Pointless hiring directors with their own idiosyncratic style when you're gona go all-out crazy overprotective bitch about maintaining the 'consistent' 'vision' of the 'franchise'. It's up to the creators you've tasked with creating that particular chapter of the saga to set the right tone, keep things in the spirit of the originals or whatever, and so on. You want safe, you hire safe.
Much as I can tend to dislike sequels that have gone totally wacko with their tonal deviation from their series precursors, once you've made that choice you need to run with it. Part of their brief upon signing onto the project can be to tone it down a little, play it a little more subtly, and stylistic filmmakers as unique as Lynch and Gondry have managed that in the past, still producing something really good. If they don't shackle their wild creativity enough for your/the target demographic's tastes, so be it. Imagine DC saying "No! Not Batmanny enough!" to all the then-unusual ideas the Nolans put forward for the Batman trilogy... same thing with Burton, to less successful effect, but still worth trusting.
At least an awkward, not-quite-there odd-one-out of a film will always earn a bit of grudging respect from its having the creative balls to go somewhere different, even if it kinda ends up getting disowned in the grand scheme of things. I hate that these stories (what they should be, first and foremost - connected to what's gone before, but ultimately their own individual thing) just are not allowed to fail, with commercial failure being considered the gravest sin. Every great thing has been a potential failure at some stage or other of its conception and development, and the leap of faith involved gives them something extra, some intangible movie magic, akin to the sonic mood captured in the studio during the recording of an amazing, innovative, brave record - it's not quantifiable, it's just breathing there almost silently in the background, some genius human electromagnetic aura shiz committed to tape at just that exactly right point in their lives. Safe rarely amounts to shit, so it's even worse if you pretend to be adventurous to begin with and then welch on the deal and bail when things don't match up precisely with your boring fucking well-worn template for success.
