According to the Mayan calendar, the end of the world will be in 2012. However, 2011 might be the year that creativity ends. By December of 2011, Hollywood will have broken the record for most sequels ever released in one year. According to the website Box Office Mojo, 27 sequels will be released in the next ten months, the highest number since 2003.
Of the 27 films, nine of them are second movies in a series. There are also five third films, five fourth films, five fifth films, two seventh films and one eighth film.
The list of sequels contains a lot of children’s films, such as “Happy Feet 2” and “Kung Fu Panda 2.” These movies essentially market themselves because children are already fans of these characters and will beg their parents to see the follow-up.
To me, the most upsetting of these sequels is Pixar’s “Cars 2”. Pixar is known for creating incredibly inventive and original worlds. The films “Up,” “Wall-E” and “Finding Nemo” were great movies because they showed us something that we had never seen before within the realm of animation. “Cars” is Pixar’s most marketable film by far, spawning hundreds of toys, games and other merchandise. Making a sequel to “Cars” instead of coming up with new content seems like a blatant cash-grab by the studio. Pixar already released a sequel to “Toy Story” this year, so I was hoping for something new.
Dreamworks animation is releasing a spin-off to the wildly popular “Shrek” series this year, titled “Puss in Boots.” There have already been four “Shrek” movies, ten video games and a theme park ride. I don’t think there could possibly be more stories to be told about Shrek and his friends, especially after the fourth film was titled “The Final Chapter.”
This shows Hollywood’s total lack of faith in their audience. Movie studios are afraid that nobody will go see a movie unless the public is already a fan of the material before buying their ticket. This list doesn’t even mention the number of remakes that will be released this year.
In our current economic climate, studios feel that they cannot afford to take a gamble on original content. They seem to have forgotten that Warner Brothers gave Christopher Nolan $160 million to make “Inception,” a completely original film which went on to become a huge box office success and a Best Picture nominee.
There are people out there who are willing to go see something that they haven’t seen before. It is possible that the reason why audiences are losing interest in seeing movies in theaters is because they feel that they have seen it all already. There are very few times that a sequel can impress me as much as the first film did, mainly because I have already seen most of what they have to offer. I am not impressed by Johnny Depp’s performance as Capt. Jack Sparrow anymore, because I have already seen it three times. There is no need for a “Pirates of the Caribbean 4,” just like there is no need for a fifth entry in the “Fast and the Furious” series.
I want to be able to go to a movie theater with out feeling like I’m having déjà-vu. If the world is really going to end in 2012, I would like to see something original before it’s too late.
Matt Grippi is a junior journalism major and contributing writer for the Daily 49er.
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