The phrase “There’s nothing new under the Sun” is sometimes attributed to Shakespeare, and sometimes (more accurately) to the Bible. But whether it was the greatest writer in the English language or God himself who had said it, they must have been talking about the current state of the movie industry.  

It seems like every commercial cinema and streaming service is filled with sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, spin-offs, and anything else that implies an existing original work that needs to have every last drop of its creative potential squeezed out of it. For the purposes of repetitiveness, and you precious reading time, I’ll refer to all these things as a sequel from this point on, superficial as that may make me.  

Out of the 27 movies currently on show in Amsterdam’s Pathé, 12 of them fall somewhere in that category. If we look at the top ten highest grossing movies of 2024, all of them do. [i]

Of course, there’s nothing new about the idea of a sequel or a franchise. James Bond has been using his license to kill at the box office since the 60s, and a new Star Wars movie came out every three years from 1977 to 1983 (and many times since). Some sequels even managed to reach critical acclaim – we need to look no further than Godfather II to see that. But still, it seems like the prevalence of media that needs a reference point is particularly high these days and is taking on a new image.  

“As recently as the late 80s, the conventional wisdom was that a sequel would do 50% of the business that the original movie did.” [ii] Looking at the data about highest grossing movies from last year, that is evidently not the case anymore. Studios also don’t necessarily wait for an original piece of media to perform well before deciding to make it a part of a coveted “cinematic universe” we have become so familiar with. Often, sequels are planned before a first part even comes out. Although this can send a message to the audience that the studios can’t wait until shoving another movie into our faces, the reception of sequels is also increasingly avoiding the high-brow disdain it used to be subject to.  

Indeed, it no longer goes without saying that any movie with the number 2 in the title is going to be viewed as a cheesy, tacky, and unashamedly cash-grabby piece of media, which was a reputation any sequel could only hope to shake for a majority of the film industry’s existence. The romantic explanation for this is that we love nostalgia, and sequels simply stir up those warm fuzzy feelings. The cynics scoff at this answer and claim that we’re so bombarded with cash-grabs we don’t view them as critically anymore.  

Even if you lean on the cynical side, you have to admit that the cash grabs have become, if not less apparent, at least more sophisticated. With movies being viewed as a part of a larger franchise, a lot of effort and budget is being dedicated to these sequels – not necessarily less than to the originals. But while that gives us higher budget franchises, it’s also emblematic of a more conceptual issue the culture of sequels reveals about the movie industry.  

The matter of fact is that the industry is paranoid. [iii] Since the rise of alternative kinds of media and short-span content, there’s a perpetual worry that movies have one foot in the grave. Investing in an industry you don’t see a future in is, of course, perceived as risky, so risky investments within the industry are a definite no-go. What’s better then, than digging up old hits or expanding on a story that’s already killing it. The issue with that is simple; eventually, you run out of originals. Relying on old content to keep producing new content is, by definition, unsustainable and, therefore, not exactly a way to avoid the dreaded death of films. [iv]

This is a typical problem of a creative industry that tries to use a pure market logic to sustain itself – it becomes profoundly uncreative. It turns out audiences respond much better to a superhero making a building go boom for the 23rd time than they do to an arthouse film about generational trauma, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As a 70s James Bond enthusiast, I’ll be the last person to tell you every movie needs to be original and life-altering. But the market logic that guides the film industry does create an essentially contradictory relationship, when creativity and originality in what should be creative products start to be treated as “risks” and, therefore, have a much harder time being made.  

Does that mean the movie industry is sure to die? If it survived the arrival of the talkies, it’ll survive franchises too. But that doesn’t mean we can, or should, take it for granted or try to reexamine our approaches to it. Ultimately, we don’t just want it to be there – we want it to be good.