Criticism Members' piece
What We Lose When Everything Is a Franchise
The cultural logic of the sequel, the cinematic universe, the extended edition — and the strange comfort of never being finished.
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A franchise can never end, because ending is bad for business. So we get stories engineered never to resolve — and a generation fluent in lore but starved of conclusions. The tragedy is not the bad films. It is what we forget a story is even for.
It is the kind of subject The Lantern was made for: small enough to overlook, large enough to organise a life around once you start to notice it. We sent a writer to notice it properly.
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