Like Your Mother, Very Unnecessary

Some stories can be told in two hours. Actually, most stories can be told in less than that. The thing is, though, with many movies making millions and millions of dollars within a few weeks, some people are inclined to make, like, five sequels after just one (semi) successful movie.

The first Michael Bay-directed Transformers was released in 2007. Starring Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, the movie got a dismal 57% on Rotten Tomatoes. But it also grossed over 700 million dollars internationally. Soooo, you can guess what happened; Bay pushed out a sequel, and then another one, and soon to be another. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) got 20% and 36%, respectively (RT). The former grossed over 800 millions dollars while the latter hit over one billion, both internationally. I mean, does the story of the transformer robot things really take seven and a half  hours to tell? Obviously I realize that these movies were made solely for the profit, but it's just completely unnecessary, like the fourth movie, which is planned to be released in 2014.

The 2009 movie, Avatar, was both a critical (83%, RT) and economic (grossing 2.7 billion freaking dollars) hit. Before its release, director James Cameron said that, if successful, he would make sequels of the film. After the almost-three-billion-dollar success, the answer was pretty obvious: there would be a sequel. Actually, earlier, Cameron stated that he had a "trilogy-scaled arc" in mind for the movie.

Do there really need to be two more of this movie? Didn't the first one kind of wrap things all up? (This isn't rhetorical; I really have no idea. I started watching the three hour movie once but, you know, it's three hours.) It's really a gamble for Cameron to try and spread Avatar's success through two more movies, too.

Pirates of the Caribbean was actually made to have sequels. The first movie, PotC: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) was followed by PotC: Dead Man's Chest (2006), and PotC: At World's End (2007). It was all good and stuff. The story finished after the third and, while the critics' rating steadily went down (in order: 79%, 54%, 45%, RT), they grossed over 2.6 billion dollars worldwide. Then, for whatever reason, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was released in 2011. Well, it was the worst received of the franchise. Buuuut, it wasn't over then. Earlier this year, Disney announced that there would be a fifth freaking movie.

This unnecessary sequel trend is popular with animated movies, too. Like with Cars 2, Finding Nemo 2, Kung Fu Panda 2 and Toy Story Freaking 4, which is just sick. And don't even get me started on Ice Age.

So yeah, how about we just think of some new ways to make billions of dollars other than squeezing the juice out of the orange until it's just a little lump of pulp and peel even though we all know the juice in the cup has been enough for a while.