10 Reasons You Can’t Stand Mainstream Cinema

2. Oh Sweet, Another Sequel

To put this in perspective, in 2011 the top 10 grossing movies made $2.5 billion dollars DOMESTICALLY. A decent year. Out of the those top 10, nine were sequels which included blockbusters like "Harry Potter," "Transformers," "Twilight," and "Pirates of the Caribbean." The other movie was an adaptation, "Thor." In fact, out of the top 20 grossing movies only one was an original, "Bridesmaids." To give you a little more hope, the 21st top grossing movie of that year was "Super 8," another original. So if I do my math right, 1 out of the top 20 grossing movies means that 5% of original material contributed to those $2.5 billion dollars. Silver lining, right? And let's not forget prequels. "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," "Prometheus," and the forthcoming "Monsters University." Sequels and prequels dominate every year. The biggest movie of 2012 was "The Avengers," which, if you think about it, was five sequels blended together. Other big films of this past year were "The Dark Knight Rises," "Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2," "Madagascar 3," MIB 3," and the sequel to the longest running franchise, "Skyfall." More sequels in the queue? We have great additions such as "Iron Man 3," "Die Hard 5," "The Hangover Part 3," "Fast and Furious 6," "The Wolverine," and much more to look forward to. The truth is we love sequels. We loved Robert Downey Jr.'s quips as Iron Man, so we got a couple more witty banter filled movies. We loved Christopher Nolan's Batman, so we got a couple more epics. Even though we love sequels, we can't help but moan when we hear that there's going to be another sequel to "Indiana Jones" and "Scary Movie" and "Transformers." It's too much. There's a limit to how many sequels we want to see and there's certainly a standard as to which movies we want to see sequels to. So Hollywood, give us a fresh movie and maybe we'll want a sequel to that.
 
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Contributor
Contributor

I'm a thinker/fantasizer who writes down his thoughts and fantasies hoping it makes sense to everyone else. Also I'm an aspiring screenwriter, but if I can work in film at all, I'd be happy. One day you may hear the name Ryan Kim and associate it with "Academy Award winning writer" or with "where's that guy with my coffee." If the latter comes true, please let it be Paul Thomas Anderson's coffee I'm getting.