8 Film Franchises That Became Victims Of Their Own Popularity
1. Star Wars Turned What Was Once Simple Needlessly Complex
For all its immense popularity, the original Star Wars trilogy is remarkably simple. It's a very bare-bones tale of good versus evil. There's the Empire, who are the bad guys, and the Rebels, who are the good guys. It really doesn't get a whole lot more complicated than that. When the original trilogy first released, many labelled it as a space western because it dealt with the sorts of basic, territorial and black/white themes that many popular westerns did.
It was this simplicity which made the franchise so widely accessible, allowing people from all over the world to relate to the universal struggle against evil. Yet it seems that George Lucas misinterpreted the incredible success of the first three films as being the product of a world hungry for intricate sci-fi. It didn't help that one of the more complex moments in the trilogy became extremely talked about and iconic, the reveal that big bad Darth Vader was once Luke Skywalker's father. When it came to the prequels, then, Lucas strived to push everything further, compromising straightforwardness in the process. What this resulted in was a bunch of intricate yet dull and fairly redundant material, including midi-chlorians and far too much time spent on the Galactic Senate. And that's just the narrative the special effects were more complicated and the weighty action scenes became closer to insanely choreographed dance numbers. Of course, this complexity also spawned from the sheer popularity of Star Wars merchandise, of which Lucas stood to gain a massive amount of profit. The easiest way to sell more merch is to create new characters, and so the plot had to accommodate as many diverse characters as possible, even at the cost of focus. Which other franchises got lost in their own popularity. Share any more not included down in the comments.