apparently.
But the ultimate Renner-fication of this problem came his week, when it was reported that the actor asked Marvel to off Hawkeye in The Avengers. Whatever Renner’s reasons (it’s not hard to imagine wanting to free from a decade-long team-up hero part that isn’t going to get more than the 7th fiddle treatment), the opportunity to actually kill a hero must have appealed to someone on the Marvel creative team. So rare is an actual death in franchise cinema, and here we had an actor willing to let his role go. But that’s a marketing decision now, Jeremy.
Renner is coming back for Avengers: Infiinity War. And surely for the next four films that require Hawkeye.
All of this is just boring. It makes watching movies boring, and if you love movies like I do, then you probably feel like this lack of existential character level threat is destroying summer movie season.
This hasn’t always been the case. People used to die in the movies. Even in big, blockbuster movies. The good guys died in the service of something good. That meant something; audiences felt some catharsis at the violence, at the sacrifices made or the senseless loss of life. Audiences were asked to dive into the full emotional range. As great as Civil War was, the emotional experience of that film was largely: “this is so cool.” I’m over cool. I want to feel something.
Before this problem took over Hollywood, we saw, not infrequently, blockbuster heroes die. In Terminator 2 and Alien 3, the heroes actually died, for good. That they were ret-conned back to life in attempts to exploit a franchise is obvious, and not the fault of T2 or Alien 3. These deaths mattered in the movies.
Franchise stories that weaved mythology and action, like the Matrix, built their heroes fate around the actual possibility of death. The Matrix, perhaps more than any other series this century, grappled with death for its heroes, killing both of its central heroes but saving the nameless millions. Such a decision would be downright radical in 2016. You also had broad tear-jerking blockbusters like Armageddon, which sacrificed its biggest star for the salvation of the earth. Ben Affleck bawling through the glass to Bruce Willis’ immanent death gave audiences the high stakes and the big feels.
By eradicating death from popular movies, Hollywood franchise planning has sucked out the life of the blockbuster entertainment. The life-sucking monster that is responsible is the comic book superhero adaptation (the Alien/Terminator style ret-con is a different problem). Superhero franchises are the driving force of the entire film industry. The result has meant that comic book concepts of death-as either impermanent or a fake-out to be solved later-have consumed blockbuster cinema narratives of almost all other kinds. If this lack of risk was confined to the superhero movie world, I don’t think it would matter. But the commingling of comic book reality with traditional cinematic narratives has now spread into almost every corner of blockbuster entertainment.
The consequences of this problem are significant, largely because these boring movies are rewarded for their boredom with incredible box office returns. No one film or franchise can be held responsible for not killing its heroes. And the solution is not to start killing heroes left and right. But even as the stakes in our blockbuster films have continued to increase, as heroes face ever grander scenarios of national or global destruction, the stakes for the audience have become almost non-existent. The financial realities of Hollywood franchises have made it so.
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