By Kayla Hoang, Staff Writer
Avengers: Endgame (2019) recently became one of the fastest movies to reach one billion dollars in the box office, and soon accumulated to two billion dollars after 11 days. However, it’s box office success was quickly overshadowed by films (How to Train your Dragon: The Hidden World, John Wick 3, etc.) that came into theaters immediately afterwards.
Sequels are still huge within a franchises’ fan bases and they are a great way to garner media and audience attention. However, with the over-dependence of adding film after film to promise a movie’s success comes the loss of Hollywood’s originality.
Films and franchises continue to add-on to the pile, spending an overabundance of time and money to simply recycle an original plot point.
By the next 10 years, filmmakers are already on the verge of creating an onslaught of sequels for a whole variety of box office hits, some of which can be seen as simply adding to a story line that has already appropriately concluded.
For example: movies like Avatar (2009) or Toy Story (1999) were both box office and critical successes, and both are receiving new additions to their franchises. The Toy Story series is getting Toy Story 4 this year, and Avatar is in the works of getting an additional four movies before 2030, turning it into a five-movie series. The problem is that despite these types of movies and successes, their plot lines have already been appropriately concluded.
When movies without any plot holes or cliffhangers to warrant a sequel receive a sequel, it becomes less of a project on originality and more of a scheme for money-making.
It’s not just simply the fact that some of these constant sequels are unnecessary for many films. Even critics and audiences can see the negative effects of taking scraps of an original film’s story line as an attempt to squeeze out more movies.
Recent sequels that hit theaters include Men In Black: International, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, or Dark Phoenix were all supposed blockbusters with their extremely famous film franchises and their big-name celebrity cast. However, the gimmick of adding onto a famous movie series isn’t making the cut anymore. Not only did these movies under perform in box offices, they received plenty of negative critic reviews.
There are some ways that directors have been able to find success in their sequels. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example, meets plenty of success despite the whole assortment of characters and movies that all pile up into one whole film series. They’ve been able to vary their plots, and their directors have mastered their ability of casting and writing to keep audiences and critics constantly entertained.
It’s understandable that in a world where people constantly flock to theaters to watch movies as a source of comfort and entertainment, there’s plenty of pressure on Hollywood and its filmmakers to keep delivering.
However, it’s time that movie-makers learn to find their sense of originality again instead of following the same path of repetition and dependence on special effects and technology as an attempt to attract viewers.
