ABSTRACT
Moving beyond more familiar considerations of commercial imperatives and audience responses, this chapter discusses the global screen franchise in relation to questions of value and meaning. The chapter examines how a series of screen texts that involve a fundamental structure of Sisyphean repetition might achieve meaningfulness precisely as a result of themes and ideas being continually revived and revisited. Each Hollywood franchise shares the core ambition of attracting a substantial global audience. The international box office success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens could be seen to provide an indication of the long-term performance of a franchise acquired by the Walt Disney Company. Franchises can display more complex levels of self-consciousness in relation to their cycles of perpetual repetition. In the perpetual cycles of repetition that screen franchises create, the very notion of an ending becomes difficult. The Dark Knight Rises marks the end of a trilogy of Batman films by director Christopher Nolan.
