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Let’s face it – any movie released the first week of January is almost always not with us. Used as the dumping ground for the film industry (although this year’s slate for the month looks more enticing than usual), January is the time when audiences catch up on the awards bait or rent summer blockbusters they missed in theaters. So instead of skipping a column this week, I decided to reflect back on the year of 2011 and point out movie trends and decade-old franchises, based on domestic box office, that are with us or not with us.

The Mission: Impossible franchise

Let’s start out with the latest release first. Hatched over 15 years ago, the Tom Cruise-led popcorn action franchise made a return to theaters this Christmas, five years after the last. Looking back, this franchise actually has a slow churn-out rate, with a four to six year interim. I was surprised that Paramount greenlighted another sequel in the seemingly defunct franchise; however, I couldn’t have been happier with their decision, as I loved jaw-dropping action in Ghost Protocol (a title not a "ghoulish" as it thinks it is … and open to puns). Under the directorial eye of Pixar genius Brad Bird (the underrated Ratatouille and the sequel-begging The Incredibles), the IMAX-shot Burj Khalifa sequence was one of the best stunt scenes of the year, and the plot wasn’t too shabby either. After a ho-hum month of December at the box office, M:I-GP is this year’s Christmas miracle, still being with us.

Horror Remakes

Some scary films released this year were horrifying … but not for the right reasons. I love this spooky genre like many others, but audiences were not given much to scream about. The ‘80s remakes of Fright Night 3D (which I highly enjoyed in 2D) and The Thing (the only scare is that you were suckered into paying $10 for the piece of garbage) were DOA, grossing less than their originals … even with the aid of 20-plus years of inflation. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was underwhelming in quality and grosses while the horror quasi-sequels Scream 4 and Final Destination 5, didn’t find much of an audience that enjoyed them besides myself, making the least in their respective franchises. The only horror remake that killed at the box office was The Roommate (I shudder just thinking about how bad it was), which reaped $37.3 million against a budget the size of an average college tuition. While new scares are always welcomed (Paranormal Activity 3 and Insidious were big hits), rehashing the same old ghosts is just not with us.

Fractured Fairytales

While The Princess Bride, Enchanted, and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland won over audiences in the past, 2011 told a much “Grimm”-er tale. Beastly, a tween-driven Beauty and the Beast, grossed a rather ugly $27.9 million, and Red Riding Hood (aka Twilight without vampires) was left alone in the woods with sub-$40 million. Even combined, their grosses couldn’t match the totals, much less attendance, of the first three films mentioned (same goes for their Rottentomatoe-meter scores). This doesn’t bode well for 2012, which brings us two Snow White re-dos, a Jack and the Beanstalk re-invisioning, and an action-packed Hansel and Gretel. This genre might be a favorite of studio execs who can ride off of known names that come for free thanks to the public domain, but at the box office, they do not end up so happily ever after, being not with us.

Colons and Hyphens

We are the generation that will go to our Netflix queues and will not know which film in a popular franchise came first, second, third, and so on… Numbers were used in the past to clarify the chronology of a series; nowadays studio executives are absolutely terrified to add numbers in the title for fear it will make the film sound tired. The only numbers put in movie titles this year were to signify part one or part two, or if the film was in 3D (which was annoyingly, practically everything). Do you want to see Planet of the Apes 7 or The Ape Saga: Rise of the Planet of the Apes: On Stranger Tides – Part 2 in 3D? While there are eight sequels in this year’s top 10 grossing films, only three of them have numbers in them (excluding numbers to represent part one or two). While colon-izing a title does not always provide box office success (ie. Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son and Spy Kids: All the Time in the World – though they did fairly better than expected/deserved), elongated titles are certainly with us.

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