10 Things Everyone Hates About Modern Movies

One of the strangest and most unexpected movie trends over the last few years has been the rise of the "retcon sequel," where a new film acts as a direct sequel to an earlier entry into a given franchise while wiping every subsequent film out of the continuity.

While there's no denying that this approach saved the flagging Halloween franchise from circling the drain forever more, it also gives filmmakers considerably less accountability overall.

Studios are far more likely to roll the dice on a bold, possibly poorly thought-out movie, when they can just draw a line under it and try again, rather than being bound to fix the actual mess they've created.

Some more egregious examples include Superman Returns ignoring Superman III and Superman IV, the Terminator franchise serving up two dud retcon sequels in a row, and the X-Men franchise semi-ingeniously using time travel to wipe a number of undesirable films from the timeline.

Even when it works, as with X-Men and Halloween, it's never that satisfying to hear that a wealth of prior movies have been swept off the map, especially as these films will more often than not contain some things that fans actually do like.

As movie audiences become ever-more comfortable with the idea of alternate continuities just as comic book fans have for literally decades, though, it's likely to become an even bigger trend unless viewers vote with their wallets en masse.

If the choice is between a retcon sequel and nothing, fans will quite understandably spring for the latter.