The Fifth Film Is Where Everything Gets Weird

MTV asked me to make some mock movie posters showing why the fifth film in a series is always a bad idea.

More pictures in the link, but my unsanitized text below the cut here.

UPDATE: Lost these images in a site upgrade and all my backups went the way of the dinosaurs in a hard drive catastrophe a few years ago. I’ll fix if I ever find an old drive with them on it.


Good news, everyone! Another installment of The Fast & The Furious comes out tomorrow! And don’t worry — it’s jam-packed with faceless B-characters standing around bored behind the main cast of Vin Diesel, Blond Guy, Chick Who Is Probably Not Olivia Wilde, and The Artist Formerly Known as The Rock, so you won’t miss any of that hot extra subplot action.

The fact is, the fifth installment of any series is usually the weirdest, because it’s after they’ve completely tapped the concept for an awful fourth, but have yet to refine and reimagine (or just reboot) the themes. Although they may have rebooted this franchise. To be honest, it’s kind of hard to tell. The cars are the real stars, and they don’t even fit on the poster.

To illustrate our point, we showed what would happen if five classic franchises hadn’t known when to quit, even though the money was rolling in.

Let’s start off with an easy one. The Jaws movies did get greedy, even for a great white shark. The only problem is the fifth film is typically subtitled Gimmick in Space, no easy feat for a shark. Still, if there’s a Brody to be killed, that monster will hunt it to the farthest frontier. The primitive monster comes back for fifth helpings in…

Speaking of eating, let’s check in on film’s favorite Italian family. It turns out the most intensely committed actor who isn’t just screaming or mugging irritated faces for the camera is…(oh no. Really?)

Gladiator is a beautiful film, and every man is allowed tears in one (1) viewing, though he’s required to successfully hold most of them in, and you have to watch the film five times, minimum. Thank goodness it never came back to battle a series of corrupt Caesars.

John Doe has no such compunctions, being driven by holy vengeance. A bullet to the head will only slow him down to rise, like Lazarus, for more justice.

And finally, what could be more classic than the great American novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald? Don’t worry. There’s always a way to screw up a concept, especially when you get four more chances to make it wrong.