5 Franchises That Should Get A Comedic Spoof

How could it be we don’t already have a popular Jurassic Park parody film waiting for us? Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original is, of course, brilliant, but the very fact that any follow ups to Jurassic Park were made can be mined for comedy gold. After all, the existence of the sequels leads to the obvious question of why all of these idiots keep making dinosaurs.

You don’t need any high minded idealists like Jeff Golblum’s Malcolm looking over your shoulder and saying things like, “Life finds a way” to see what an epically bad idea making dinosaurs is. All you need is to note that dinosaurs were made, dinosaurs got loose and killed people, and yet somehow dinosaurs continued to be made. If you can’t find comedy in supposed geniuses putting all their resources into creating things which 1) want to kill them and 2) are exceptionally good at killing them… just give up.

If you’re looking to spoof a film franchise, what could offer more fertile ground than the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? 

It is a story about a group of children whose educational direction is largely determined by a talking hat. It is a story in which the names of some of the most sinister and heroic characters — like Dumbledore and Voldemort — sound like they were borrowed from lawn gnomes. It is a story whose entire saga could be completely uprooted if someone  in Hogwarts had thought to install at least one security camera.

Considering the reputation JK Rowling has attracted as a transphobe, a Harry Potter spoof could also have some real teeth to it.

The only good reason I could think of to not spoof the Fast and the Furious films, is that it could legitimately be too difficult to create a parody of something that is already blatantly ridiculous. When you have this group of heroes dropping their cars out airplanes to save the world, constantly stomping out the word “family” like it will summon the powers of Shazam, and saying that it all began as a bunch of morons drag racing, where do you go? How do you make fun of something that already doesn’t even know how to take itself seriously?

But if you can find a way to do it, you should. And if you do, that might be the only Fast and Furious movie Dwayne Johnson would sign up for.

Beginning with 1979’s Alien and continuing to today, the franchise marked not only by its killing machine xenomorphs, but with just about everything going wrong every time Sigourney Weaver gets on a spaceship, could be deeply mined for parody. Among the subjects that could be easily used for comedy are the face-huggers, the fact that the villainous aliens‘ mouths have their own mouths, and the fact that Weyland-Yutani corporation keeps throwing employees at the xenomorphs even though at this point it would be a miracle if there was anyone left alive to work for the jerks.

The potential for spoofing Predator is unique because of the nature of the thing. Sure, you could just poke fun of the franchise itself, or you could go the route Archie Comics and Dark Horse went in 2015 when they published the comic book miniseries Archie vs. Predator. 

The crossover route becomes even more promising when you realize that the Predator IP is currently under Disney‘s umbrella. One of the hunters from the Predator films could stalk Homer Simpson, Scrooge McDuck, Mickey Mouse, the Muppets, the Muppet Babies, Indiana Jones, the Avengers, Benjamin Franklin Gates from National Treasure, etc.

Or there’s always my personal favorite choice for a Predator crossover that I wrote about some months ago:

Disney owns Predator. Disney owns Star Wars. Star Wars has Ewoks. 

Make it happen, Disney.