10 Movie Franchises That Became Parodies Of Themselves

5. Thor And Iron Man

Woah, woah, woah, Marvel are not slipping into parody. Their Cinematic Universe has never been better, with Captain America: The Winter Soldier showing an ability to handle a proper story and Guardians Of The Galaxy bringing a previously unknown property to the big leagues with a real deftness of touch. Ever since Disney has taken over Marvel and The Avengers became the third highest grossing movie of all time things have only improved, with increasing audience appeal. One of The Avengers' biggest selling points was its witty banter, which has since been extrapolated to be a trait of the whole series. The thing is, some of their sub-franchises (a phrase we never thought we'd write) have suffered in this. Namely both of 2013's big releases, Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World. Shane Black's take on old Shellhead basically functioned as a comedy, and while it worked, its send up of genre conventions made the best in the Iron Man trilogy (there, we said it) really a parody of it. Less successful was Thor 2. Not only following the same structure of The Avengers with its Infinity Stone MacGuffin and CGI portal-heavy finale, the film took liberally from the team-up's humour. The first film had moments of brevity, but it was mostly fun, not funny. In the sequel you could have replaced Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston with other actors and you'd have swore you were watching a piss-take. All the more disappointing when Marvel had brought Game Of Thrones' Alan Taylor on board to grit the whole thing up.