In film industry, filmmaking has gone from a beautiful art form made for expression into a lucrative business concerned with only the thought of money a film will produce. Although this has been true in American society for years, large studios have been making movies for economic gain since big studio films became a thing. Currently, the moving making empire has become even more of a money making business than it was in the past, specifically done by the multitudes of sequels that have been made recently.

Turning films into a series that continues the plot for years has become a profitable practice in big studio film making, in order to make money off of the fan base that ensues from the films. Although this tactic has been enacted by the filmmaking businesses since the 1970s, with films such as the Star Wars franchise, along with other films such as the Halloween and Friday the 13^th series. Turning films into big franchises has become more of a common practice. One example a big film industry that turn films into a long continuous series is the Marvel film franchise.

The Marvel film company turns its movies into huge franchises is by taking the first movie, such as Iron Man, and then continuing the plot, allowing the movie to go on, in the case of Iron Man six years, taking the movie actors who agreed to star in the films and keeping them with the same plot. Additionally, according to various news sources, the many franchises of the Marvel film company have no intention of stopping, as they plan to continue further adapting series into the late 2020s. While the Marvel film company is notorious for turning films into franchises, this is done for many other movie series.

Keeping in touch with the theme of horror movies becoming franchises, the Paranormal Activity movies have become another singular film to be turned into a franchise, this time for the worse. When the first Paranormal Activity movie came out in 2007, it was seen as a well-made independent movie on small budget by an unknown director and actors that became regarded as one of the better horror movies to use to home video format, in order to replicate an actual haunting. Nevertheless, after the movie became both a commercial and critical success, it was picked up to make a sequel, which, in turn, resulted in a total of six Paranormal Activity movies being created, each one being progressively being worse.

Turning movies into franchises creates movies that are extremely subpar, one way being that plot devices are mostly repeated throughout the movie series. Take for instance many of the Marvel movies that have been created. Although all of the movies are different because of the characters and setting, the films have extremely similar plots devices. In my opinion, this is intentionally done by the film company in order to ensure that audiences are going to see the movies, as, by focusing more on action and graphics that plot, the Marvel film company is able to entice audiences with action, rather than with plot.

Additionally, turning movies into franchises compromises the artistic merit of the actors that are in the films. Concerning the many Marvel movies, actors such as Robert Downey Jr., a well renowned and celebrated actor, is just being turned into another action star, as, in my opinion, the Marvel movies are more focused on creating characters that are more suitable to fight, rather than to actually portray a decent plot.

Turning movies into franchises is a practice that has to stop, as it takes away the fun of developing plots, as well as taking away artistic merit from actors.