Want to go to the movies? Hollywood is happy to oblige. Each year, the American movie-making industry churns out between 700 and 1,000 films. These films generate more than $11.8 billion dollars in annual box office revenue and attract millions of people.
But what are these movies about? What, precisely, is the content that creates such huge box office sales, causing people to flock to theatres in droves? Apparently, it’s sequels.
And prequels, and remakes, and reboots, and … well, you get the point. The percentage of films with a colon in their title (take, for example, Avengers: Endgame, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, etc. etc.) has increased drastically from 1990 to 2019. The sheer number of films that have sprung from pre-established ideas is astounding. To prove my point, here’s a list of the top films of 2018:
Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again
X-Men: Dark Phoenix
Pacific Rim: Uprising
Ant-Man and the Wasp (sequel)
Bumblebee (the 7th Transformer movie)
Deadpool 2
The Equalizer 2
Super Troopers 2
Wreck-It Ralph 2
Creed 2
Paddington 2
The Incredibles 2
Sicario 2
Hotel Transylvania 3
The Purge 4
The First Purge
Mission Impossible 6
Halloween (remake)
Mary Poppins Returns (sequel)
The Predator (remake)
Tomb Raider (remake)
Ocean’s 8 (despite its title, not a sequel or remake … but a hybrid of both)
Fifty Shades Freed (second sequel)
Maze Runner: The Death Cure (another second sequel)
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
X-Men: New Mutants
I could include more films (all adaptations of comic books, novels, television shows, and other films), but I rest my case. Here’s the most interesting part of all this, though: these sequels, prequels, reboots, and remakes make, on average, 25% more money than their original counterparts. This leads to the dilemma of modern cinema: Hollywood is a manufactured, money-making machine. Huge, globe-spanning corporations make billions in profit off of blockbuster cinema - and for what? To fill the world with more of the same?
And thus, the conflict emerges. Sequels make so much more money than original works because they keep audiences coming back for more. Sequels feature big-name actors, familiar faces that audiences can identify in one movie after another, and they effectively create storylines that span trilogies and sagas. Because sequels are so lucrative, corporations - notably, Disney and all the companies it has pilfered (not unlike an amoeba engulfing its prey in exocytosis) - are spawning more and more sequels and prequels, leaving original ideas in the dust. Sequels are also less of a gamble. They employ the same actors and the same storylines and ensure audiences will come back.
Film is no doubt an art form and a very important one at that. Its worldwide prevalence makes it one of the most popular forms of visual art - but the current global film landscape is a wasteland of recycled content. This phenomenon raises a serious question: What happened to creating art because of need? What happened to birthing an idea not for money, not for a corporation, but because the idea in and of itself was so fantastically original that it just begged to be brought to fruition? As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said, “A work of art is only good if it has sprung from necessity.”
That’s why the advent of sequels is destroying cinema. The prevalence of sequels and prequels is a sour grape that will one day ruin the bunch; a bad seed that will only continue to grow. Art should only be created if it has true inspiration. It should be created if it sprung from the mind of a human being who was so fascinated by a subject, a place, an era, or an idea that they couldn’t help but create something about it. After all, what is the point of art if it wasn’t made to inspire, to astound?
The problem with corporations churning out sequel after reboot after remake is that the purpose that lies at the center of their movies is monetary gain. They aren’t willing to take risks, to create something never seen before. Blockbuster cinema would rather stick to the formula that’s working right now than delve into the unknown. Companies would rather ensure they make a profit than take risks on new content. The idea at the heart of almost every newly-released movie is not to create something beautiful, but instead to make money.
It is worth noting that great movies are being made. Corporations, with their expansive wealth of assets, scour the earth to find the best and brightest animators, directors, screenwriters, and actors, and because of that, quality films are being produced. However, despite the artistry from the people involved, these movies are not original, nor are they inventive or groundbreaking.
One source says that this phenom is the hallmark of a “paranoid, risk-averse, one-sheet focused, star-driven Hollywood studio culture.” And honestly? I couldn’t agree more. If American cinema is to continue, Hollywood executives need to take risks; they need to embrace the new, the novelty of the unknown. Hopefully, 2020 will bring a new era in cinema: one that values artistic originality over Transformers 9. (Or 8, or 20, whatever it is).