The Greatest Movie Franchises of All Time - Midwest Division Round 1

[DaFace]

Links to preceding threads:

Spoiler!

• Nomination Thread
• Play-in Round
• Eastern Division Round 1
• Western Division Round 1
• Southern Division Round 1

You can view the entire tournament bracket here as we go along, but here's the Midwest division:



Please vote for the franchise in each pair that you feel is most deserving of being in consideration for the Greatest Movie Franchise of All Time. I'll put one of these up every day or two as we go along. So vote!

Possible Concerns and Responses:

1. A franchise I like isn't on the list! Too bad. Nominations are closed. This is just a fun offseason diversion, but feel free to complain in the thread if it will make you feel better.
2. There's something on the list that I don't even think is a franchise! Don't vote for it.
3. There's something on the list that I don't recognize. Yeah, there are a few that I don't recognize either. If you feel generous, look it up and determine if you think it's worthy. Or just don't vote for it. Either option is allowed.
4. The seeding seems weird (or there's something I have no idea how it got in there). The seeding is based on total estimated tickets from Box Office Mojo, but some older franchises were randomly seeded since we don't have any data available about their ticket sales. Again, if you don't feel something is deserving, don't vote for it!

[DrRyan]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

You pull the seeding out of a hat for this tournament?

Some awful seeds this round.

I was wondering as well. The Godfather as a 7 seed? 1 and 2 are all time greats and sure, 3 was trash but I would take Godfather over Star Wars 10x out of 10 when including all of them.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by DrRyan

I was wondering as well. The Godfather as a 7 seed? 1 and 2 are all time greats and sure, 3 was trash but I would take Godfather over Star Wars 10x out of 10 when including all of them.

The seeding based on ticket sales naturally gives higher weight to franchises that 1) have a lot of movies and 2) sold a lot of tickets, which I think is about as good of a metric as you can reasonably have. If we really wanted to get into semantics, I'd probably go so far as to suggest that most of them in the contest (Godfather included) aren't even really franchises - it's just a trilogy, one of which wasn't even that good. The seeding helps to take care of that.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Rain man would've had this figured out already.

FIX YO SHIT!!

Eh, I've decided it's not worth the effort of coordinating it, so we'll just stick with the original bracket as planned. John Wick might have an argument that it got shafted years down the road, but for now it's just a pair of movies, so I have trouble feeling like it didn't get a fair look in a contest about franchises.

[eDave]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

**** Star Trek

[CoMoChief]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

Man. Wick got hosed. If Nolan doesn’t exist Batman doesn’t even compete.

The first 2 Keaton Batmans were great films.

[oldman]

Originally Posted by DaFace

I'd probably go so far as to suggest that most of them in the contest (Godfather included) aren't even really franchises - it's just a trilogy, one of which wasn't even that good.

I'm going to disagree a bit with you on Godfather III. When Part I is considered either the #1 or #2 greatest movie of all time (depends on which reputable poll you look at) and Part II is in the top 20 (again, reputable polls), that's a tough follow up. I'd say Part III had to be made to complete the arc. It just didn't have the texture of the other 2.

[DaFace]

I'll leave this one open for one more day, though most of the matchups are probably settled at this point. Still, it's possible that a good run could take Vacation above Rocky, and a REALLY big run could see Oceans catch Planet of the Apes. We had more like 150 voters for the other divisions (not surprising since they launched on weekdays), so there's still plenty of time for big comebacks!

[Nzoner]

Originally Posted by oldman

I'm going to disagree a bit with you on Godfather III. When Part I is considered either the #1 or #2 greatest movie of all time (depends on which reputable poll you look at) and Part II is in the top 20 (again, reputable polls), that's a tough follow up. I'd say Part III had to be made to complete the arc. It just didn't have the texture of the other 2.

I agree with this and personally I enjoyed Part III for what it was.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Nzoner

I agree with this and personally I enjoyed Part III for what it was.

Part III was solid but unspectacular. If you can avoid comparing it to I and II, it's okay.

2 major casting decisions just did not work. Everyone knows the first one and it's one of the most infamous in movie history - Sofia Coppola is just god-awful in this movie.

But George Hamilton effectively replacing Robert Duvall doesn't get nearly enough scorn. Hamilton is just some kind of vanilla cross between William Devane and Treat Williams. He just brings absolutely nothing to that roll and dammit you can't just write out Tom Hagen. No, a 30 second cameo by his nephew the priest, St. Exposition, didn't do us any good.

The frustrating part was that it was, unsurprisingly, about money. Duvall wanted to get paid nearer to the lead. And Coppoloa balked even though he gave James Caan as much money to appear in a brief end-scene in Godfather II as he had paid him for his massive role in Godfather I because he wanted the scene and needed Caan to play Sonny or it wouldn't work.

They found the money for Caan - they should've found the money for Duvall.

[jjchieffan]

So sad that Jack Ryan fell. Those are some great movies. Terminator is a great franchise too. Arnold is awesome. It's a shame that they had to go against each other. But the Jack Ryan stuff is the better franchise.

[DaFace]

This is now closed, which closes out the rest of Round 1. Batman, Terminator, Planet of the Apes, Lord of the Rings, Friday the 13th, Rocky, The Godfather, and Star Trek move on!