Industry Spotlight - The mighty franchise, part the first

How many of the films due to be released this year are not original? How many are remakes? Sequels? Prequels even? Quite a few, isn’t it? And when you include any of the original titles linked to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as well, the list only gets longer.

And as long as audiences continue to get hyped about seeing their favourite heroes return to the big screen arena, the studios are going to keep churning out their franchise films, because they’re the titles that pull in the big bucks. And who’s responsible for creating these new stories to challenge our favourite characters? That would be our beloved screenwriters.

Naturally though, this is a high pressure position to be in. How do you follow a film as wildly popular as Kingsman: The Secret Service, for example, without inviting the usual reviews that say it ‘wasn’t as good as the first one’?  The answer: with some difficulty. 

Brie Larson captured in Captain Marvel's controversial green costume

A new franchise film is up for scrutiny as soon as it’s announced. From news of who will produce/write/direct it, to who will star in it, to whatever gossip the internet can find on it. Even when a film is being kept under close guard, the internet will find a way to examine it. On-set pictures from the latest offering from the MCU, Captain Marvel, sparked debate recently over the colour of Brie Larson’s costume and why it wasn't the colour some fans expected. This is the level of pressure the writer has to deal with when tackling a franchise film, this scrutiny from the get go. 

And sticking with the superhero theme, I want to turn to the flip side of the MCU successes and look at DC. Poor old DC created their own Extended Universe (DCEU) in 2013, a full 5 years after Marvel. And it’s remained on the back foot ever since. After the beating that Batman v Superman and then Suicide Squad took at the box office, Justice League had a lot to do to amend DC’s reputation. And it was too big an ask. The switch from Snyder to Whedon proved fatal among critics, who pointed out a clashing of two directorial styles that are "as different as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 300." As the third of five DCEU films to receive a critical slating, you wouldn't be wrong to wonder who's really to blame for it, especially considering the Snyder-Whedon change-up on Justice League. No one seems ready to admit how much control Joss Whedon really had over the process, so all we can say for certain is that there's work to be done for the folks at DC to boost their reputation.

MCU vs DCEU superheroes

That said, DCEU’s Wonder Woman was received very well when it was released last year, and this is the only stage in the game so far where DC appear to be ahead of Marvel: producing a solo superhero film about a female hero. This despite the fact that fans have been crying out for a Black Widow film from Marvel since The Avengers came out in 2012. So needless to say, there's quite a lot riding on Captain Marvel, and writer Nicole Perlman is well aware of the pressure on her shoulders. Not only does the film have to slot into the narrative of the larger MCU, but it has to be received well if Marvel are to stay ahead in the game, because having a female lead is a big deal, regardless of whether you think it should be a big deal or not: she has to be a hero, and a woman, and not one at the expense of the other.

"She's a very strong character and her being a woman is part of that strength ... There are things you wouldn't think twice about Iron Man but you would think twice about for Captain Marvel."

Constructing the story for a new franchise instalment is a challenge for any writer - including enough familiar elements to keep the returning audience happy, and enough new elements to keep things fresh, and not repetitive. It’s a balancing act. It’s the difficult second album. And it will always leave the writer subject to scrutiny and criticism. I mean, how often is the sequel generally thought of as on a level with the original film? And with the MCU and DCEU kickstarting a decade-long superhero influx in cinemas, the screenwriters are being forced to find more and more new ways of telling these stories, so that audiences don’t get so bored that they stop buying tickets. Or perhaps that reality is further away than we think, who knows? But until that happens, it looks like writers will still have a steady job reworking the superhero story as many times as the mighty studios command.