I’m not as pessimistic as he is, but if you actually read the article he’s not wrong. He’s also not saying franchise films shouldn’t exist, but that there should be other choices. It’s nice he recognizes he is too old to say where cinema should go, and that the next generation will need to take those steps.

Personally, I think the root cause is that the studios are too risk averse. They only take chances when a vehicle has at least one big name attached, and they rarely give risks the support they need. Further, if one risk doesn’t pan out, they assume everything remotely like it won’t. Sometimes that one movie just doesn’t work out, but others like it could.