I don’t know what it is about me but I just refuse to be on board, no matter the property, when I hear the words Sequel Announced following it. Maybe it’s the final culmination in movie snob cynicism? I don’t know. But it’s something that’s began to irk me.

I know how the Hollywood machine works. They operate like a shotgun. They make as many properties as they can with their ingrained formula at work. They wait to see what the box office brings them and on that they decide to throw one, two or even three more movies with the same characters doing the same very thing. I get it. I see it. I understand it. But deep down inside I don’t like it in theory. From time to time I’ve been known to enjoy these movies, and even their blatantly derivative sequels. However, that doesn’t mean that I approve of them.

The problem with these sequels is that it takes all the surprise out of it. Not to say that the starting point is that surprising. However, from time to time you’ll forget the fact that all these things are going to happen. The guy will get the girl, the bad guy will be caught and the good guy will be cleared of the suspicion and everyone’s happy about everything. It’s sad. But once you slap “Part 2” on the end of that then you remove the little unpredictable aspect of the film. That is, the setup and the characters themselves.

What makes me fall in love from movie to movie, more than the director, writer, cinematography and/or plot, is it’s characters. The true essence of a film are the people that you invest the next two hours to watch the fail or succeed at their end goal. Do you care that they make it the finish line? If you can’t say “YES” to that question then nine times out of ten then you’re not going to care or like the movie you’re watching.

So when the sequel comes around you no longer have anyone to setup, we rarely have anything else to learn about this person that we’re cheering for. So the film just becomes a facilitator of action or gags or whatever genre the film is in.

I’m not going to tell you that sequels never work, that would be a bold faced lie. What I’m telling you is trying to explain my typical gut reaction to the news that – insert random movie name – is going to be getting a sequel and somehow the same exact shit that happened to the person in the last movie is going to be happening to them all over again with little to no explanation. Soon enough this guy is going to have figure out a way to actually getting paid doing this stuff. How can this keep happening to this person over and over? Can he be that unlucky? Really?

As I said before, this doesn’t mean I don’t end up enjoying sequels. I’m just saying that this is how I feel about Hollywood’s constant need to find that next franchise and keep bringing it back for financial security.

Do you get worried when people start to talk about sequels?