Doomed to Remake & Sequel Hell

Posted by Cynical Sarah on February 9, 2006

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it – or so the saying goes.

Before you groan and move on to something else thinking this is another article about the war or politics or any number of government issues, give me a little credit for not being that obvious. Instead, my reminder goes out to the movie industry.

I’m tired of all the re-makes and sequels and prequels and whatever else they’ll come up with to keep making money off the movie going public. I watched “Star Trek III: Search for Spock” on tv this past weekend purely out of desperation since there wasn’t anything else to watch.

I wasn’t even more than five minutes into the movie before I figured out Star Trek should never have made it past II. It was just another example of the movie industry milking something for all they can get out of it. The movies were just the beginning though. Anyone who bothered to watch the newest series, Star Trek: Enterprise, knows this is one franchise that’s been sucked dry.

People in the industry today need to take a look at that and learn from it. Or maybe we need a new regulatory agency that makes sure only the truly good movies gets to have sequels like that. I’m all for the Harry Potter movies continuing on, but really, did we need a “Saw II,” all the “Scary Movies” or those “American Pie” sequels. (Hello, you know you’re done when your latest movie goes straight to video.)

Remakes are another one of my new pet peeves. I didn’t need to see another, bigger version of King Kong. Sorry Peter Jackson but no movie is good enough to be remade twice like that. Just because you have the power to redo a movie into this big heaping pile of special affects and CGI reality, doesn’t mean you should wield that power on everything. Next time you’re looking for a movie project Mr. Jackson please keep this little guideline in mind: Lord of the Rings trilogy = good decision, King Kong remake = bad decision. Somewhere in between I’m sure you can find plenty more movies to make.

I know the movie audience is partially to blame for these movie mistakes. I don’t know how many times I myself watched a movie and then had my parents ask me if it was the original or the new. It’s time we dug deeper for our movie education and watched some of the oldies so they can’t just keep remaking them generation after generation.

And we’ve got to stop paying to see all those crazy sequels. Understandably, everyone and their dog had to go see the Star Wars prequels (at least the third one was finally worth seeing), but we’re never going to get decent movies in the market when we’re all paying to go see Scream XL and all the other movie spoof rip-offs just like it.

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