10 Movie Endings That Basically Doomed Their Franchise
1. Introducing Time Travel - Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
The Ending
The fifth film in the Paranormal Activity franchise served as a spin-off to the main story, but dropped a game-changing final twist by introducing time travel into the franchise.
At the end of the movie, which takes place in 2012, poor Hector (Jorge Diaz) gets forced through a strange door, which transports him back to 2006, where he find himself caught in the middle of the first movie's ending, as a possessed Katie (Katie Featherston) kills her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) and Hector is presumably killed off-screen.
Why It Doomed The Franchise
The introduction of time travel has signalled the death knell for countless movies and TV series, and though this twist did at least find a vaguely creative way to tethered The Marked Ones to the main franchise, it ultimately completely derailed the series' already loose sense of internal logic and continuity.
Time travel is one of those things that can't be put back in the box once it's been conjured, and the final movie in the series (to date), The Ghost Dimension, ultimately failed to do much to capitalise on the big reveal.
Sure, the series started running on fumes in its third entry and never really recovered, and so the addition of time travel was just a desperation move to keep fans interested, along with the inclusion of a 3D gimmick in The Ghost Dimension.
To all filmmakers out there - don't use time travel unless you're really, really sure about it.