In my recent article on the Fast and Furious franchise, I pointed out that one of the main female characters, played by Michelle Rodriguez, aged a lot worse than the male lead, played by Vin Diesel. The same is obviously true for all female characters in this franchise, and all male characters. There are, however, some interesting implications based on this rather obvious observation.

The main point I want to make is that it is not feasible to build a long-lasting franchise around recurring female characters. They simply age too quickly. Even within a few years their looks decline so much that the effect is quite jarring. A good recent example is Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad (2016) vs The Suicide Squad (2021). She was born in 1990, so she is around 26 years old in the former, and 31 years in the latter. There are some scenes in the former that are quite sexually charged. The latter movie attempts this as well, but the effect falls flat.

Even if we ignore sex appeal, women do not hold up well in the acting business. Apart from the first Terminator movie, Sarah Connor, played by Lina Hamilton, is not depicted as a sexual being. Nonetheless, she went from sex kitten in The Terminator (1984) to granny in Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). The latter is one of the most incongruous performances I have ever seen. Supposedly, she is revisiting the role of tough-as-nails Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Note that Linda Hamilton was born in 1956. Thus, her age in the three movies I mentioned is 28, 35, and 63, respectively. A tough 63 year-old female killing machine is about as believable as Michelle Rodriguez in Fast and Furious playing the sexy and sex-crazed mid-forties wife of Dom Toretto in Fast X.

I think the Europeans have a much better understanding of these dynamics. Let’s approach this problem analytically. In Fast and Furious, the basic formula is dudebros + hot chicks + fast cars + crazy action. The problem is that the producers hold the “hot chicks” variable constant, i.e. some of the hot chicks in first movie show up in this franchise movie after movie until they are in their 40s or 50s, and still supposed to be playing hot chicks. Hollywood wokeness made it worse because the latter movies actively want to push the equation “hot chicks = old, not-hot chicks” onto the viewer. Now, onto one of the better-known European franchises, The Transporter with Jason Statham. This movie also has a simple formula: “Jason Statham + hot chick + fighting + car chases”. However, unlike with the Fast and Furious, the hot chick is different in each movie. In the first one, it was a hot Asian, the second one has a white, blonde sex bomb, and the third one a flirtatious Ukrainian slut, daughter of a corrupt, er, rich politician.

The Transporter franchise ended after three entries. (There was also a reboot a while ago, with a new male lead, but I have not watched that one.) Each movie did well, albeit the third one performed a bit worse than the second one, in terms of return on investment. Quite possibly the second one did best partly because of Kate Nauta:

The Transporter formula, with Jason Statham, could have gone on for a while longer. However, imagine a story in which there was always the same main actress or, worse, the titular “transporter” was not played by Jason Statham but some chick: whoever may be chosen, she would age so quickly that getting more than two movies made that had a modicum of success would be extremely unlikely.

Moving on from bashing actresses, I think that a franchise cannot be effectively built around a male actor either. Sure, the runway is a lot longer, but how many male actors are there that can play a strong lead role in an action-movie franchise for more than perhaps ten years? There are countless examples of franchises losing their appeal as their male leads age and become less convincing. Arguably, this happened with the Fast and Furious franchise, too. The first movie is pretty great, with the youthful and handsome Paul Walker and a still fairly young Vin Diesel. In Fast X, two decades later, Vin Diesel is still in a pretty decent shape, thanks to steroids, but he no longer has the same screen presence. On a side note, the Fast and Furious franchise should probably have ended with Fast Five or, at the latest, with Furious 7, after the death of Paul Walker.

I wrote about the Terminator franchise above. Sure, Linda Hamilton does not hold up well, but neither does Schwarzenegger. Yet, he shows up in almost every movie of the franchise. This is sad to see, considering that he was close to his physical peak in The Terminator (1984), in his roid-maxxed physique, and only looks worse and worse in each movie. A good point could be made that the first movie should never have been developed into a franchise as it told a complete story. Die Hard is another franchise that comes to mind. Bruce Willis gets older and older, yet we are supposed to believe that he is at peak performance in each movie. This franchise is likely dead, though. In any case, Bruce Willis is retired from acting, possibly due to the vaxx, so we will not see him getting in trouble again as the one-man army John McClane.

I think the only way to set up a truly long-lasting franchise is to have it center around a concept, not particular actors. Think of the James Bond franchise: James Bond is the best spy in the world, no matter who plays him. The same could have worked for Die Hard or Fast and Furious. On a side note, this approach works with women too, albeit only in porn, as long-running series such as Girls Gone Wild (295 entries in five years), Cock Gobblers (567 releases in 32 years), and Hungry Holes (699 releases in 22 years) impressively demonstrate. However, probably a better approach is to not rely on the fame of lead actors at all. For instance, the Godzilla movie franchise has been around since 1954. Even the appearance of the monster changes between movies, within reason. Godzilla may still be around in a few hundred years. Every actor alive today will be forgotten by then.