>>42151>Why have movies and other franchises moved away from just doing normal sequels to doing prequels and side stories so much?Because its been demonstrated that sequential films rarely are able to match their predecessor, and even if the 2nd film is good the 3rd usually flops (Terminator 3, Alien3, etc.). Instead of being pure sequels, the X-verse type building structure allows for movies to be only loosely connected to a prior film, meaning that while fans of a prior movie can be appealed to and exploited (theoretically) it also allows writers more freedom to just make up what they want (within certain small limits). The problem of this is that eventually it gets tiresome.
>what is the point of telling the backstory of a character like Furiosa when the ending of Fury Road set up a more interesting scenario? They won, they overthrew the bad guys, but we don't get to see what the victory looks like? Because the audience wants to know more, even though they simultaneously don't want to know more. Furthermore its because Max is irrelevant. He's not a character in the Fury Road movie, he's a caricature, in part because Mel Gibson is too old and uninterested in playing him and no new actor can match that energy, so they decided to take the real main character of the previous film and prequel her. Thunderdome was meant as an old-school ending of "this was the legend of Mad Max, who still may wander the desert."
>Seriously, what is added by establishing an explicit canon for all these separate products? Probably meant to solidify the story line so that in future stories/games they can comfortably reference prior games without being disruptive to canon (though they still failed).