Most sequels/remakes = teh suck, but so does your taste in movies

As we all know by now, the movie world seems to be lax in the originality department. If the last few years are any indicator, we can expect at least one of two things:

1. If a movie is an uber-successful blockbuster, expect a sequel and expect everyone, their mother, and their Uncle's half-brother to make pale imitation after pale imitation.
2. If a movie presents a halfway decent and original idea, see number 1.

Some of the best examples of this are the obligatory "Summer" flicks and horror movies. And I swear to Yahweh that I will vomit in Short Round's hat the next time I see someone use fuckin' bullet-time (I saw a Toyota car commercial the other day using a variation of bullet-time. Sick.).

But people are quick to blame studios for this. Those people are wrong.

Take for example the original Scream. It wasn't meant to be a serious horror flick; it was intended to spoof the genre that director Wes Craven helped proliferate (with his Nightmare on Elm Street series) by taking every slasher convention and tossing it into one film. Unfortunately, Scream unintentionally launched the mid-to-late '90s onslaught of "serious" teenie-horror - anybody remember Urban Legends, Urban Legends: Final Cut, I Know What You Did Last Summer, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Disturbing Behavior, or even the two Scream sequels? Yeah. Blech.

What about the torture porn horror stuff... Hostel, Hostel 2, Saws I-XLVIII? Die, die my darlings, please.

But if you feel there is any reason to hate Scream or whatever, don't do it because of the relentless knock-offs - blame the assclowns who went and saw those knock-offs.

Studios churn out loads of watered-down imitations to earn a quick buck because the people who go to watch the movies are the ones who keep them in a job that allows them to make shitty movies. Sure, it's the studios' direct fault that these films are made, but business is business and as long as they make money, they'll continue to puke out a product that makes money for them. And how do they make that money? People paying to partake of the product they manufacture. If these people did not shell out the dough, the companies would cease to make the thing not being bought - I don't see many people with "Achy Break Heart" t-shirts and L.A. Gear shoes going out to buy Pet Rocks and Vanilla Ice albums. Of course, I don't live in the "Twilight Zone", or 1990, either.

But to my point: in all aspects of mass-market consumerism in capitalist economies, blame for the continuation of the manufacture of a product rests completely on the shoulders of the consumers who buy that product. A lot of people are in denial about the fact that it's not the studios' fault for the success of these films, because they have so much hatred toward them for making them at all. But, alas, capitalism has its disadvantages sometimes, like the making of money through the distribution of product. Goddamn that idea all to Hell.

So, the next time you want to blame someone for making crappy movies, blame yourselves. You all still have an ass-beating coming for House of the Dead...