Some of these changes were gradual, others less so.
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00:00It's impossible to tell what will happen with a film once it's released into the wider world.
00:05As an artist, you have to accept that, to some degree, your art is no longer yours once it's in the public sphere.
00:12Still, few movies have started off as one thing and then pivoted so far towards something else as these 10 franchise starters.
00:19For a multitude of reasons, it's baffling to look back at where these series started versus what we know them to be today.
00:26So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture here with 10 film franchises that became something else entirely.
00:33Number 10. The Chronicles of Riddick
00:35Pitch Black was a sci-fi film with horror elements released in the year 2000.
00:40It tracked the crew of a spaceship that had crashed on a planet about to undergo an eclipse.
00:44Only problem, it was inhabited by cave-dwelling creatures that will kill them all once the sun is blocked.
00:50What are the chances?
00:50Thankfully, they had Richard B. Riddick in their crew, a criminal with genetically enhanced eyes.
00:57Played by your boy Vin Diesel, Riddick helped the crew escape the planet, redeeming himself somewhat in the process.
01:03Diesel's performance as Riddick was one of his first standout moments and clearly caught the attention of the film's producers.
01:09The second film in the series, The Chronicles of Riddick from 2004, was entirely focused on him.
01:15As well as switching out the lead character, the movie also became more action-oriented, and it also had about four times more money to play with.
01:23A third film, entitled Just Riddick, came out in 2013 and was just as action-heavy as the last.
01:29The series has become a long way from Vin and his shiny eyes running around in the dark.
01:34Number 9. Evil Dead
01:36In 1981, Sam Raimi announced himself on the horror stage with The Evil Dead, a film all about the dangers of reading.
01:44Five college students come across a version of The Book of the Dead, and inadvertently summon a group of demonic deadites hellbent on taking them all down.
01:52Survivors Ash and Linda make it into the next movie, Evil Dead 2, although Linda gets binned off after about 15 minutes.
01:58This sets the stage for Ash, played by Bruce Campbell, of course, to become a solo horror icon.
02:05Evil Dead 2 and its follow-up Army of Darkness lean much more into comedy than the movie that started it all.
02:11Ash really gets into his action-hero one-liners, and there are far more comical moments pepper throughout their respective run-times.
02:18By the time Army of Darkness rolled around, Raimi fully embraced the laugh, setting the whole thing in the Middle Ages after Ash accidentally travelled back in time.
02:27The 2013 remake got things back on the spooky path, but nobody really cared all that much.
02:33Evil Dead is one of the best examples of comedy horror out there, and there's nothing wrong with that.
02:38Number 8. Rambo
02:39First Blood from 1982 was the first big-screen appearance of Sly as Vietnam War vet John Rambo.
02:46After a run-in with the local police triggers his PTSD, Rambo violently escapes from jail before hiding out in the nearby forest as the cops relentlessly pursue him.
02:54He's a complex anti-hero in this movie.
02:57He causes untold damage, but is also a man without a home, left to rot by the country he's so bravely served.
03:04He doesn't even kill anyone unless it's by accident.
03:06Don't get too attached to this version of Rambo, though. He's completely gone by the series' next instalment.
03:12Rambo First Blood Part 2, which makes no sense grammatically, came out three years later and transformed the title character into a full-on action man.
03:20His tendency to blow up, maim, and kill as many people as possible doesn't slow down over the course of the next three films.
03:28A once-promising character transformed into yet another meathead. That's the real trauma right there.
03:34Number 7. Mad Max
03:36It might surprise you to learn that a film series called Mad Max actually started off fairly realistically.
03:43George Miller's first trip to a dystopian Down Under doesn't actually take place during a full-blown apocalypse.
03:48It is instead set during the breakdown of society as the country struggles to come to terms with mass oil shortages.
03:54Mel Gibson plays Max Rokotansky, a police officer tasked with keeping order in a crumbling world.
04:01By the time the second Mad Max movie comes along, the world hasn't just crumbled, it's disintegrated.
04:07Max now finds himself a hermitic survivor in a world ravaged by full-on nuclear war.
04:12It is this film, called The Road Warrior in the US, that introduces the whole weird mutant people element of the franchise.
04:19The third film, Beyond Thunderdome, takes this concept to the extreme. It has Tina Turner in it for goodness sake.
04:262015's Fury Road returned the series to slightly more grounded roots, but it was still utterly mental.
04:32With that film garnering so much success, expect to see Miller lean more into the zaniness of the franchise going forward.
04:39Maybe he'll even get Tina back.
04:41Number 6. Jaws
04:42In 1975, Steven Spielberg changed everything when he made the original blockbuster Jaws.
04:48He certainly changed everything for the world's shark population, who have never recovered.
04:53It was tense, it was frightening, it had just the right balance of action, horror and intrigue.
04:59Jaws was a massive hit, and then came the sequels.
05:03Jaws 2, released three years later, was a decent if unnecessary follow-up.
05:07Jaws 3D, though, that's when the rudder came fully off the boat.
05:11And as for Jaws The Revenge? Don't even get us started.
05:15Alright, get us started, because it's actually quite funny.
05:17Ignoring the events of the first two sequels, always a good sign, the fourth Jaws film is totally nuts.
05:23Not only does the shark follow the Brody family to the Bahamas, but Brody's wife Ellen also develops psychic powers.
05:30Like she can sense when the shark is going to attack.
05:33It's completely nonsensical, and earned the film a well-deserved 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is probably too high, in all honesty.
05:40Number 5, RoboCop.
05:43Despite sounding like it was tailor-made to sell toys, the first RoboCop movie is a really bloody affair.
05:50The film has an 18 rating in the UK today, and got the dreaded X rating from the American Motion Picture Association,
05:56which would have killed its initial theatrical run.
05:59Thankfully, the rating was eventually lowered, and fans got to see it.
06:02The violence and gore was still present when Officer Alex Murphy returned for the sequel.
06:07Not for number 3, though.
06:09Number 3 was very different.
06:11This movie was intentionally geared towards a family audience, so cut down massively on the violence and swearing.
06:18Not the swearing!
06:19That's the best part of this film series about a robotic police officer.
06:22RoboCop 3 completely zapped the franchise of everything fans loved about it.
06:28It was meant to be an over-the-top bloodfest, but now it was just another sci-fi series designed to get pre-teens into movie theatres.
06:35It failed at this, by the way, drawing less money than the original film despite having almost twice the budget.
06:41At least RoboCop can take some comfort knowing that he's not the only android on this list, but he'll be back later.
06:48Number 4, A Nightmare on Elm Street.
06:50Freddy Krueger remains one of horror's greatest ever monsters, despite several decades' worth of attempts to neuter him.
06:57First stalking us in our dreams in the original 1984 Nightmare movie, Freddy has been back eight times across various sequels, reboots and spin-offs.
07:06And yeah, he's changed a bit over the years.
07:08He started out as a genuinely frightening villain, able to assault people when they were at their most vulnerable.
07:15His disfigured face and iconic bladed glove weapon soon became classic horror iconography.
07:20Over time, though, the character became less of a relentless killer and more of a punchline.
07:25He started cracking jokes, dressing up in funny costumes and pulling very odd faces.
07:30He wasn't scary anymore, which was a crying shame.
07:33Wes Craven did his best to revitalise his creation in his new Nightmare film, but that couldn't undo years of damage done to the character.
07:40Once Freddy's edge was blunted, the films really started to go downhill, to the point where there are now more bad Nightmare films than good ones.
07:49Number 3, The Terminator.
07:51Before he became obsessed with shoving blue people down our throats, James Cameron made 1984's The Terminator.
07:57It's now become an iconic tale.
08:00Machines take over the Earth, humans rebel, machines send Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to kill human resistance leader before he is born.
08:07Chuck in some sunglasses and Arnie's bare butt, and that's basically the movie.
08:11The first Terminator film is a slasher film dressed up in sci-fi clothes.
08:16Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese are relentlessly pursued by the mechanical menace, who is as unmoving and cold as any great horror villain.
08:22The picture is just darker too. Literally, some scenes are kind of hard to see.
08:27Seven years later, Cameron returns to the series for Terminator 2 Judgment Day.
08:32This time, he presented an out-and-out action thriller, complete with car chases, shootouts, and enough leather to make a vegan puke.
08:39The horror elements of the past movie were completely gone, traded in for one-liners and cool fight sequences.
08:45Not that this was a bad thing, mind you, as Terminator 2 is often considered one of the greatest action movies of all time.
08:51If only the same could be said for all of the films after that.
08:55Number 2. Harry Potter
08:57It is often said of the Harry Potter movies that they grew up with their audience, which is the perfect way of describing them.
09:04The first two films are children's movies, through and through.
09:07Everything from the music, to the colour palette, to the action screamed,
09:10Take your ten-year-old to see me!
09:12And, to their immense credit, this worked.
09:15As the lead trio grew up or weren't cute anymore, the films took a decidedly darker tone.
09:20This kicked off with the appearance of the Dementor in Prisoner of Azkaban,
09:24a moment that wet the pants of unsuspecting children the world over.
09:28Things shifted again when Voldemort made his return to the land of the living,
09:32giving Harry et al. a physical embodiment of evil to fight with.
09:36By the time the final two movies were being shown, these were not kids' films anymore.
09:41Imagine how out of place a game of Quidditch or Wizard's Chess would have looked in either of the Deathly Hallows films.
09:47And, equally, just think what the reaction would have been like to the Bethilda Bagshot sequence
09:51if it had made its way into the Philosopher's Stone.
09:53That's not a world worth thinking about.
09:55Number one, The Fast and the Furious.
09:58Vin Diesel starts the list, Vin Diesel ends the list.
10:01How poetic.
10:02Well, as poetic as supercars jumping through buildings can be.
10:05In 2001, one of the biggest, most ridiculous film franchises of all time revved into life
10:11as undercover cop Brian O'Connor attempted to bring down Diesel's street-racing kingpin Dominic Toretto.
10:17The film ends with the two men forming a friendship.
10:20Some might even call it a family, but the story was far from over.
10:23Since initially meeting, Brian, Dom, and their friends have outrun helicopters, jumped cars across skyscrapers,
10:30deflected nuclear missiles, parachuted in cars, and gone to actual space.
10:35This series used to be about street racing. How did this happen?
10:39The Fast movies aren't car movies anymore.
10:42They're superhero flicks filled with impossible feats of action, garish gadgets, and shady villains.
10:47They are completely ludicrous, but hey, if that's what you want out of a film, you honestly can't do much better.
10:53And that concludes our list.
10:55If you think we missed any, then do let us know in the comments below,
10:58and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
11:02Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there,
11:04and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
11:08I've been Ellie with WhatCulture.
11:09I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.