8.The First Film Requires a Tedious Origin Story
7.The Sequels Must Have Multiple Villains
6. In Part 2, the Hero Must Reveal His Identity to Someone
5. Part 3 Must Feature an Evil Version of the Hero
4.The Hero Must Lose His Powers at Some Point
3.The Bad Guys Must Invade the Hero's Secret Hideout
2.A Villain Must Redeem Himself
1.The Fifth Film Reboots the Franchise
Highlights:
I think it would be fun to try and use each and every one of these rules in a comic book series.Rule 8. In Spider-Man 3, the previous origin story is changed so that the current villain (The Sandman, Marko Cain) is now the murderer of Uncle Ben, a plot point based entirely on the premise that none of the fans owned a DVD of the first film.
Rule 7. Michael Keaton's Batman fought the Joker first, then found himself simultaneously taking on the combination of the Penguin and Christopher Walken.
Rule 6. Michael Keaton, also in an effort to get into somebody's pants, reveals his secret identity in Batman Returns to his girlfriend and the Penguin, also revealing a previously unknown fact about Batman: his mask is made out of Fruit Roll-Ups.
Rule 5. Most of us are still having nightmares about Spider-Man 3, where Peter Parker, under the control of the alien symbiote, turned into the love child of Alex from A Clockwork Orange and John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever, while looking oddly like a lesbian biker.
Rule 4. Perhaps the most the most mysterious of power losses comes in Spider-Man 2, where Spider-Man's powers start to slowly fade away for seemingly no reason, yet conveniently return when Mary Jane is kidnapped by Dr. Octopus.
Rule 3. This rule has the Cock Block Corollary: If the superhero is having trouble getting laid, letting the girl "invade" his secret headquarters will always do the trick (see Superman 2, Batman and both Fantastic Four movies.)
Rule 2. But on top of all that you have Sandman, who goes through a similar series of steps, but solely within the third film. He gets pity banked in the beginning of the film through the manipulative use of a sick young daughter, does several dastardly deeds and then does an abrupt heel turn right at the end by apologizing to Spider-Man and sobbing like a little bitch. This seems to set off a chain reaction that has all of the characters in the film spending the last 10 minutes of screen time sobbing.
Rule 1. The Rocky franchise got more and more inflated over the course of four films, culminating with Rocky, a legally retarded boxer, ending the Cold War.
