Is Hollywood Incapable Of Capitalizing on Beloved Franchises?

This week, we were treated to the teaser poster and plot synopsis for the legacy sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer, and it may as well have been copy and pasted from the first film. A generic hook, the same title of the film released nearly 30 years ago, and the damn near exact same plot synopsis: “When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they’re forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer… and is hell-bent on revenge. As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help.“

Don’t get me wrong, you could essentially say that Scream 5 had this exact issue (with it just being called SCREAM upon release and following a similar plot), but I’d argue there’s quite a difference. The Scream franchise has the Stab franchise within it, which allows them to comment on their own series in a meta way. Parallels can be called out by characters because all they need to have done is watch the Stab films, to know what happened prior. In this Last Summer sequel, a group of friends find themselves in the EXACT situation that occurred to Julie James and her friends 30 years prior. A situation that very few people are supposed to have known about. Yet not only has it gotten out there enough for it to be recreated, but for this new group to make a connection to it happening in the past as well. Last Summer isn’t and has never been Meta, so any connection would just be convoluted.

Why is redoing the first film’s story the ONLY solution when it comes to picking up this story 30 years later? But hell, at least we’re getting a new I Know What You Did Last Summer…

Look at our other horror franchises. Nightmare on Elm Street has been on the backburner for 15 years despite Freddy Krueger still being enough of a pop culture figure to appear in video games and TV shows. Yet you’re telling me we couldn’t get a sequel? I understand that the Craven Estate is being stingy with the rights but let’s get a move on! Hell, Michael Myers had a recent trilogy which essentially erased the other films in the franchise. What the hell are we even doing here? And there’s baffling decision to prequel-ize Friday the 13th. Because that’s what I want from my Jason Voorhees series: a film about his life prior to becoming a hockey mask wearing, machete-wielding psychopath.

Most of the appeal of the Friday the 13th franchise comes from Jason Voorhees stalking and killing various teens and young adults. There’s plenty of sex and violence, and they tend to go for entertainment value over logic. There are 12 Friday the 13th films and nearly every single one of them follows this formula. So it’s pretty surprising that the franchise died after the very successful 2009 reboot. It’s made all the more baffling when you consider the fact that Friday the 13th fans have been CLAMORING for more. The lawsuit complicated things for years, which is likely why we end up in the situation we’re in. But that doesn’t excuse the strange decisions with trying to bring the franchise back, post-lawsuit.

Linda Cardellini is an absolutely fantastic actress but I can’t imagine a world where I give a shit about Pamela Voorhees and her problems. She’s a villain. We had an entire film that showed her taking unjust revenge on counselors that had absolutely nothing to do with her son’s death. I don’t, and have never cared about Pamela’s plight. We got more than enough of her in the first film, and adding any more to her backstory just has the potential to taint that first film. How many times does it need to be said that we don’t need more villain background before someone actually starts listening?

It’s infuriating that we can’t get a proper Jason-led Friday film, yet we are getting a prequel about his mother that no one asked for. This feels like yet another studio trying to check the boxes on how to take advantage of a fan group. Because it may have the Crystal Lake name attached to it, but it’s so far from everything we know that makes Friday the 13th what it is, it may as well be something else entirely. In this day and age of marketing, attaching your own original ideas to an established properties seem to be the norm.

Hell, even the Saw franchise is dealing with creative struggles despite coming off of one of the most successful entries in the franchise. How on earth do you right your franchise after so many missteps and then proceed to shit the bed with it? Just give us Saw XI with Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, and Costas Mandylor. It’s really not that difficult. Yet instead, if rumors are to be believed, one of the producers wants a reboot. Again, what the hell are we doing here?! Does Hollywood just hate money? I’m beginning to think so…

What do you think? Am I just being too cynical? Has it just been bad luck that we’ve had so many of our horror icons put on ice?

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