Greetings, reader!
Today marks the beginning of a new, ten-week series. I'm comparing various instalments from various movie franchises - which franchise has the best first film, which has the best second film, et cetera. Kicking things off, these are the greatest franchise-opening films of all time!
P.S. For those interested, my annual Oscar predictions had the result of 15 correct out of 23. Not as good as the 17/23 I got the last two years, but not terrible either. Maybe next year I'll break my record!
Here are my honorable mentions: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Batman Begins (2005), Die Hard (1988), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
10. Halloween (1978)
The original Halloween is a stone-cold classic in the field of horror cinema. No unnecessary gore or overkill jump scares, just expertly built suspense and vibes. The signature creepy feel of Halloween night is on full display, with the overall atmosphere of Haddonfield, Illinois being just so very bleak and ready for shit to go down.
John Carpenter's steady directing and the spine-tingling score (also composed by John Carpenter!) really nail Halloween down as one of the quintessential horror classics, and a franchise debut that certainly raises enough curiosity to justify at least a few of the 12 sequels / remakes / reboots / spin-offs. Some of them are surprisingly good, but none of them hold a candle (or even a jack-o-lantern, heh) to the original.
9. The Matrix (1999)
The Matrix trilogy kicks off with a film that more or less defines the modern era of sci-fi cinema. When you watch The Matrix now, the movie feels clichéd, but that's just because so very many sci-fi action movies made after it have ripped off its style. This is a standard-setting film, influential enough for many to copy from it and refreshing enough to warrant re-watch after re-watch.
The directing by the Wachowski sisters is zany and delightfully out-of-the-box, and the end result is one of the more mind-bending and thought-provoking films in the genre. The worldbuilding is cool enough that the film does beg for sequels, and those sequels are worth watching - but once again, there's no beating the original with this franchise.
8. Dune (2021)
Sure, one could argue that David Lynch's 1980's fever dream Dune is the first in a franchise where this remake is second and 2024's Dune: Part Two third. But I didn't go with that; in so many ways, Denis Villeneuve's 2021 Dune is a fresh start, a clean slate, the start of something new, and much more a new adaptation of Frank Herbert's book than a new version of the 80's movie.
Anyways, this is an all-timer - possibly the best film of the 2020's so far, and arguably the best realization of book-to-movie adaptation I've ever seen. Everything from the set designs to the casting decisions works in making the end product feel eerily much like Frank Herbert's Dune, one of my favorite books, and seeing it done justice on the big screen is a treat. I just saw the sequel this week, so next week's blog post (the top 10 second instalments of movie franchises) will reveal what I thought of that!
7. Home Alone (1990)
This subjective favorite was hard to rank, but #7 was what I ended up going with. Home Alone will always be my favorite Christmas movie, and more importantly, very possibly my favorite kids' movie of all time. I loved Home Alone as a child, and as a grown-up, the sheer nostagia always moves me and takes me to a magical place. It's an entertaining and whimsical joy ride of shenanigans, and one of those movies I just never get tired of.
6. Jurassic Park (1993)
This groundbreaking 90's sci-fi adventure flick kicked off the uneven Jurassic Park franchise, and is arguably Steven Spielberg's greatest film. The John Williams score is one for the ages, and everything in the film just works - the balance of edge-of-your-seat tension and wholesome family fun, the memorable cast and dialogue, you name it.
The Oscar-winning visuals also mark the film as Hollywood's greatest visual effects in relation to the time of the film's release. Seriously, a movie from 1993 has no business having such strikingly authentic-looking dinosaurs!
5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Comedy films are sometimes overlooked by cinema buffs, which is a travesty - making one laugh is one of the most important goals art can accomplish, and a much-needed accomplishment in this day and age. And no film makes you laugh quite like Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
This comedy legend has it all - the six-member Monty Python comedy troupe with their impeccable chemistry and weird humor, a collection of insanely memorable and quotable moments, hysterical running jokes and gags that range from impressively clever to so-stupid-that-it's-extremely-funny. The scene where the two tower guards have trouble following the King's orders is, in my honest opinion, the single funniest scene in cinematic history.
4. The Godfather (1972)
The classic of the classics. The original Godfather is cinema heritage, with character dynamics that have influenced everything in Hollywood, ridiculously quotable dialogue, and an unforgettable atmosphere created by a beautiful score, razor-sharp directing and impeccable art direction / set decoration that all fit together with aplomb. The acting performances by Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Robert Duvall and James Caan* make this into a serious candidate for 'best-acted film of all time'. So, yeah, it's a good one.
*I know that listing six names as examples may seem like bad writing, but I simply didn't have the heart to leave any of those names out when thinking about how much each performance brings to the end product.
3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
The first Harry Potter film combines what I loved about the first Home Alone film as described above, and what I loved about the first Dune film as described above: it's a nostalgic gem that was a major part of my upbringing, and it's one of the greatest book-to-film adaptations I've seen. The locations, characters and various plot points from the first book come alive on the big screen in a spectacular manner, making for a magical film with infinite re-watch potential.
Also, most of the Harry Potter films are good enough to make it into their respective top 10 in this franchise-instalment series, and I feel a bit uncomfortable praising the series multiple weeks in a row when considering the controversies around J.K. Rowling and her, y'know, hate speech. The very least I can do as an ally is to bring as much attention to trans rights on this platform as I do to praising the movies based on her books, so here goes: Rowling's bigoted rhetoric on trans people isn't just 'controversial', it's downright dangerous, as there's always a correlation between rhetoric against the human rights of specific minorities by popular figures, and hate crimes committed against these people. Things for trans people are difficult enough, with so much hateful ideology sparking legislation against a community just trying to live their lives, so people like Rowling should really just shut the f**k up.
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Speaking of remarkable book-to-movie adaptations, this is the film that defied decades and decades of 'No filmmaker could ever do this book series justice' attitudes. Tolkien's fantasy trilogy is so grand in scale and intricate in feel that it would've been hard to imagine a big-screen adaptation living up to it all, until Peter Jackson took on the challenge and passed the test with flying colors.
The Fellowship of the Ring kicks off the greatest film trilogy of all time with amazing production values, a dynamite cast, a heart-melting and psyche-pumping Howard Shore score, and magnificent New Zealand scenery captured by Oscar-winning cinematography. It brings Tolkien's imaginative fantasy world to life on the big screen in a downright breathtaking manner.
So how come such a masterpiece isn't the greatest franchise-opening instalment of all time? Well, because...
1. Star Wars (1977)
One of the very greatest films ever made, period. Star Wars is a relatively simple adventure tale, yet the world George Lucas created had something so inherently magical and addictive about it, that this individual adventure film spawned two sequels, a prequel trilogy, a legacy sequel trilogy, two spin-off films, and various spin-off TV shows (not to mention the graphic novels et cetera deeper down the semi-canon iceberg). People just keep wanting more and more Star Wars, and the thanks for this absolute craze (probably the closest equivalent that the movie franchise world has had to Beatlemania) can be addressed to the film that started it all.
Star Wars (later re-branded as Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope) is perfectly paced, with fascinating worldbuilding and intriguing characters. The music by John Williams is as magnificent as it gets, and the visuals and set design go illegally hard for the 1970's. No movie franchise in history has kicked off with as much promise and hype as this absolutely historical game-changer.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week as I continue this project and rank the top 10 second instalments of movie franchises.
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