Sequels and Branding

I came across an article in AdAge about how movies now a days no longer have numbers in their movie sequels. If you sit and think about it for a minute you'll realize that I am right, except for the exception of Iron Man 2. The last few years we've been exposed to new Batman movies, the first movie was called "Batman Begins" and the second one was called "The Dark Knight". The article by Chris Thilk talks about the reason why the Batman movies can get away with moving out of the "branding" name because Batman is not just about the Batman, and he is known to the world to as a bunch of different names like, "The Caped Crusader", "The Dark Knight", "The World's Greatest Detective", "The Bat", and all of the viewers may just simply call him Bruce Wayne. Since all of these names are so well known, it really doesn't constitute as going against the brand even though the name of the most recent "Batman" movie doesn't even have the name Batman in it.


I actually think it's kind of obnoxious, but in a way I kind of get it in Batman's situation or even Star Wars, and it's probably because there has been a million previous movies before the newest ones, so it would be technically incorrect to call them 1, 2, 3, etc. It just gets me thinking about maybe instead of remaking, or having prequels to old, historic movies maybe the movie industry could produce their own, new, original films?

http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=143697