I’ve noticed this a lot lately and in discussions with people, it’s become pretty clear that movie franchises, they tend to completely fall apart by the time that the series gets to 3-4 movies. Some don’t even make it that far.

So why is that? Why do so many of the most popular intellectual properties completely crap out so fast? Let’s take a look.

Now by this, I mean the following. You can disagree and you’re certainly welcome to do so, but this is my thoughts:

Star Wars: It went three good movies and everything else that’s come since has been crap.

Star Trek: You might argue that it got four movies, a lot of people aren’t wild about The Search for Spock and once you got to Undiscovered Country, that was pretty decent, but beyond that, it just sucked.

Ghostbusters: It went two. I haven’t seen Afterlife yet, but the less we talk about 2016, the better.

Indiana Jones: The first three were excellent. Let’s not pretend anything else was, or honestly, will be.

Halloween: It went three decent movies and thereafter, it was toast. We shouldn’t pretend that any of the Thorn cult crap ever existed. It was a figment of your imagination.

Friday the 13th: Maybe 3. Maybe. It went off the rails pretty quickly. This is actually where the discussion started with a friend and we both agreed that much beyond the 3rd movie, you’re getting into crap territory.

Nightmare on Elm Street: I’ll give it 4, only because 2 was so unintentionally hilarious. After Dream Master though? Yeah, pass.

I mean, we can go talk about things like Godzilla and James Bond and even there, I think it’s clear that the earlier movies in each era tend to be the best. It’s hard to say because these series are just so different and for the Bond series, I’m much more of a Roger Moore and Sean Connery kind of guy and I haven’t really cared about anything Daniel Craig ever did. Or we can talk about Marvel. What’s my favorite movie in the MCU? The original Iron Man. Nothing else has even come close. The early X-Men movies were the best, the early Spider-Man movies were the best, we can even look at Harry Potter, where I think both the movies and the books went south following the third entry. The list goes on and on and on.

So why? Well, I think it’s because the studios stop looking at these franchises as quality movies and start to look at them as perennial money makers. They stop caring about the excellence of the writing, it’s all about wanting another cash infusion. It’s why so many franchises that once were decent, things like the Hellraiser series, I suppose, become direct-to-DVD garbage. It stops being a dream and starts being a paycheck.

That, unfortunately, is what Hollywood has turned into these days. Some might argue it’s all that it’s ever been, but I can remember movies that, once upon a time, were a passion project for a director and today, most of them seem to be safe, boring garbage, meant to attract a lot of people with flashy CGI and zero intellect whatsoever. That’s kind of sad and as I watch movies these days, the overwhelming majority really aren’t anything that sticks with you.

My wife told me to put some new t-shirts on my Christmas list because I need to retire a bunch of the ones that I have. I had a really hard time doing that because, once upon a time, there were tons of TV shows and movies that I loved but that really isn’t the case anymore. I couldn’t come up with a new TV show, made in the past, say, 5 years, that I cared about at all. It’s hard to find any that I even want to pick up on Blu-ray. It’s all forgettable garbage and why would I want to wear that on my body? The same goes for movies. I might really like the aforementioned Ghostbusters: Afterlife but who knows? It might just be another safe, nostalgia grab and I have a hard time believing that it’ll have the heart of the originals. I can still sit down and watch any of the good movies I described above. I own them all, often many times over. My wife and I still sit down every single year, at least once a year, and watch the original Star Wars trilogy. When’s the last time I saw one of the prequels? When they came out. When’s the next time I want to watch one of the sequel trilogy again? Never. I just don’t care. The movies haven’t made me want to care.

That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?