Greetings, reader!
My 10-week series of movie frachise posts just keeps on giving, with this week's post looking at the very best seventh parts across movie franchises. Here we go!
Here are my honorable mentions: American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (2009), Annabelle Comes Home (2019), Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988), Shazam! (2019), Thor: The Dark World (2013).
10. Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Sean Connery's final 007 flick may be his worst Bond adventure, but still, it is a Sean Connery 007 flick. That alone puts it ahead of the worst films starring lesser James Bonds, as Connery is charming and entertaining enough to carry a script significantly weaker than Goldfinger or Thunderball. The plot of Diamonds Are Forever may be a bit generic and predictable, but the heavy use of casinos, henchmen and Blofeld makes for a setting that is nonetheless an entertaining backdrop for Bond's antics. Not the great sendoff Connery deserved, but a decent on-par addition to the franchise.
Also, Shirley Bassey's Diamonds Are Forever is up there with the best Bond theme songs. Hey, there's a good blog post idea for the future!
9. H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
The seventh film of the Halloween franchise took the retcon route: after receiving criticism for escalatingly strange and overdone plotlines in the sequels, the franchise decided that for the purposes of H20, films 3-6 haven't happened. Taking the repeated returns, deaths and re-returns of Michael Myers every few years out of the equation, this film pretends that no one has heard from the killer in 20 years, since his original massacre in Haddonfield, Illinois. And, 20 years after the fateful night that the first two films are set in, Myers makes his grand comeback.
Released on the 20-year anniversary of the original Halloween, this reboot gains a lot from Jamie Lee Curtis' return to the iconic role of Laurie Strode - undoubtedly the greatest 'final girl' in slasher history. Her confrontation with Michael Myers, after being traumatized by their original encounter for 20 years, makes for a dramatic punch amidst the entertaining slasher horror. Not a cinematic masterpiece, but definitely one of the better Halloween sequels.
8. Star Trek: Generations (1994)
Just like the Halloween flick described above, this one isn't all that cinematically impressive, but it gains a lot of nerdy fan-service points for its payoff-heavy plot. You see, this Star Trek film - released after the sequels-to-the-original-series movies but before the Next Generation trilogy - serves as the once-in-a-lifetime crossover between iconic captains James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart).
No matter how cruddy the film's dialogue and certain production elements may be, it's such a trekker's dream come true to see Kirk and Picard in the same film, working together, that the film deserves some cutting-of-slack when reviewing it. It's fun and satisfying, which is more than you can say for a lot of seventh instalments out there.
7. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
After a masterclass original, a series of sequels with quickly deteriorating quality and a god-awful remake, the Planet of the Apes franchise was all but dead - until Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver and Rupert Wyatt revived the franchise with this fresh prequel/reboot.
When I first saw the trailer for this film (I'm pretty sure this happened while I was in the cinema to watch #5 from today's list), I had no idea it was the trailer for a Planet of the Apes film for the first 83 per cent of it. It just looked like a damn good movie about a man in today's world who has an exceptionally smart chimpanzee as a pet.
Then it escalated. Just before the logo hit, I realized in horror and awe what I was seeing: the trailer for the story of how the Planet of the Apes came to be. I was excited, and the end product did not disappoint.
6. Creed (2015)
The Rocky reboot film is, in my opinion, even a tad better than the original Rocky. After the sequels had overstayed their welcome, this fresh start takes place decades later, with a focus on Apollo Creed's son Adonis. Michael B. Jordan (truly the Michael Jordan of actors), does a fantastic job as the title character, as does Sylvester Stallone in his Oscar-nominated performance as the washed-up Rocky Balboa who agrees to mentor the young star.
Also, the directing by Ryan Coogler is insane. The boxing sequences are so well-coordinated and thrilling that I found them exhilarating to watch even though I, and I can't stress this point enough, don't give two shits about boxing. The sport has made for some decent cinema nonetheless, and this movie is one of the best.
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
The last Harry Potter book was split into two parts, which was a smart move - the source material covers so much ground, that one film to capture it all would've been either a) very rushed or b) five hours long. While all of the best moments are saved for the inevitably better Deathly Hallows: Part 2, this is still a very good kick-off for the franchise's endgame. The stakes are higher than before, the story and characters are more mature than ever, and the whole thing is rather exhilarating.
And then for this week's J.K. Rowling disclaimer. Many of my readers are relatives from the same generation as Rowling, and I've understood that the whole trans rights discourse is a bigger question mark for many of them than it is for people in my generation. So here's a recap on why I feel so strongly about this, for anyone struggling to grasp the premise: trans people have always existed, but have become more visible in society during the last few decades, because for a long time it wasn't safe to be openly trans so they had to live in a lie (mind you, it's still very much not completely safe to be openly trans, very much thanks to people like J.K. Rowling). Basically, all this community is asking for is to be able to live their lives, and no matter what right-wing voices from Fox News in the U.S. to the Christian Democrats in Finland may be saying, trans people are not a danger to anyone and giving them equal rights and treating them with basic human compassion is not anything away from anyone.
It's just like the gay rights debate a few decades back: people are afraid of what they don't understand, and some people react aggressively instead of stopping to listen so that they would understand. And this aggression is fueled by people like J.K. Rowling, who falsely claim that the trans community is dangerous and has some scary agenda. She has publicly spoken against the human rights of the trans community for a long time now, and as someone who very much wants trans people to be able to live their lives true to themselves and be safe in society, I am extremely disappointed that the author who shaped a big part of my childhood and inspired some of my favorite movies turned out to be such a bigot. If you have any questions about these topics, I'm happy to discuss them and share more insight, so zap me a message!
4. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
This time-traveling extravaganza is without a doubt among the better X-Men films - you can't really go wrong when you use timeline shenanigans to reunite the original cast (Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Patrick Stewart et cetera) with the reboot cast (Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy et cetera), while throwing a Peter Dinklage villain into the mix just to be safe. There's even a fantastic Pentagon heist sequence, with the spotlight on the lovable Quicksilver (Evan Peters)!
3. Furious 7 (2015)
The seventh Fast & Furious film is much better than it deserves to be. Praising the movie always feels a bit wrong, because a big part of its success is morbidly due to the tragedy of Paul Walker's death - as heartbreaking as it must have been for the franchise's cast and crew to move on, they pay beautiful tribute to the friend they lost. This gives the film an emotional core, complete with a final scene that had me (and a majority of the people in the cinema) crying like a baby.
But Furious 7 is also just a pretty kick-ass sequel on its own merits, when viewed with a "fast cars go brrr" attitude instead of expecting grade-A cinema. The stunts are delightfully over-the-top, the cast has great chemistry and a great time even in the light of losing their star, and the end product is very entertaining.
2. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
Okay, hear me out - this Nightmare on Elm Street reboot is unironically one of the absolutely scaries movies I've ever seen. I won't promise you'll have the same experience, dear reader - these things are very subjective. For my wild imagination and love for barrier-breaking storytelling, the way this Wes Craven masterclass blends fiction and reality made it feel like Freddy Krueger really was somewhere out there.
We've all seen meta storytelling as a means of comedy, but this here film provides some mind-bending meta horror. In the film's plot, we're in "the real world" where the first six Nightmare on Elm Street movies are existing movies, made by Wes Craven, who plays himself in the film (as does Heather Langenkamp, star of the original Elm Street flick). Years after performing that role, Langenkamp starts to have nightmares where Krueger is coming after her, only it's a darker and more real-feeling version of Krueger - and the dreams start to affect her reality.
The premise might seem goofy to some viewers, but for me, it hit all the right notes. This is one of the very few horror movies that actually made me lose a bit of sleep the next night - something about the "What if Freddy Krueger wasn't limited to fiction and the big screen, but turned out to be an entity in real life" idea really hit home.
1. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
When a teenage Veikko Hoffman heard that they're making a new Star Wars trilogy, he was hesitant - right up until the teaser trailer was released, and it blew him away. The film looked so good that skepticism turned into excitement. Some time later, he went to see Episode VII in the cinema, which was a downright magical experience - he had spent so much time watching the six pre-existing Star Wars films, thinking that that would always be it, that it was cathartic to sit in the movie theater, watching the yellow text crawl to the backdrop of John Williams' legendary score.
Thankfully, the movie itself was magnificent. While I do see why some people criticized it for being too close-to-home and similar to the original trilogy, I don't personally see it as being so close that it would be a problem. It plays with nostalgia in a warm and cozy way, while simultaneously introducing a new generation of heroes and villains, tastefully mixing old and new while retaining the franchise's atmosphere. And that ending scene is one for the ages.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for my ranking of the top 10 eighth instalments from movie franchises.
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