franchise

How Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City Wants to Get This Franchise Right

Before Resident Evil became a best-selling video game franchise, it was a passion project with a simple purpose: to scare the hell out of a generation of unsuspecting gamers. While 2002’s Resident Evil movie shared the 1996 game’s name, it emphasized sci-fi storytelling and action over scares. That movie—and the five sequels that followed—became box office hits, but ultimately divided video game fans who wondered if those movies really got the fabled franchise “right.” For Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City director Johannes Roberts, the chance to reboot this franchise is less about correcting past mistakes than making the most…
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Final Fantasy’s Multiverse Fan Theory Will Change How You Look at the Franchise

Many beloved video game franchises try to maintain a semblance of continuity and worldbuilding. Usually, those attempts consist of linear a-to-b narratives across sequels, but there are times when the connections between games in a franchise can be a bit perplexing. For instance, each Legend of Zelda game seems insular at first, but they actually take place in a shared world and timelines. The timeline barely makes sense, but it’s there. Final Fantasy, meanwhile, seemingly reinvents its wheel with each entry. Every title takes place in its own world with its own history and lore that is, on paper, completely…
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Star Trek: Prodigy’s Franchise Connections Will Go Beyond Voyager

If Picard is the continuation of the story begun in Star Trek: The Next Generation, then Prodigy is shaping up to be the narrative successor to Star Trek: Voyager. We’ve known for a while that the animated series, created in partnership with Nickelodeon, would bring back Kate Mulgrew as a holographic version of her Captain Janeway character, but subsequent updates—such as the reveal that the series would take place in the Delta quadrant, or that Voyager cast member Robert Beltran would also be appearing on the show—hint at deeper connections between the two Star Trek series. Today, Paramount released the…
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Resident Evil vs. Silent Hill: Which Franchise is Scarier?

The release of Resident Evil Village and the always persistent rumors of a Silent Hill revival seem to have these two famous franchises on the minds of more horror fans than ever. Then again, these two franchises tend to live rent free in the minds of most gamers most of the time due to the simple fact that they feature some of the greatest scares in video game history. “Scare” is the key word here. Maybe you have an opinion on which games are better, more memorable, or more fun, but at the end of the day, which franchise do…
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Star Wars Fans Take Over Lucasfilm and “Fix” the Franchise Using Viral Tweet

Last December, during a Disney Investors Day presentation, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy unveiled the future of the Star Wars franchise, a future full of TV and movie projects set to explore the galaxy beyond the Skywalker Saga. That slate includes exciting directors Taika Waititi (Thor: Love and Thunder) and Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman) taking on the next two Star Wars movies, while Ahsoka Tano, Lando Calrissian, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Boba Fett will get their own Disney+ series. The message is clear: much more Star Wars than ever before is on the way. Naturally, Star Wars fans had plenty of opinions…
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How Spiral Connects to the Larger Saw Franchise

This article contains spoilers for Spiral: From the Book of Saw. Read the spoiler-free review here. It was a year and lifetime ago when the Spiral: From the Book of Saw trailer caught everyone off guard. What is this police procedural thriller starring Chris Rock and… wait a second, is that the Saw music? Yes, it was! Rock, plus Samuel L. Jackson, is starring in a reboot/spinoff of the 2000s’ most popular horror franchise: Saw. How it would connect to those gruesome bloodbaths which helped pioneer the “torture porn” subgenre of horror, was not immediately clear. But with Spiral now…
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Are Resident Evil Village’s Vampires and Werewolves the Future of the Franchise?

A recent extended gameplay preview of Resident Evil Village strongly suggests that Lady Dimitrescu’s vampires and Heisenberg’s werewolves could sooner become the face of the franchise over the zombies that are so closely associated with the Resident Evil name. At various points during the gameplay preview, we see Ethan do battle with werewolves (now formally referred to as “Lycans”) and a host of vampire-like creatures. Yes, we’ve seen those monsters before in previous trailers, but these recent previews confirm that those archetypes aren’t limited to the game’s major villains. There’s a small army of those monsters running around the village,…
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How Power Rangers Dino Fury Finally Embraced The Franchise’s Continuity

Warning: This article contains POWER RANGERS DINO FURY episode eight spoilers. For the better part of 20 years Power Rangers has actively resisted a strict continuity. Sure it would drop a reference here or there but most of the time the show was content to keep its season closed off from one another. When we did get references or connections to the past they were often throw away at best and actively contradictory at worst. Sure we had a few great callbacks like Dr. K’s return in Beast Morphers but on the whole, attempts at continuity were few and far between and…
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$400 Million Knives Out 2 Deal Gives Netflix Major Movie Franchise

For the most devoted defenders of the theatrical experience, it will probably make no damn sense. It compels them though. Rian Johnson’s Knives Out 2 and Knives Out 3 are headed to a Netflix account near you thanks to a landmark deal that makes streaming history, and gives Netflix its first major film franchise. News of the development was broken late Wednesday by Deadline, who reported the streaming service is closing a deal with Johnson and his producing partner Ram Bergman to release two Knives Out sequels. Each will see Daniel Craig return as Benoit Blanc, the Last of the…
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10 Best Kingdom Hearts Worlds That Capture the Magic of the Franchise

There are times when it’s hard to believe the Kingdom Hearts franchise even exists. In an age of copyright strikes, brand protection, and corporate concepts that often clash with creativity, how were we so lucky to get a game that allowed us to explore the wonderful worlds of Disney and Final Fantasy? Kingdom Hearts‘ greatness comes down to a variety of factors, but discussion about the game really do seem to always circle back to those worlds. Each new area of the Kingdom Hearts franchise takes you on an almost impossible journey through some of the most imaginative environments ever…
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The Star Trek: The Original Series Episodes That Best Define the Franchise

By the time my generation got to watch Star Trek: The Original Series, the episodes often were being presented in top-ten marathons. When I was ten-years-old, for the 25th Anniversary of Star Trek, I tape-recorded a marathon of ten episodes that had all been voted by fans as the best-ever installments of The Original Series. Later, I got lucky and found Trek stickers at the grocery store and was able to label my VHS tapes correctly. But do I think all the episodes that were in that marathon back in 1991 were really the best episodes of all of the…
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Is Pokémon Legends: Arceus the Future of the Franchise?

On a day designed to celebrate everything that the Pokémon series has given us in the franchise’s 25-year history, few people expected Nintendo to reveal something quite so bold as Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Billed as an open-world action-RPG, Arceus promises to take us back to the very early days of the Sinnoh region. According to a description shared by the game’s developers, Arceus will let us “catch wild pokémon” after studying their behaviors and waiting for the right moment. Furthermore, the game will let us “battle wild pokémon with our ally pokémon” as part of a new combat system that…
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Why Final Fantasy XII’s Story is the Best in Franchise History

The Xbox team’s recent announcement that Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age will be added to Game Pass in February means that we’re this much closer to being able to experience every main entry into the RPG franchise via Microsoft’s subscription service. It also means that we have a chance to revisit Final Fantasy 12‘s story. It’s a plot that’s been called a disappointment by fans as well as its own creators who felt that the title’s production problems ultimately hindered their efforts. Final Fantasy 12 received a warm welcome in 2006, but there’s long been this asterisk next to…
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How the Mortal Kombat Movie’s Main Character Renews the Franchise

The grandiose, auspiciously R-rated new movie take on classic ultraviolent video game franchise Mortal Kombat is arriving sooner than you might think. Moreover, thanks to studio Warner Bros’ recent move of setting up its entire 2021 slate of films for day-and-date streaming debuts on HBO Max, the crimson-spilling cinematic scenery will be witnessed by audiences from home this April. However, in a potentially odd divergence from the game’s mythos, it has been revealed that, amongst an ensemble of classic Kombatants, the film’s star, Lewis Tan (Deadpool 2, Wu Assassins), will play a completely original character. Warner’s Mortal Kombat reboot movie,…
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Spider-Man 3: Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock Return is a Smart Move for Franchise

Way back in 2004, many speculated Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus would return after Spider-Man 2, even though he ended that movie by vanishing beneath the Hudson River. This of course seemed like wishful thinking at the time: Molina might’ve been the best Spider-Man movie villain up to that point, but Sony couldn’t bring him back after he took a nuclear-heated bath, right? Nearly 15 years and two reboots later, it turns out they could! Indeed, THR confirmed Tuesday that Molina will return  as the metal-armed scientist in the Tom Holland-led, and Marvel Studios produced sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home.…
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How Star Trek: Discovery Fulfills Spock’s Franchise Legacy

This Star Trek: Discovery article contains MAJOR spoilers for “Unification III,” and spoilers for Picard. Michael Burnham has returned to her home planet Vulcan in an attempt to recover some data from a Vulcan and Romulan alliance she never thought was even possible. If this sounds like the beginning of an epic title crawl in a Star Wars movie, you’re not far off. In Discovery Season 3, Episode 7, “Unification III,” the Trek franchise has delivered one of its most epic and generation-spanning episodes in a very long time. We always knew Star Trek: Discovery’s status as both a prequel…
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New Mutants: How Magik and Lockheed Fit Into the X-Men Franchise’s Evolution

This article contains New Mutants spoilers. The New Mutants, now available to watch on streaming, is the final outing in Fox’s eclectic X-Men film franchise. While Marvel Studios’ finally confirmed Deadpool 3 is a wild card in how it connects to anything, that’s in Disney’s hands now. Otherwise, we have 13 movies in 20 years celebrating superpowers as a metaphor for real-life prejudice. But only in the end, did the X-Men franchise really start to open up to a universe where mutants aren’t the explanation to everything outlandish. One of the reasons the Avengers movies worked out so well was…
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