I love my summer movies. Back in the day school we had a local theater where we could watch new releases for about $3/ticket (sometimes they would have $1 nights, and student discounts; no need to sell your organs at the nearest pawnshop/old-drunk-guy-in-an-alleyway-who-i-so-need-to-go-see-about-getting-my-parietal-lobe-back). It was affordable and so there was no reason not to see every new film that came out, regardless of its quality (I suspect something about this attitude may be responsible for not knowing many of my professors' names). This was a great strategy until I found myself on graduation day being told that I had completed my "studies" and that I was no longer welcome to pursue my 5+x year BA degree (where x represents the number times they had to invent a new letter just to grade my academic performance). Oh man those were the days. I miss 2008.
ANYway, I soon discovered that the world outside of my perfect, cheap, film-watching bubble did not enjoy the same easy movie-going experience as I had. As symptoms of my cinema withdrawal grew greater (at the time i was staving off cravings by developing an intense interest in vanilla wafers), I realized I would have to choose my future movie-going experiences more carefully. With that in mind, let's take a look at next years release schedu-OH SWEET CARAMELIZED JESUS WITH A CREAMY NOUGAT CENTER! THEY'VE REPLACED ALL THE MOVIES WITH POORLY CONCEIVED SEQUELS!!
It'll be okay. To more constructively illustrate how I feel about this, I've put together a sophisticated and complicated Venn Diagram based on the actual data 1:
Spy Kids 4? Underworld 4? Mission Impossible IV? (okay I cheated on the date of that last one a little, but I couldn't bear breaking the "four" theme, and 5inal Destination was the only title with the sophistication to use a number as a letter). Sure, some of these might turn out fine, but it's telling when 42% of your movies in a given season 2 are sequels and remakes. Am I the only one who is frightened by the decline of America's best remaining export (besides sparkly toothpaste and exhaust pipe whistles, I mean)?
Oh Hollywood, some day we're going to look back on this and laugh... then drink a glass of bourbon while quickly changing the subject before we finally circle back to our original topic of amusement and cry vigorously like the manly Australians we are making fun of.
Footnotes
1 "actual data" may be better recognized in this context as "haphazard delirium". Standard services and fees may apply.
2 42% is based on me manually tallying up sequels/remakes scheduled for the May-September period and doing my best to perform basic math. I did not recount to verify my results, but rest assured, the conclusion is very scientific, as you can see by the usage of a %.
And yes, I'm counting Captain America as a remake. I haven't forgotten.]