Alien v. Die Hard was tough. Aliens and Die Hard are my two favorite movies from the 80s. But I like Aliens just a hair better.

I went with...

Bond over Revenge of the Nerds. I'm not a huge Bond fan, but it's had its moments. Pretty straightforward win.

Back to the Future over Bourne. BTTF is an iconic film franchise. It's part of our culture now. Everyone knows Marty and the Delorean and the Doc. Bourne is just a movie. Easy win here.

Love Bug over Hunger Games. I liked Love Bug as a tiny child and suspect I would like it less today. But the original was my favorite movie from the ages of roughly 5 through 8, and I remember having deep film discussions with other kids about how the movie wouldn't have been the same if they had cast a sedan or station wagon in the leading role. I saw one Hunger Games movie and it was a fine movie, but I'm going with the Bug here.

Hangover over Fast and Furious. This isn't even a contest. All three Hangover movies are great rides and highly entertaining, even if all three movies are the same plot. Fast and Furious is just a bunch of car stuff, all probably with the same plot. Hangover should go deep into the tournament.

Classic Mysteries over Karate Kid - Meh. Classic mysteries in a coin flip. They're kind of famous so they must be good.

Police Academy over Shrek. I have a minor bias against animated films, and Police Academy ... well, it was a vehicle for some former NFL players to act. Whatever.

Alien over Die Hard. Good scifi is rare. It's hard to do scifi well, and all three Alien movies were top notch. And that thing was on that guy's face and then it burst out of his chest and stuff. You gotta vote for Alien, people, you just gotta!

Jurassic Park over Blade. Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs always win.

After seeing the brackets in the east and west for round 1, my conclusion is that there aren’t really very many good movie franchises. I see quite a few that had one good movie and a bunch of money-grabbing stinkers, but not many quality series with multiple good entries.

Fun offseason tournament though.

I guess there are also some series that have relatively steady quality, but they’re so far outside my interest area that I overlook them. Like Hope & Crosby or Shrek.

That does seem to be the standard formula. I think a few stand out as exceptions, such as Back To The Future and Alien, but most are just a good movie and then a comet tail of debris.

Die Hard beating Alien is just insane. There is one... ONE good Die Hard movie and as great as it is, it isn't as good as Alien. It's POSSIBLY better than Aliens. That's all. I know people love Die Hard but I'm pretty shocked at that one.

Agreed. Alien should be a top contender, and it's getting beat up by a Christmas flick.

Whoever you dumb ****s that voted for Karate Kid over classic mysteries need to have your brains ripped out through your ****ing assholes, since you clearly don't use them.

The metric ****-ton of cinematic language born from these movies that we STILL employ is staggering. The innovations in cinematography, lighting, editing, and story structure remain every bit a part of the other movies in this contest that people are so quick to gush about.

FFS the AMC movie theater bar is called "MacGuffin's." The Maltese Falcon INVENTED the MacGuffin - the object our hero seeks which is ultimately meaningless, because what he/she truly needs to find is within.

AKA

EVERY ****ING INDIANA JONES PLOT

aka

THE ****ING HANGOVER

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BTTF seems like it's managed to stay relevant long after its cinematic release, so I'd agree that ticket sales might be an imperfect metric (although there's nothing else that's better really). My guess is that if we had a way of looking at total views in any format, it'd be seeded quite a bit higher.

It's too bad they're in black and white, though. And that they're not comedies. If they were comedies and in color, I'd support them much more strongly.

And maybe some gratuitous female nudity. That always helps.

I didn't vote for the classic mysteries because I don't see them as a movie franchise. They're obviously superior films to the Karate Kid.

I just really loved the first Die Hard movie. I can appreciate that Alien was really good and I liked it when I first saw, but it's really that horror genre that I'm not as big on. Aliens was more of a solid action flick. Neither "franchise" has anything beyond that so I picked the one all-time classic that I enjoy and based my decision on that.

I think that's what most people are doing. It's just not how I see the tournament in general. Same reason I voted against Ghostbusters in the other division even though it's probably a top ten all time movie for me.