8 Best Number 8 Films In A Franchise

If you'd have told any teenage film fan back in 2001 that The Fast And The Furious would be the first part of the one of the most successful film franchises in history, they'd have spat their alcopops in your face.

But here we are, with the F&F family (drinking game idea: do a shot whenever someone says "family" in the franchise, and see if you need your stomach pumped at the end) inexplicably now on their eighth entry with the ridiculously titled The Fate Of The Furious.

Credit where credit's due though, because to make it to number eight in a film series, and still have an audience coming back for more, is a pretty impressive feat. Even the Police Academy franchise never unlocked this particular achievement, and everyone knows that the Police Academy series is just plain awesome.

And whilst we eagerly wait for Steve Guttenberg to reboot the Citizens on Patrol scheme, it's well worth looking back at which film franchises have managed to reach the eighth part of their respective stories without losing the plot, or their audience, in the process.

Poor George Lazenby. The Australian actor got one of the most difficult jobs in film history: he had to follow Sean Connery as James Bond - essentially, the cinematic equivalent of having to perform after Jimi Hendrix.

The thing that really must stick in Lazenby's craw though, is that he was handed the most interesting James Bond story so far. On Her Majesty's Secret Service did provide all the usual Bond shenanigans we'd come to expect, especially with the opening ski chase which would become one of the most iconic set-pieces in the series.

But it also offered something new in the form of an actual love interest for James, which added a whole new dimension to 007.

In the Connery era, Bond would play fast and loose with sexual politics, and the spy was nothing more than a bed-hopping Lothario with the ladies. But with Diana Rigg's Teresa di Vicenzo in OHMSS, Bond would stay faithful to one woman; a woman whom he falls in love with and in the end, even marries. The film then delivers a heart-wrenching final reel gut-punch, with the brutal murder of the bride by SPECTRE, just as the Bond's are happily heading off towards their honeymoon.

All of this makes OHMSS a surprisingly darker entry in the usually silly Bond series, and one that ultimately paved the way for the modern, more gritty, 007 films that we see today.