2019 remakes or sequels: Lion King, Spider Man, Jumanji, Frozen, Avengers, Toy Story, Aladdin, Dr Sleep, Godzilla, Terminator, John Wick, Zombieland.

There were a few good movies in 2019 like every year.

Hollywood overall has become extremely derivative and market focused.

If you went back twenty years one could also compile a similar list (not necessarily remakes, but something of a similarly low quality). Pretty clear you just have an axe to grind.

Go look through a catalog of movies from the 90s and even late 80s, particularly 1999 which was the best year for movies by far in the history of Hollywood.

The quality has gone down substantially.

Your claim is false.

The Wikipedia article for 1999 in film is there for all to see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_in_film#1999_Wide-release...

Between The King and I (Disney animated), Baby Geniuses, Doug's 1st Movie, 10 Things I Hate About You, Wing Commander, The Rage: Carrie 2, My Favorite Martian, and Office Space, I see plenty of sequels, low-effort trash, and remakes. And that's just stuff that came out in the first three months of the year.

edit: We got a remake of Wild Wild West, a remake of Tarzan, a sequel to Austin Powers, a sequel to The Brave Little Toaster, a prequel to Star Wars, and our second Shakespear adapation of the year in months 4-6.

double edit: In 7-9, we got another Muppet movie, an Inspector Gadget remake, The Haunting and The Thomas Crown Affair were both remakes, a Universal Soldier sequel, and a Dudley Do-Right remake.

I have no interest in continuing to analyze this list, thing were just as bad twenty years ago

I appreciate you looking into this and maybe I stand corrected.

This deserves further discussion for sure.

I'll do it at some point in the future on a blog post and will link it here.

Another interesting measure is studio funding of remakes and sequels (adjusted for inflation or as a percentage of total Hollywood's production spending) but that starts getting into blog post territory.

Up until the past decade or so there was always something that was interesting at the movies.

Not so much anymore.

<dander up> Wait, which of sequel, low-effort trash, or remake are you calling Office Space?

It's a remake or a sequel, depending on how you wanna count that sort of thing (and, imo, it's not very good)

I don't see how it's either. "Milton" was not a movie. You could call it an adaptation. As for not very good, well, de gustibus.

The original "Wild Wild West" was a TV show; there was a 1980 TV movie, but the 1999 film is neither a remake nor a sequel to that 1980 movie. I'm using pretty expansive/liberal definitions of the terms here, I admit, but I think broadly my point stands just fine.

I agree that your overall point is broadly correct, but I think that a good principle in internet discussion is to be "liberal in the evidence you accept, and conservative in the evidence you 'send'".

The overall thrust of the "there's too many sequels and remakes" argument is that recent cinema shows a staleness/creative exhaustion in the industry, which is relying on brand recognition to cover for its failings. One creator expanding on their animated shorts to make a feature film out of them (Office Space) or a filmmaker making a (relatively creative, I think) adaptation of Shakespeare (10 Things I Hate About You), doesn't really demonstrate that, IMO. Many of the other examples you cite do. Certainly people have been complaining about sequelitis in movies for as long as I can remember (30+ years).

My own impression of a big trend in film over recent decades is the decline of comedies, especially in the family comedy/romantic comedy sub-genres. But I don't have hard data on that either.

While everything you say is valid, even subtracting those two examples, that's still a hefty list of films from 1999 that fall into sequel/remake territory, much like the modern day movies that the ancestral post is complaining about.

Arguably a sequel to the Milton cartoon shorts.

My favorite original movies of 2019: Parasite, 1917, Once upon a time in hollywood, midsommar, uncut gems, ford v. ferrari, the lighthouse, knives out, jojo rabbit, us, a number of shows that have shifted towards a streamed series format vs. traditional film

I think the film industry is alive and well.

I'd also say that dr. sleep only barely qualifies as a sequel if we're in the mood to complain about hollywood cliches.