Franchise yourself but learn from Hollywood

I was reading an article the other day that referred to the premiere of Fast and the Furious 6 and what makes a successful franchise. From 50 years of Bond to seven Police Academy movies, Hollywood always has a way of making the most of a good franchise and the worst of a bad one. Often the need to make another movie is driven by the pressure of investors and scriptwriters are called upon to pen a sequel, a prequel and the eyebrow raising reboot but in Leadership, Learning and Life we are always looking for ways to improve and develop, so is there a unique formula that we can learn from? Let's take a look at some of the good and bad lessons

Keep things simple - Okay, so it may have slipped your attention if you are not a regular reader but I like Star Trek, and just last night I was in fully freaky geeky mode at the launch of the latest release Into Darkness, an awesome prequel from a different time line (now there's a twist) . Star Trek has both good and bad examples. In forty plus years the Star Trek franchise has got it right and got it wrong on many occasions, part of the reason was the due to of some of the characters and the story lines they ran with, take Data from next generation for example, a real classic case of Pinnochio syndrome, he wants to be human but then when you hit him with an emotion chip he wants to be android (iOS wasn't available at the time) then he has an evil twin, a crazy "father/creator" a Borg queen stalker and on and on it went. Perhaps if they hadn't tried to replace a Vulcan with an android it would have been better. The reason the latest films have worked is they have stuck with the tried and tested formula. The prequel is sometimes where you can look for help. If you have a situation or something you need to learn from sometimes you have to go back a little further, Data mining if you pardon the pun.

Familiarity - Who doesn't like Toy Story? What makes it so special? It's the association with the characters. We all had or have played with a Mr Potato Head, a Slinky Dog and pretended to make calls with a Fisher Price phone. What is even more incredible is that Pixar were able to introduce us to new characters such as Woody and Buzz Lightyear on the strength of the other toys and they have both become almost more iconic than the original real toys. The success of  Toy Story 3 is unrivalled as the highest grossing animated film of all time, unique in that it is rare for sequels to do better than the original and the formula of a successful sequel can be looked at when wanting to improve ourselves, build better teams and become great leaders. Toy Story believed in its ability to bring a story to life from another perspective. Stepping out of your own perceptions and opinions and thinking about how it looks through someone else's eyes is a good way to become familiar with another persons way of thinking. This will help to build understanding of a situation, relationships and ultimately success.

Warning..........let me advise caution. Rebooting the franchise, repeating mistakes and wasting time. Now first let me say that everything I have saw so far about Man of Steel looks good and I will no doubt be again front of the IMAX queue to see it......but...when you think of Superman what do you think of? Is it the late Christopher Reeve on his perilous journey of milking a franchise whereby the movies descended into farcical sequels? The awful sickly sweet Lois & Clark or the reasonable (if a couple of seasons too long) Smallville? So why didn't anyone think of Brandon Routh? and who is saying "who" right now? Well because it was really a non sequel. Superman Returns tried to think prequel, sequel and a little bit of reboot all at once and by doing so became forgettable and so it comes to pass that the next churn out of Superman is a reboot that will try repair the damage and wipe our memory of all that has went before by telling a story of a boy who falls to earth from Krypton, taken in by a farmer and his wife, struggles through adolescent years, gets looked up in the phone book by General Zod, dons a cape, wears his pants outside his trousers (and you can't go wrong if you do that) and saves the world. Now there is nothing wrong with a reboot but in most cases it's like doing what you have always done and getting what you always get. It's okay to take risks, don't always revert to type if things are tough. If you act too cautious sometimes people can get suspicious that the consistency is a fear of improvement, others a little more cynical that you just can't change. Only reboot if you can add something different.


Movies and Hollywood are great places to learn from, you just have to follow the script, your script.

That Learning Dude @LearningXDude