C’MON HOLLYWOOD: Don’t say “Final” unless you mean it!

…don’t say “Final” unless you mean it!
by J.A. Hamilton

Marketing isn’t an easy job or rather great marketing doesn’t come easy. Hollywood do love their gimmicks (3-D being the latest craze) but the whole “Final” tag they’ve been slapping on movie sequels lately (and periodically in the past but I’ll get to that later) is starting to annoy me. When a singer announces his or her final tour, album or concert fans clamour to these events in droves expecting them to go out with a bang and the same can be said about films. If we’re told this will be the final instalment of a franchise and that “we’ve saved the best for last” (of course you have) we too get excited, hoping to see something amazing brought to the table. So if you’re anything like me, you no doubt get angry when the so called final instalment was just a marketing ploy to get a few extra bucks at our expense.

“Dead!? I was just bullshittin and you know this man!”

Let’s take the SAW franchise for example. Now truth be told I enjoy the SAW films. I enjoy them because I like horror films that cling to the horrific (violence, gore, nudity) and all the bells and whistles that come with it. That said, I’ve been ever so curious after the third one as to exactly how in the Jesus they could keep it going. If you count the upcoming seventh, Jigsaw’s been dead for more films than he’s been alive. This is fine on some levels I suppose but listening to one of the latest trailers for the new one, Jigsaw’s now re-using old taglines like “you haven’t seen anything yet”. We know dude, you told us that two or three movies ago. They say this is the final one and that everything has been building up to this one. Call me cynical but that sounds a lot like what he’s been saying for the past couple. Let’s just hope this really is the final SAW.

Seriously though, bring back Devon Sawa for the last one.

Next on my shit list are the FINAL DESTINATION flicks. Now I dug Devon Sawa when he was around (God knows where he disappeared to) and loved the premise of the first film. The second was straight to DVD fodder but sported one of the coolest opening death scenes ever in my opinion. Three was “meh” and “THE” FINAL DESTINATION (or so they’d have us believe) wasn’t too bad but like the SAW films, lost its original flare yet still remained watchable. Of course, here we go again. Instead of letting the damn thing die (no pun intended) we’re getting a FINAL DESTINATION 5. But don’t worry, the producers have promised this one will be darker (I guess somewhere down the line the idea of death hunting people down one by one and killing them in the most gruesome ways imaginable became a light hearted concept) in hopes of following in the original’s footsteps. Umm, yay…I guess.

This was by far one of the worst installments.

I’m not trying to pick on Horror films here but they do seem to be a glutton for punishment when it comes to this topic and the abuse started years ago. Remember FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE? They had Freddy’s last dance dressed to kill with Alice Cooper in there playing Freddy’s Dad (which didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me) and the end dream battle was even in 3-D (yes, the idea of 3-D was super cool back then). The FRIDAY THE 13th films were worse though, they dropped the “final” F-bomb as far back as part 4 (FRIDAY THE 13th: THE FINAL CHAPTER) and then AGAIN with JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY (an all out crap fest and slap in the face to any fan of the series but having Freddy’s glove come up and pull Jason’s mask under the sand at the end was still money).

The whole worm thing was a bit much.

To quote Big Worm from FRIDAY, “playing with my money is like playing with my emotions,” and that’s exactly what Hollywood’s doing when they mislead us into thinking these are the final films in any given franchise. Nobody likes to miss the last one and these marketing teams not only know this but use it to their advantage. Even SCARY MOVIE did it (despite making fun of the idea in a sense) by promising no sequels. I’m not bashing sequels per se, but if you’re going to go all out, balls to the wall and give us a final send off worth seeing in theatres, please, for the love of Christ, don’t turn around and slap us in the face by putting out a new one the following year and scrambling to expand all the loose ends that were supposedly tied up for the finale as YES, it pisses us off.