Parody is a fine art that, when done wrong, can look like imitation or, even worse, bullying. There's an element of reverence and understanding that needs to be reached before you can really lay something bare for the purposes of comedy, which is something the Scary Movie ilk don't seem to get; Iron Man turning up and farting is neither funny nor parody. There needs to be a real affection for the source, otherwise things can come across as spiteful; Airplane! would have been just an ill-framed gag reel if it wasn't clear that director team ZAZ really loved the disaster genre. Many movies leave themselves open for parody - how a film ripping into explosion laden blockbusters hasn't emerged yet we don't know. However, some don't give their parodists a chance to get in on the act - they do it themselves. With movie studios enamoured with franchises it's quite easy for a series to go on much longer than it should and change before our very eyes. Normally it's just a film forgetting what made it work in the first place - think the likes of Robocop and Terminator turning themselves into fun outings for the whole family - leading to some pretty irate fans. But not always. Today we're not just looking at franchises that lost their way, but ones that went so far down that path they ended up being a parody of themselves.
