10 Movie Franchises That Destroyed Themselves With ONE Decision

In recent years in particular, Hollywood has dined out excessively on audience nostalgia by reviving dormant existing franchises with the cynical "soft-reboot" treatment - a suspiciously familiar continuity sequel which ushers in a new cast to take up the mantle.

Star Wars proved with the sequel trilogy that it was simply incapable of letting go of its tethers to the past. Though The Force Awakens received understandable criticism for hewing too close to A New Hope, it was a somewhat understandable move given the hostile fan reception to George Lucas' prequels. It was safe, but effective.

Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi was a more daring and creative - if also flawed - sequel, and one which at least suggested the series would finally be moving into more unexpected and original spaces.

But the wildly divisive response to the film unfortunately caused Lucasfilm to pivot, undoing much of Johnson's work in The Rise of Skywalker and instead lazily leaning back on the series' greatest hits.

Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) returns with scarcely little explanation, Lando (Billy Dee Williams) is shoehorned into the plot, Rey (Daisy Ridley) is randomly revealed to be Palpatine's granddaughter, and even the new characters it introduces are largely just transparent facsimiles of existing archetypes.

The Rise of Skywalker isn't the worst Star Wars film, but it is the most creatively bankrupt, confirming that the series' overt reliance on nostalgia and the past had finally become its undoing.

For many fans, their interest in Star Wars movies has waned considerably as a result, that the series is hopelessly shackled to the Skywalkers rather than forging a unique path for a new generation.

Though there are flecks of promise with the success of The Mandalorian and Taika Waititi recently signing on to write and direct his own Star Wars film, it sure would be nice to actually miss Star Wars at the movies for a little while, rather than the specialness of the series being diluted with so much product - moreover, so much mediocre product.

Needless to say, Lucasfilm will struggle to rustle up much enthusiasm for yet another linear, numerical sequel trilogy any time soon.