1. Just Once In A While The Magic Can Happen...
Evidence:
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home So what are the common themes among fourth films in a franchise? They feel tired. They don't deliver anything new. They can't recreate the magic of the original despite all their efforts (
Pirates Of The Carribean: On Stranger Tides) and they come up with new and inventive ideas that frankly don't work. Which as I said at the beginning of this article, is a terrible shame. Because if you build on what came before, each film should be better and better. But let's end on a positive note. Hollywood has to learn from its mistakes. I feel we're finally starting to crack the curse of the disappointing third film with
The Dark Knight Rises and
Iron Man 3. Now they need to switch to delivering great fourth films. And believe it or not, it has happened. My supporting evidence?
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. So why did this work so well? Simply put it nailed every aspect of what a fourth film in a franchise should do: 1) It built on what came before. The death and Resurrection of Spock. The conflict with the Klingons over Genesis. The stealing of the Enterprise and its tragic destruction. The fourth Star Trek film tackled this ongoing plot threads from the previous two sequels and resolved them. 2) It delivered a bigger threat. While bigger is not always better, we needed Kirk and the rag tag band of Starfleet crew members to go up against a threat bigger than Khan and the Klingons. After all the emotional turmoil of the last two films, how do you manage that? A probe that will threaten to wipe out all life on Earth itself. It didn't need to be an evil, moustache-twirling super villain. We had already had that in Khan and Kruge. But the alien probe was devestating enough that it seemed like all hope was lost for Earth. 3) Most importantly, it delivered something unexpected. It sent Kirk and his crew back to Earth in the 1980s. The result was a film that was hilarious as it was heart-warming but still offered plenty of tension. Every character gets a moment to shine. It delivers a powerful message about the environment. And it brings the sense of fun back into the franchise. This was a film with heart and became the most successful Star Trek film to date. Without it, we might not have had
Star Trek: The Next Generation and all its television (and film) spin offs. So you see, fourth films in a franchise can be successful.
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire introduced us to the reborn Voldermort and set the scene for every film to follow. And if you think about,
Thor was the fourth film in the Avengers franchise, which managed to successfully introduce the magic and galactic scope of the universe that was needed to move the series forward. So will there be more great fourth films? Just as long as film makers look at the long list of unfortunate fourth films that came before them and look at the few, like Star Trek 4, that shone, striving to get that right balance.
Jurassic World is on its way. There's already talk of
The Amazing Spider-Man 4 in 2018...the first superhero film that can hopefully deliver a great fourth entry. Fingers cross, we could be seeing some fantastic fourth films in years to come!