Agent Palmer

Special Report by Agent Z

2015’s summer blockbusters have consisted primarily of reboots and sequels. Many older franchises have released new films in efforts to revitalize their fandom. Mad Max: Fury Road and Jurassic World were success stories that Terminator Genisys sought to duplicate.

Unfortunately, rebooting Skynet proved predictably problematic.

Remember that time when Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum saved the world together?

Of course you do, because Independence Day was the highest grossing film of 1996. In case you’re wondering, it beat out Twister, Mission: Impossible, Jerry Maguire, and Ransom, which, with ID4, make up the Top 5 highest domestic grossing movies of that year.

In order to increase sales of toys marketers have always used Saturday Morning Cartoon commercial breaks, but some went to the extreme creating whole new brand monsters that took on a lives of their own. From He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to Transformers, Care Bears, G.I. Joe, Pound Puppies, and countless others, let’s look at the franchises of in variety of mediums spawned from toys, in order to increase the sale of those toys.

Keep in mind this was 30 years ago, before the marketers of today realized that releasing toys to a movie, will boost a movie.

(Spoiler Alert: You Have Been Warned)

I fell in love with Jurassic Park when it was first released. In fact, it was one of the first movies I remember seeing opening weekend as a kid. My parents took a ten-year old me to watch it at a drive-in!

So it was with great anticipation that I mused over the trailer last December, after having exposed my love for the first Jurassic Park film earlier last summer.

Is it Avengers: Age of Ultron best movie yet? No, I don’t think so… Is it the most important movie to date in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Yes, it is and more importantly it will be and that is exactly why I don’t think it is the best.

I enjoyed it, it was very entertaining, but it just seems like as a film it was trying to do too much.