In the world of big franchises, it seems like just about anything can get a small army of sequels. One silly action movie can spawn an ongoing series, even as no one appears to be watching the individual entries. As the franchise develops behind the scenes, every new entry in the franchise unironically calling itself the Has Fallen series becomes gradually harder to ignore.
How do you build a franchise around a frighteningly generic story like Olympus Has Fallen? Evidently, all it takes is a new location and a second take on the same concept. However, watching these adventures demonstrates that there is a certain appeal to the comical action series.
Olympus Has Fallen is a bizarre film. It was the first screenwriting effort of Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, both of whom have worked almost exclusively on this film and its sequels. The spec script was snagged by Millennium Films almost immediately. A lot of the public profile of the film stemmed from the fact that Sony also had a film about saving the White House from terrorists in production at the same time. Luckily for Millennium, they got Antoine Fuqua to direct and Gerard Butler to star. The visionary behind Training Day and The Magnificent Seven brought some real talent to the film, allowing it to carry on even after he left. Butler, on the other hand, is the underpinning of the series. Both in the sense that his performance is key to the franchise and that he's a producer. The Has Fallen films have raked in a whopping $523,526,638 on a total budget of only $170 million. It's safe to say we'll be seeing a few more of these films.
The Has Fallen series follows the adventures of Mike Banning, as portrayed by Gerard Butler. Banning is a Secret Service agent who is removed from duty after he fails to save the First Lady from a disastrous car accident. He's demoted and given a dull desk job, but, while he's living in disgrace, the White House is attacked by a North Korean terrorist group. Banning murders his way through the invasion, saving the lives of both President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and Speaker of the House Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman.) This earns Banning back his Secret Service position, putting him in place for the sequels. London Has Fallen sees Banning travel with Asher to the state funeral of the Prime Minister, whereupon it is attacked by terrorists, leaving the agent to save the day again. Finally, Angel Has Fallen follows Banning's attempt to prove his innocence after he's accused of a drone attack on Trumbull, who is now the President. At least three more films and a TV series are set to follow.
The appeal of the Has Fallen franchise closely mirrors that of the Taken movies, the Equalizer movies, or the late-stage Die Hard films. They're action movies aimed at a slightly older audience. They're almost comically violent, they center on a single middle-aged man as an unstoppable action hero, and the enemies are broad stereotypes of communist and Islamic boogeymen. There's something a bit insidious about the films when viewed from a political angle, but they certainly don't invite that level of analysis. Fuqua's direction of the first film is the smartest aspect of the franchise at large, and he was working with a lot of setbacks. Olympus Has Fallen, a movie about terrorists taking the White House, was filmed almost entirely in Shreveport, Louisiana. The location that the entire film is based around had to be digitally added in during post-production. It's a slapped-together film, aimed at an unpleasant demographic, but there's something inherently funny about its bombastic lack of integrity as art.
The Has Fallen series has been an object of decidedly mixed critical opinion. Both Butler and Fuqua were duly praised for their success with the first film, but just about every other aspect was mocked. The level of violence clashes with the kindergarten-level writing, the hero lacks a personality, the villains lack basic character traits, and the closest thing it has to creativity is a list of locations that could conceivably fall. The biggest problem by far is the tone. The films take themselves way too seriously, fawning over these symbols of national pride as if the franchise has anything to say about them. These issues would tank just about any other action franchise, but the Has Fallen series just keeps popping up. Arguably, these issues aren't bugs, they're features.
There's something so appealing about a movie in which everything is taken seriously and nothing seems to actually matter. There's some unironic fun to be had with Olympus Has Fallen, but the ongoing franchise is fun in the way that 80s Blockbuster rentals used to be. Check out the Has Fallen series to finally understand the kind of action movie your dad would enjoy.