Franchises Revived

Two weeks ago, I watched Casino Royale and Batman Begins* within a few days of each other. After finishing the movies, lying in a semi-comatose daze, virtually engulfed by my gigantic luv-sac and covered in potato chip crumbs, I had an epiphany about these two seemingly unrelated movies: Does anybody realize what these two movies have done for their respective franchises? If you look at the rapid deterioration of the Bond and Batman franchises in the few movies preceding Royale and Begins (from here on out, R&B), you have to agree that they were beyond absurd -- An invisible car?! Really?? I think Ian Fleming rolled over in his grave -- and were ineptly written / produced / acted / directed / craft serviced / cast. Both franchises were decaying and dead in the water. We all knew it. We just had to treat the dead franchises like Bourne treated the death of his girlfriend in The Bourne Supremacy: Burn all evidence of their existence so you can detach yourself, then track down and kill everyone responsible for the demise. Minus the track down part. And the killing. The point is, we had to move on.

But R&B completely reversed all of our crushed hopes. They both revitalized their franchises. I almost want to term it a comeback, but it was more than that, because these movies were better than any of the franchise movies that had preceded them. They were darker, grittier, and returned to character development. No more failed attempts at humor. No more nipple-suits. No more of me experiencing self-imposed, Arthur Dimmesdale-caliber guilt for having wasted my time watching.

(If anybody reading this is nodding your head in agreement and said / murmured / thought / thought-about-thinking / etc. to yourself "Mm hm. Tokyo Drift. Tokyo Drift did that exact same thing for the Fast & the Furious franchise." We are done. No really, I mean it: Stop reading my blog right now.)

Back to my point: What R&B did is pretty much unprecedented in movie history. They both pulled a freakin Gandalf. You know, when he falls to his death in The Fellowship of the Ring, and all of the characters AND the audience are completely crushed / shocked because they truly believe that Gandalf is dead. Gone. That's it. It's an absolute and final fact that must be accepted before you can move on.

But then in The Two Towers, he reappears, and you just sit there in disbelief (or as my buddy Nartker puts it: "That fool came out of left field when no one expected it"); and not only has he come back, he's got amazing white, conditioned hair and all kinds of crazy new powers. That's the only way for me to describe what Casino Royale and Batman Begins pulled with their franchises. A complete and utter Gandalf: Presumed dead. Revived. Now better than ever.

(Actually, if the other readers will indulge me for a second, I'd like to address you Tokyo Drift fans... I mean, honestly. Did you ever consider Fast & the Furious to be a franchise? Are you waiting for the box set to come out on BluRay?)

Anyway. My point is that R&B are rare gems. Franchises usually start strong and dwindle, then never recover. The best examples I can think of are Episodes 1-3 of Star Wars. Also, the Spiderman and X-Men franchises had strong showings in their first two episodes, then threw up metaphorical goose eggs when it came to their third and final installments.

So I guess I'm encouraging you to watch and appreciate these two revivalist movies the next opportunity you get (Women: if for no other reason, to see Daniel Craig and Christian Bale shirtless).



End note -- Other candidates for (what ended up being) the Gandalf analogy included:
>> The scene in Field of Dreams when the daughter falls of the bleachers and chokes on her hot dog, and the player that eventually becomes a doctor makes the decision to step off the field and revive her;
>> LOST, Season 1, when Charlie has been hanging from a tree for like five minutes and Jack and Kate cut him down, and Jack gives him CPR for like three minutes straight and you're thinking "he's dead, he's dead," but then Jack brings him back to life with the pound-the-chest-with-your-fist thing (the exact same thing from Mission Impossible 3, courtesy of JJ Abrams)

*In preparation for the release of The Dark Knight. The anxiety-laden week leading up to watching this movie on opening day is a story for another entry.