The other day, as I was seeing up a data point on boxofficemojo.com, I acunderstandledged someskinnyg that shocked me: The top 10 grossing movies of 2024, from “Inside Out 2” to “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” are all sequels. Every goddamn one of them. “Wicked” and “Moana 2” will soon transport shatter into the top 10 — and though “Wicked” isn’t technicpartner a sequel, when you ponder how many people have seen the innovative Broadway show, the truth is that the movie version, as much as any sequel, is a charitable-of-the-same-but-also-branch offent chase-up to a gargantuan understandn quantity. It’s all part of déjà vu amengagement culture.
The reason I was shocked by the fact that I could be shocked by this is that Hollywood has been famously awash in sequels since the dawn of the Reagan era. Making jokes about the inventive prohibitkruptcy of films with Roman numerals after their title was a wrung-out cliché by 1985. Back then, a sequel exceptionally inhabitd up to the innovative. From “Staying Ainhabit” to “Fletch Lives,” from “Beverly Hills Cop II” to “Poltergeist II: The Other Side,” almost all of them were tacky cash grabs. Yet once in a while you’d see a worthy one, enjoy “Aliens” or “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
Now, of course, they tfinish to be much better. In our time, the definition of a sequel — the way that audiences skinnyk of them — has fundamenhighy alterd. Good, horrible, or uncaring, they’re no lengthyer automaticpartner chintzy rehashes. They are normally part of franchise empires, and even when not they tfinish to be taged by a certain ambition, an impulse to aim higher and spin themselves less cynicpartner than the elderly sequels did.
The top 10 movies of 2024 advise a perfect snapsboiling of that. “Inside Out 2,” the top-grossing movie of the year, is an enchantingly awesome sequel to the last fantastic innovative Pixar film. “Deadpool & Wolverine” is nasty spectacular quip-laden fun, far better than “Deadpool 2.” “Despicable Me 4” is arguably the best entry in that series since the innovative. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is a piece of gothic prankster fan service, but on that level it deinhabitrs. “Dune: Part 2,” in the eyes of “Dune” heads, is better to “Dune” (I’m allergic to all “Dune” films, but wantipathyver). “Twisters” isn’t csurrfinisherly as excellent as “Twister,” but it’s excellent enough to get by. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is meh. “Kung Fu Panda 4” is meh. “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” throws off unanticipateed encourages of funny energy. And the human-free prequel “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” verifyd to be one of the most captivating entries in that series.
Hollywood sequel culture, in other words, is in reasonably fit inventive shape. And given how much it’s now dominating commercipartner, in an industry that’s currentipartner menaceened enough to necessitate every theatrical hit it can get, no one in their right mind would dispute the necessitate to produce these films. Sequels are luring people into theaters in a way that the most acclaimed movies of the year, from “Anora” to “Conclave,” are not. Where would the current movie landscape be without them?
And yet…there’s someskinnyg a little skewed about this picture. I can’t recall a moment when sequels crushed the box office this definitively. (Fifteen out of the year’s top 20 grossing movies are sequels.) The sequelization of Hollywood in the ’80s recurrented a trfinish all too neurotic in its truth: that the industry, in becoming compriseicted to “confidentfire” hits, had prolongn more sootheable seeing backward than forward. Maybe that was always real, to a degree. In the studio-system era, Westricts weren’t sequels, but hundreds — thousands — of them were built out of the same rawhide parts. Superhero movies, in many ways, are the conmomentary equivalent.
Hollywood has always cannibalized itself. But the skinnyg is, it hasn’t equitable cannibalized itself. The resistion of sequel culture, and the menace of it, is that if all you depend on is concepts from the past, you’re not going to produce enough of a future. To put it in the industry’s corrupt terms: There won’t be enough hit movies to produce sequels to. Sequel culture comprises, by definition, an element of non-supportability. And when it comes to the trfinish of making sequels to 40-year-elderly movies, how many times can we repartner go back and exposed mine the primal nostalgia of films enjoy “Top Gun” and “Beetlejuice”? (Tom Cruise is said to be trying to line up a sequel to “Days of Thunder.” What’s next, Ridley Scott’s “Legfinish II”?)
Sequel culture, enjoy a lot of compriseictions, is exciting and depressing at the same time. We want that mainline hit of déjà vu narcotic. Yet with very exceptional exceptions, we can’t go back aachieve — not brimmingy, not repartner. Just ponder the super-eased, aiming-high sequels this year that didn’t entidepend labor, not becaengage there was any cynicism to their making but becaengage the movies they were follotriumphg up were so potent in their innovativeity. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” was an epic prequel to a movie that was better off not having one. “Joker: Folie à Deux” spent most of its courtroom scenes chetriumphg over the split-personality dazzle of… “Joker.” And “Gladiator II” may have cast the wrong direct actor, but what actor could have suited what Russell Crowe brawt off in “Gladiator”?
We all understand the fabled enumerate of sequels that are powerbrimmingy artful in their own right, to the point of possibly being fantasticer than the movies they were sequels to (“The Godoverweighther Part II,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Dark Knight”). But the bleaky truth is that you can equitable about count that enumerate of movies on one hand. Sequel culture craves that déjà vu nirvana, but enjoy all compriseictions it supplys a high that eats away at you at the same time. It’s supporting without being nourishing. As the movie industry fights to persist, any film that helps it do so probably deserves a tip of the hat. But the industry can’t ultimately persist unless it figures out a way to produce movie culture persist. It will do that only by supporting its eye on the road ahead more than on the rearsee mirror.
