Over 25% Of People Agree That This Movie Franchise Needs To Die
If there's one thing in life that Hollywood loves, it's milking a franchise until its skin gets all chapped and flaky. Sometimes it works — we're just shy of two dozen Avengers-centric movies deep right now, with Kevin Feige recently announcing that there are 4.6 billion more MCU films scheduled for release through 2023. Other times, fatigue sets in, and audiences find themselves watching another Star Wars film with a sense of dutiful disinterest usually reserved for attending a significant other's work holiday party.
It all raises an important question: when do you take a film series off of life support? Should franchises be allowed to bow out while they're still on top, their stories brought to a satisfactory conclusion? Or is it better to keep ladling out sequels until audiences abandon their hopes of keeping up and watch Airwolf reruns instead?
To get a gauge on this question, Looper put out a poll asking "Which movie franchise would you like to see die the most?" 658 people from around the United States responded, presumably chanting "blood" and shaking their fists in the air, and while no landslide winner emerged, roughly a quarter of those polled brought one series of films to a definitive first place, inadvertently answering the question "can a franchise be too fast? Too furious?"
Audiences want Fast and Furious to end its life a quarter mile at a time
With 25.9% of the vote, the Fast and Furious franchise fricasseed its fellow films in the fight for "foulest franchise"; for real, fam.
It's strange to think about, but the Fast and Furious movies have been going for 20 years, their varied stories running the gamut from "guys in tank tops drive fancy cars hastily" to "guys in fancy tops drive tanks hastily." Nine feature films, a handful of theme park attractions, and an animated children's show later, it appears that at least some of the entertainment titan's potential viewers have Tokyo drifted off to other avenues of entertainment.
In the race for "most killable franchise," second place was awarded to The Terminator series, with 17% of the vote, though it seems worth noting that any attempts to actually kill the Terminator movies would just cause a time traveler to appear and protect them, and the whole thing would start all over again. Bringing in 15% of the vote, good for third place, was Pirates of the Caribbean, a franchise with Rotten Tomatoes scores that form a downward parabolic arc as they continue to be released. Star Wars and Mission: Impossible were essentially tied for fourth, with around 14% each.
Meanwhile, some gentle users wrote in their responses, stating that they wouldn't kill any franchise.
"There's people that enjoy all of them so I wouldn't want to see any of them go away," one person responded.
It remains to be seen whether this respondent feel the same way when Fast and Furious goes to outer space in the next movie.