Endgame and the oth­er 22^nd entries in movie fran­chise history

Avengers: Endgame marks the clos­ing of an unprece­dent­ed era of block­buster film­mak­ing, the cli­max of a cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse that has spanned 22 entries. While there are count­less exam­ples of sequels, pre­quels, three­quels and more, it’s rare that a fran­chise get to the 22 film mark while still cap­tur­ing the public’s imag­i­na­tion. There are, how­ev­er, a hand­ful of instances – we’ll leave it to you to judge whether Kevin Feige and com­pa­ny turned to any these for inspiration…

The MCU has cre­at­ed an unfor­get­table lega­cy, but what it’s real­ly been lack­ing is a mix­ture of bawdy humour and grit­ty real-world pol­i­tics. While worse times were to come for the Car­ry On fran­chise, Con­ve­nience was the first film in the series to lose mon­ey at the box office. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a tri­umph though; its por­tray­al of union work­ers as lazy, oppor­tunis­tic and prone to strik­ing at a moment’s notice chimed with the real-life ten­sions between the unions and British gov­ern­ment in the ​’70s.

Anoth­er part of the film’s unde­ni­able glo­ry is Car­ry On stal­wart Sid James’ char­ac­ter being writ­ten as a down­trod­den hus­band, a direct response to com­plaints about the actor’s treat­ment of women in Car­ry On Hen­ry. The Avengers might rep­re­sent the best of human­i­ty and soci­ety, but can you hon­est­ly say that Endgame wouldn’t be improved by the team vis­it­ing a pub called The Whip­pit Inn?

Par­al­lels can be drawn between the 22^nd instal­ments of both the MCU and Toho’s Godzil­la fran­chise, giv­en that this 1995 dis­as­ter movie fea­tured a pass­ing of the torch. This mon­u­men­tal fight between The King of Mon­sters and sea crea­tures known as Destoroy­ah result­ed in the title character’s death, his lega­cy being car­ried on by Godzil­la Jr. The film was well received, with many con­sid­er­ing it one of the best Godzil­la films ever made thanks to impres­sive effects and a rev­er­ence to the orig­i­nal film. With the Avengers series now at a cross­roads, Mar­vel may want to take notes from Godzilla’s 23^rd instal­ment from 1998, which pit­ted the icon­ic mon­ster against erm, Fer­ris Bueller.

007’s short­est and most vio­lent adven­ture is the type of movie that says ​‘who needs a script when you can just shoot things?’ Set with­in the excit­ing and sexy world of Boli­vian nat­ur­al resources, Daniel Craig’s Bond inves­ti­gates the mys­te­ri­ous organ­i­sa­tion Quan­tum who, hand­i­ly, all wear ​‘Q’ badges just in case they were in dan­ger of going unrecog­nised. Released just as the MCU was get­ting start­ed, the super­hero franchise’s tra­di­tion of putting small ref­er­ences to oth­er char­ac­ters in the back­ground was clear­ly inspired a scene in this film, where an extra can be seen sweep­ing thin air.

The sto­ry of Ash and the oth­er Poké­mon attempt­ing to save their town from a for­est fire is both the 22^nd and 21^st instal­ment in the Poké­verse (2011’s Poké­mon the Movie: Black — Vic­ti­ni and Reshi­ram and White — Vic­ti­ni and Zekrom are two parts of the same sto­ry released sep­a­rate­ly, if we’re get­ting technical).

Endgame could well have tak­en inspi­ra­tion from The Pow­er of Us, as it fol­lows a host of dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters work­ing towards the same goal despite dif­fer­ent moti­va­tions – though the objec­tive of sav­ing the for­est is a slight­ly small­er-scale than sav­ing the entire uni­verse. The film’s envi­ron­men­tal theme proved so effec­tive that the pro­duc­ers of the Amer­i­can Poké­mon films have ignored the for­mu­la entire­ly for Detec­tive Pikachu, giv­ing the series’ most beloved char­ac­ter a deer­stalk­er and Ryan Reynolds’ voice.

Every long-run­ning fran­chise ben­e­fits from a glo­ri­ous return. Matthew Lil­lard, the live action Shag­gy in the James Gunn-penned Scoo­by Doo films, lent his voice to the ani­mat­ed equiv­a­lent as the Scoo­by gang inves­ti­gate spooky goings on at a mag­ic acad­e­my. The 22^nd Scoo­by Doo movie was a clear inspi­ra­tion for Marvel’s tra­di­tion­al post cred­it teas­es, with those hang­ing around after Abracadabra-Doo’s cred­its being treat­ed to the Mys­tery Machine’s sen­tient GPS (voiced by come­di­an Dave Attell) telling them to move on with their lives! Time will tell, how­ev­er, if Spi­der-man: Far from Home can pos­si­bly live up to the 23^rd film in this series, Scoo­by Doo! Camp Scare.