Good question. Star Wars is 50+ years old but continues to bring in new fans (even if only to quickly join in the chorus of endless complaints). Star Trek also seems to keep finding younger fans (albeit I suspect in nowhere near the numbers Star Wars does). Marvel movies are based on characters created 50-60 years in the past but younger fans are very much into them.
One thing all those films have in common is that they’re untethered to any familiar time or place; they exist in their own reality independent of the fashions or technology of the day. Star Wars may be half a century old, but aside from some iffy haircuts it never looked like the 70s, and whatever Earth the Marvel characters live on is always a day to a few years in the future compared to ours. Similarly this may have helped the Bonds over the years; staying a step or two ahead of real life with the gadgets. On the other hand, the fashions, vehicles, hairdos etc in Bond are very much of their time, which older fans either excuse or joke away but it’s quite possible they’re very off-putting to younger viewers. But the point is, in the long haul everything that ties a Bond to a moment in time is more weakness than strength. It helps that while the Bonds are generally in tune with public tastes, they are not overly concerned real-world politics or current events. Making SPECTRE the enemy instead of any Communist nation state was an extremely canny move over the long haul, for instance, while “no brainer” cash-ins of Blaxploitation or Kung-Fu films just earn a sheepish shrug or eye roll in retrospect.
Another thing the above franchises have in common is that they all operate within complex, well-developed mythos that encourage engagement and immersion in their depth and breadth. I spent countless hours learning the ins and outs of Starfleet uniforms, warp speed technology and the layout of a starship. Other kids knew the names of every alien in a Star Wars crowd scene and bought action figures of characters I don’t remember even spotting in a film. Marvel continuity is so dense by now that you need a reference guide to understand anything. Create a nuanced and fully developed fictional world and you make it much more tempting and rewarding for fans to place themselves in it. And if there’s one thing we all need at this point, young or old, it’s a place to escape to.
So I say: go big on the spectacle and sense of adventure, don’t be shy about tossing in technology that doesn’t – or can’t – exist, establish a coherent continuity in terms of who is who and what is what, and just generally present us with a world we’d like to be in. Stories about loss and pain and loneliness and misery are great if you’re chasing awards, but there’s nothing in it to pull in the next generation of fans. At this point I mostly hang around the Bond franchise out of gratitude for the wonderful escapes it provided when I was a kid, lo those many decades ago, and maybe the hope that I can recapture a tiny bit of that again, some day. Win over a young viewer that fully and you’re in business. And yes, bringing them in when they’re young is the only way to do it. The older you are, the less likely you are to be a loyal, devoted fan of anything, IMO.
