Oringer: Enough With the Movie Sequels
July 21 -- Pretend you've just been invited to a celebrity wedding and you only have a few hours to find something to wear, get your hair done and find a date.
You rush to the local mall, but for some inexplicable reason every store is selling the same item … a black sleeveless T-shirt.
It's the same shirt you've seen a million times. This year's cut is just a hair different.
You're desperate. What now?
Do you buy the T-shirt and dress it up with some fancy jewelry and a pair of silk evening slacks? Do you wear something old that screams out, "This is the best I can do!"
What if everyone else wears the new black tee, making you feel like an outcast?
These are the type questions I am burdened with this summer when going to the movie theater. You end up choosing between a bunch of movies that are exactly the same, if not a remake or a sequel of something old.
I could choose to skip some movies. However, if people start talking about them, I'll be clueless.
Do I again spend 10 bucks on celluloid fodder again? Do I skip a movie and, when it comes up in conversation, make interesting small talk about Forrest Gump?
Unwanted Multiplex Leftovers
Basically, we're all in a pickle any way you look at it.
Here's why: This summer we've had another Charlie's Angels, another Legally Blonde, another Bad Boys, another Tomb Raider, as well as third helpings of The Terminator, Spy Kids and American Pie, and not one but two installments of The Matrix. (Well, OK, the third comes out this fall. But still.)
On top of this, Hollywoods giving us big screen verisions of comic books with The Hulk and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and a cinematic interpretation of the Disney amusement park ride Pirates of the Caribbean.
To throw in another dose of the familiar, there's one movie based on the sequel-friendly monsters from A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. They didn't know whether to call it A Nightmare on Elm Street 8 or A Nightmare on Friday the 13th. They settled on Freddy vs. Jason.
