Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Quick, what's your favorite movie? Is it Lethal Weapon 2? Pirates of the Caribbean 3? How about Next Friday?

It's never a sequel, is it? Our favorite movies, the ones that stick with us, are always new experiences. We meet characters, we connect with them, we get drawn into a story from the beginning and watch its resolution at the end. It's a complete experience. It just works. There's nothing more satisfying than being told a fresh story from start to finish. And yet practically the only things Hollywood pumps out these days are sequels and remakes, reboots and reimaginings. Why is that?

Because we asked them to, of course.

Getty

"Will you pleeeeaaase make another Superman movie? THIS time, surely, somebody will enjoy it!"

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

You know that feeling when you finish a really good book, and you're just goddamn empty inside? If you could measure exactly when kids turned the last page of the Harry Potter series for the first time, I could probably extrapolate a pretty mean graph plotting the demise of childhood around the world. Finishing a good story is devastating. Because there's nothing more addictive than a good story, and just like any good high, it's going to be brutal coming down. The longer you spend hopped up on 'shrooms and bouncing around the rocks like a Gummi Bear, the longer you're going to spend sweating on the kitchen floor, trying to decide which is worse -- the existential crisis or the projectile diarrhea.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

A good story makes addicts of us all, and addicts will always demand more, even if there's no more good stuff to give. You find a junkie in the middle of withdrawals and he's not going to turn down your heroin because you dropped it in the litter box. He'll shoot that shit into his arm, cat-poop rocks and all. That's why we'll watch Jack Sparrow fuck a squirrel on a life raft rather than say goodbye to him in a dignified manner.