Movie franchises are more interested in making money than good movies.

Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay… and Mockingjay Part 2? Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3… and 4? Is it really necessary for movie franchises to make as many movies as they can possibly get out of the same characters? Personally, I wish there was still such thing as a movie without a sequel.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great sequels, but in my opinion, the majorities have almost ruined the original movie for me.

Ok, maybe one movie after the original is ok; a little follow-up on the original to see the characters again is fine and usually does the original justice. However, when a film studio makes four movies that are basically the same with a not-so-good plot line, it is easy to tell they just want to see how much more money they can get from the fans of the originally good movie.

Think about Despicable Me. The original movie featured a large angry man with a funny accent, three trouble-making girls, and of course some funny situations with a ridiculous villain. Then they decided to make a second one, and it wasn’t nearly as good as the first, but it wasn’t horrible. But then they went all the way to horrible by making a movie about just the minions. Now there is a third Despicable Me movie expected to be out in 2017. At this point it feels like they don’t want to have to think of a new plot line because they can salvage this one and squeeze a few more pennies out of it.

The problem with criticizing this approach is that it works virtually every time. The more movies, the more money. Why wouldn’t they want to create as many as possible? It is even more likely they will make a sequel if they can sell merchandise that appeals to younger kids. Think about Frozen. You think you saw as many Elsa Halloween costumes or Olaf T-shirts as you can handle? Well that’s all a part of the game that the Frozen franchise is trying to play. I have a 5-year-old little sister, and I know that she asked for all the Frozen dolls and clothing for her birthday. The same thing can be said for Minions. For the quality of the sequels, it’s just not that important to the plan.

This sort of thing has gone on for years. No franchise can let it stop at one if the movie is the slightest bit successful. Jurassic Park was an outstanding movie. Great plot line and good special effects for a movie made in the 90’s. They went on to make three more and none of them lived up to the first in my opinion. But because of those extra three movies the Jurrasic Park franchise is now worth more than $3 billion. Shouldn’t movies be about content not money?

I would much rather see a really good movie and never see a sequel than seeing a really good movie and watching a really bad sequel that doesn’t live up to my expectations and unfortunately that doesn’t happen often.