Has Hollywood Gone Too Far With Sequels? By Clayton Pickard
Hollywood seems to be all about sequels and remakes these days. So far this year, 14 out of the top 20 U.S. films have been sequels or remakes. That’s 70 percent! Does Hollywood keep making these sequels and remakes because they don’t want to take any chances with new ideas and these are a known quantity?
The movie business wasn’t always this way. Of the top ten films in 1985, only one was a sequel or a remake. In 1995, none of the top ten were sequels or remakes. But, by 2005, nine of the 
top ten films were sequels or remakes. I was looking forward to a lot of the sequels this year: Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, Captain America: Civil War, Alice Through The Looking Glass and X Men: Apocalypse. But, when I look back on the films I most enjoyed this past year, all of them are based on original ideas. For instance, The Big Short, Spotlight, Room, Inside Out, When Marnie Was There and Monster Hunt. For those of you who don’t know Monster Hunt, it was the highest grossing film in China in 2015 and is the craziest, funniest, action-packed, original film I’ve seen in years.
Some of the overwhelming amount of sequels and remakes were: The Man From Uncle, Fantastic Four, Creed, Avengers Age of Ultron, Terminator: Genysis and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. I didn’t see Creed, I heard a lot of people loved it, but did we really need a Sylvester Stallone comeback? I did see The Man From Uncle, which was fun, but it was all style and no substance. Fantastic Four was a total waste of time and money. The plot and the acting were so uninteresting that it failed to hold my attention. I purposefully did not see Terminator Genysis because it looked like 
a rehash of the last Terminator film. Nor did I choose to see Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. It’s the fifth film in the series and I feel they are milking the franchise for no reason besides money. They are even planning a sixth Mission Impossible!
A great place to see original, creative, theatrical films for kids is at children’s film festivals. I have been going to the New York International Children’s Film Festival for ten years now. I always see the most creative, visionary and uplifting films from around the world. They always premiere a Studio Ghibli film, which is how I became such a fan of that studio. There are children’s film festivals all around the U.S. If there isn’t one in your area, check out www.gkids.com for a list of great children’s films from prior festivals that you can get on DVD. And, don’t forget to look out for KIDS FIRST! Film Festival partners such as the University of Hawaii at Manoa which is doing its 10th KIDS FIRST! Film Festival all summer long.
