Summer of Sequels

With the start of the Memorial Day weekend comes the official start of Summertime, and subsequently, the start of the Summer movie season. One thing I keep hearing people talking about is the fact that there are very few movies with original ideas. Besides the now usual and steady stream of replica slasher films and high school rich-girl-and-inner-city-boy-dance-together-and-become-better-people movies, there is a wide margin of sequels this year.

Particularly, sequels of sequels. That is, thirds. Just looking at the list of movies I can think of that are coming out this Summer, we have the third Spiderman movie, the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Shrek the third, the third Bourne movie, Ocean's 13, and the third Rush Hour.

These are just the movies that are part threes. There are more.

We've got another Die Hard coming out, another Harry Potter, another Fantastic Four, and another National Treasure. We've got Evan Almighty, 28 Weeks Later, and Daddy Day Camp, which is sure to be an atrocity, considering that nobody from the original cast of Daddy Day Care is returning for the second movie.

While a lot of these movies are highly anticipated (in fact, I'm fairly excited about most of them), This list of repeats begs the question: Does Hollywood have any more original ideas left? It doesn't look like they do.

There is a little bit of hope, however. Typically, movie franchises end after the third installment, meaning that the threes that are coming out this year will probably spell the end to sequels of their respective bases. So perhaps there will be more original movies next year. You know, in between the next Batman movie, the next Indiana Jones, the next Narnia movie and the next Harry Potter. There are a lot of other sequels slated for 2008 release, but some of them make me sick to my stomach considering that I never imagined that anybody would watch the first movie, let alone a second or third.

Incidentally, yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the original theatrical release of Star Wars. Happy Birthday, George Lucas creation that spawned five sequels (so far)!