Day 428, Franchise cinema reviews

There's a new film out which is being described as part of a franchise.

I'm pretty sure that that means if we have a whip round and collect a bit of cash we can approach Disney and buy into the franchise and start producing our own films.  Or is this a misleading modern usage of franchise that is just used to identify a long running sequence of things, like a series perhaps.

The last time I saw one of the 'franchise' was the first film in the series, now apparently renamed the fourth in the series.

Fourth in the series, is that some sort of joke?

No, the owners of the intellectual property (IP) take themselves far too seriously and it isn't a joke.

Are the owners of the IP taking the piss?

Probably, it is very lucrative.

The last time I saw one of these films was in 1977.

That's discounting the time I was at a mates and he played a bit of a DVD of the one that was apparently now the first in the series - the one from 1999 - I was pissed and there appeared to be some terrible CGI thing happening.

Sorry, distracted by some weird psychedelic memory.

The last time I saw one of these films all the way through was here at Temple Twins cinema on Cheetham Hill Road in Manchester.  The cinema originally had a single screen but was split into two and 'twinned'.

Temple Cinema in its 1959 heyday, picture courtesy of Manchester Libraries

Me and mates saw all sorts of films here as well as Star Wars.  Around the same time was Superman* and Monty Python's Holy Grail**.  Later there was Friday the Thirteenth***, a bunch of other tedious teen-horror flicks, a double bill of McVicar**** and Midnight Express***** and no doubt others.

Many of the later ones were X rated but 14-15 year olds could happily get in without bother - there was nothing in any of those films that living in Cheetham Hill wouldn't have prepared you for.

Temple Twins Cinema was apparently demolished in 1983, a few years after we last visited.





*Superman was way better than Star Wars, no it definitely was, Star Wars was pulp space opera.
**First saw Holy Grail at the Odeon on Deansgate but had to see it again, nearly died laughing, twice.
***Another one described as a 'franchise', honestly what is up with people.
****Dull, dull, dull, and dull.
*****Pretty good, although put me off visiting Turkey.


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