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Why do you think it is impossible to create good Terminator and Predator sequels past part 2 (I stand firm that predator 2 is underappreciated)
Because the more sequels you add to any franchise, the more it gets diluted. You have your novel idea, that's the first movie. You have questions arising or undeveloped plot points from the first movie, that's your second. Maybe you can get a third out of it, but from that point on, you're just trapped in Flanderization (see all the slasher movie/horror movie franchises which run out of ideas until they're at the point of "for the fifteenth time, the dead serial killer is resurrected but this time in, uh, spins wheel of fortune space!")
Ironically I think Flanderisation is what made the Fast & Furious franchise succeed. The story was only ever an excuse for over the top stunts and car fighting, and each sequel progressively shrinks the story and inflates the stunts to increasingly absurd proportions (including cars in space).
Yeah, I think for something where the plot is only an excuse for the ACTION!!!, you can get away with it (though as we've seen, Marvel have managed to milk the cow dry, with people finally getting burned out on the plethora of movies being released). I might go see a fourth Iron Man movie. I'm unlikely to go see Ant-Man. When we get to "nobody knows or cares about this character, why are they getting a movie?", you stay home and see if there's anything on Netflix.
Iron Man was the first "nobody knows or cares about this character". He was the best B-list guy that Marvel Studios could pull out of a hat, and they settled for him because their A-list characters (Spiderman, Wolverine and the X-Men, Hulk, Fantastic Four) all had movie IP either sold to or at least encumbered by other studios. They had him played by Robert Downey Jr., then a C-list actor most famous for tabloid-bait substance abuse problems. It just turned out that RDJ was still an excellent actor, who managed to answer the "why are they getting a movie" question so well that we forgot it was ever even a question.
Later they started digging into their D-list characters ... and they still managed to hit it out of the park: Guardians of the Galaxy is the top-rated non-sequel movie in the MCU.
The problem isn't that nobody cares about C-list Ant-Man (whose first movie is higher-rated than Iron Man 2 or Iron Man 3), the problem is that the damn producers, directors, and writers stopped caring about Ant-Man. In Ant-Man 3 there's no significant character growth, meager personal/emotional stakes, no proper utilization of the drama they set up for him in Endgame, a cast crowded to the point that he felt like an extra in his own movie, and "ACTION!!!" that's so flooded with CGI that even the most basic physical conflict feels about as tense as playing a video game. Ant-Man seems to primarily be there because giving him top billing was expected to lure in an audience (which your testimony suggests was somewhat pointless), and their major concern for the audience was that we be exposed to a plot focused on setting up Kang as a multi-movie villain (which turned out to be completely pointless after they had to fire Jonathan Majors).
Their new plan is to bring in Doctor Doom (an A-list villain), played for some reason by RDJ (now an A-list actor), but you still might want to consider staying home and browsing Netflix, because dragging back RDJ suggests that they're still focusing on how to lure in an audience rather than on A-list writing.
Doctor Doom could be great but (1) you need to have a decent actor playing Reed Richards as the deuteragonist and (2) you need a really good writer not to make Doom stupid, Richards weak and stupid, and avoid temptations about ret-conning or making the villain too sympathetic and (3) yes, you do need Reed Richards, Victor has set up his entire notion of revenge against him even if stepping back and looking at it as an outsider that's dumb, Victor and (4) don't forget that he's ruler of Latveria and well-regarded by his people since he is actually a decent ruler, don't make him some kind of 'this is commentary on Trump authoritarian fascist dictator Amerikkka nazi bad guy'.
I don't trust any studio right now to pull that off.
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