10 Movie Franchises That Just Kept Getting Worse
4. Batman
Obviously this entry is not referring to every live-action Batman movie ever made (lest I live in fear of being attacked by furious Christopher Nolan fans), but the original cinematic franchise that ran from 1989 to 1997 and saw many changes both in front of and behind the camera, but always featured the connective tissue of grizzled Pat Hingle and grandfatherly Michael Gough.
Tim Burton's darkly Gothic entries are obviously the superior instalments, updating Batman for modern audiences in two great comic book movies that admittedly focused too heavily on the villains to the detriment of the title character. However, it wasn't until Joel Schumacher boarded the ship that it really began taking on water.
Over-the-top acting, a desire to sell toys above anything else, terrible puns, no clue of how to depict the characters and the f**king Bat-Nips are just a few of the reasons why the franchise became unsalvageable by the late 1990s before Batman Begins reinvented both the Dark Knight and the comic book genre as a whole almost a decade later.