As the curtain greatfully drops on 2011, the year turns out to have been a remarkable exercise in cinematic repetition. So far, the top seven pictures at the domestic box office have been sequels, an alignment that appears unmatched in movie history. In terms of ticket sales the most popular seven films to date have been Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2; Transformers: Dark of the Moon; Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1; The Hangover Part II; Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides; Fast Five; and Cars 2. The strong opening for Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol suggests that it may well join a list that also includes Rise of the Planet of the Apes, from yet another film series, in the ninth position. 
If Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows or Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked gain some more traction, the year’s entire Top 10 may turn out to have been sequels (and their titles will have exhausted the well of awkward punctuation). Studio executives fed this year’s trend with a flight to financial safety that has been building for a decade. At least 10 of about 30 major studio films released in the spring-summer blockbuster season were sequels or remakes, and another three — Thor, Green Lantern, and Captain America: The First Avenger — were based on comics whose kinship with existing films allowed them to play like parts of a franchise. In 2012, much like this year, the major studios will offer about 10 sequels or “reboots” (wherein a familiar series starts again, from the top), featuring the return of proven draws like Spider-Man and the Bourne spy cycle, this time with Jeremy Renner as a new hero. As a contrast, in 1993, all 10 of the top box office performers, including Jurassic Park, Mrs. Doubtfire, and The Fugitive, were freshly conceived films, whether based on an original script or adapted from another medium. There is no place for originality when greed is most important.
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