Humor District

Halloween weekend saw the premier of the latest, and hopefully last, installment of the Saw franchise. Saw ended up being one of those franchises that never ends, each year saw a new Saw movie hitting the theaters. Saw is not the first movie franchise to go on and on and on. In fact, there have been many movie series that have lasted longer than Saw. When filmmakers see that people are willing to buy tickets to a movie, they will continue to churn out different versions of that movie until tickets no longer sell. At least some filmmakers put some thought into their sequels to keep the franchises running longer. Here are some of the most enduring movie franchises of all time.

Godzilla

This giant radioactive lizard has been terrorizing the people of Japan since 1954. Godzilla has starred in over 25 movies since then, but never failed to leave a trail of destruction in his wake. He has gone up against other monsters such as Mothra, King Kong, and Mechagodzilla. Basically, Godzilla has proved that Japan has a major monster infestation. While this franchise will never be accused of making high quality and thought provoking films, there is something about Godzilla that captures the imagination and is just plain entertaining. Who doesn’t enjoy watching a 60,000 ton modern day dinosaur who breathes radioactive fire go on a rampage? Even if it is just an obviously cardboard town that is being crushed. There is actually a new Godzilla movie in development for a 2012 release.

James Bond

While a giant radioactive lizard is pretty awesome, nothing can beat James Bond. He is the man that every man wants to be. Even the Old Spice guy, Isaiah Mustafa, wishes he was Agent 007. There have been some iconic actors as Bond, including Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Pierce Brosnan. He had all the coolest gadgets in the movies, he could kick an insane amount of ass while sipping on a martini, and he got all of the girls. Who could ever forget the Bond girls throughout the franchise? When it comes down to it, James Bond is a man’s man who got to ride rocket powered snowmobiles off of cliffs and has never seen the inside of a cubicle. He has seen the inside of every woman he has met, though.

Star Trek

Star Trek is best known for being a ridiculously popular televisions series that created numerous spinoff shows. There have also been 11 Star Trek movies made, with a 12th in development. While nerds will always argue over whether Star Trek is superior to Star Wars, Star Trek definitely has the edge in the numbers department. The old movies were campy and basically centered around Captain Kirk yelling Khan and sexing up voluptuous alien women who apparently had fairly human anatomies. Alright, I admit I haven’t seen any of the first 10 Star Trek movies, but the most recent one, a franchise reboot, was outstanding and earned itself a sequel due out in 2012.

The Land Before Time

I don’t know about you, but I was dinosaur crazy when I was little. I could name more dinosaur species than my parents, and frequented the museum to look at the t-rex skeleton and make roaring sounds at adults. I also enjoyed cartoons immensely. When The Land Before Time series came out, I just about had an excitement induced aneurysm. Combining cartoons and adorable dinosaurs who have to team up to overcome diversity was a stroke of genius, and I know I made my parents go out and buy me the first 4 Land Before Time movies. Then I grew up, became less interested in dinosaurs and cartoons, sort of, and moved away from The Land Before Time. Well apparently little kids still like dinosaurs and cartoons, because there are 13 Land Before Time movies now. One of these days I will catch up on all of them.

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th has chronicled the murderous exploits of Jason Voorhees for years. So far, Jason has been killing sexy teenagers for 12 movies, and has even gone up against another horror movie powerhouse, Freddy Krueger. Like pretty much every other horror movie character, Jason refuses to be killed. Drowning in a lake at camp while your counselors get it on really makes a guy hold a grudge. I’m not sure if it is the living embodiment of supernatural violence that is Jason Voorhees that keeps audiences coming back for new installments in the franchise, but my guess is the sexy, often decapitated, teenagers have something to do with that. Well, at least pre-decapitation they do.

It is a known fact that every kid who has ever existed has gone through some point in their life when they were obsessed with dinosaurs. If you add dinosaurs to anything, it automatically makes it better. Let’s take a look at some examples. Transformers + Dinosaur = Grimlock, the coolest Transformer ever. Douchey Guy Pooping + Dinosaur = Great Scene in Jurassic Park. Me + Dinosaur = Supreme Ruler of the Galaxy. I think you get the point. To further back this up, let’s take a look at some great movies about dinosaurs.

Jurassic Park

When did you first learn the word velociraptor? If you learned it before Jurassic Park came out you are either a paleontologist or a liar. Paleontologists are too busy searching for fossils while daydreaming about riding upon sauropods to be reading this article, so you are a liar. That is the kind of impact that Jurassic Park had on our society, it taught us all a new vocabulary word that has been seared into our collective conscious. Also, it had that aforementioned scene where the pooping guy got eaten by a tyrannosaurus. The dinosaurs were lifelike enough for us to buy into the movie and actually wonder how screwed we would be if a pack of velociraptors hunted us down.

The Land Before Time

We all remember the first time we were introduced to Littlefoot, Petrie, and the rest of the prehistoric little rascals. This series remains a classic despite the terrible sequels that have been made. We even grew to love that gruff old Cera. What we had here was the perfect combination for a young audience. Kids are boring, they can’t do much, therefore they love to see other fictional kids having awesome adventures and live vicariously through them. Also, kids love dinosaurs. Seriously, if you ask a group of 10 5 year olds what they want to be when they grow up, 9 of them will say some sort of dinosaur and shun the loser who said a lawyer. The Land Before Time had kids who were also dinosaurs having adventures. It was all of our dreams come true. Plus we were all kind of curious what would happen if Littlefoot and Cera did it. You know there was some romantic tension there.

We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story

After The Land Before Time came out, we didn’t think it could get any better. Well guess what, it did. We got a sort of grown up version of The Land Before Time with We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story. Rather than having kids live out their fantasies with dinosaurs, We’re Back had kids who were friends with talking dinosaurs. This was so much better, we still got our adventure, we could tell dinosaurs what to do, and we still had opposable thumbs in our fantasies. In this movie, we also got to see what happens when the dinosaurs turn against, a little sneak peak at Jurassic Park if you will. Of course in this version our bonds of friendship with the dinosaurs were so strong we were able to talk them out of a murderous rampage. There is only one way this could possibly be improved on.

Transformers 3: Grimlock Eats Sam Witwicky’s Parents

This movie has not been made yet, but I am currently sending in numerous manuscripts to Michael Bay in order to make this a reality. This could become the greatest dinosaur movie of all time because of the shocking twist: the dinosaur is also an alien robot. That is known as the trifecta right there. Imagine the opening scene with the Witwicky parents making awkward comments about old people sex or something like they usually do. All of a sudden Grimlock tears the roof off of their house and just swallows them whole. We are trying to keep the PG-13 rating, or else he would bite them in half. You’ll have to wait until the unrated DVD comes out for that version. The rest of the movie would be Grimlock destroying everything, even Optimus Prime would not be able to contain Grimlock’s primal fury. Shia LaBeouf runs around with Megan Fox trying not to get stepped on and is essentially useless. Somehow Megan Fox’s shirt gets wet. Closing scene: Megan Fox is standing on top of Grimlock’s head as he gives out a triumphant roar. He stands upon the burning wreckage of some well known building as there is a gigantic explosion in the background. Megan Fox’s shirt is still wet. That is what is known as Oscar material. Seriously, Michael Bay, write me back.