Universal's obsession with sequels

Most of the Universal Monster movies came out when the "Greatest Generation" was coming of age. This is the generation that grew up during the Great Depression and fought in WWII. They had more important things to do than bellyache about the state of horror movie franchises.

Back then the horror movies and their sequels and spinoffs and mashups and crossovers were not the A pictures of their day. They were important financially to little Universal studios, but the other studios were doing a wide variety of big-ticket movies.

Today, the problem isn't that there are so many of this type of movie. The problem is they are the big-budget mainstream product of Hollywood and not enough of other kinds of movies are getting produced at that level anymore.

It's like having some comic books available in the library, and not many people would complain. But when the library's budget is going mostly to comic books, and the great literature or the current writers are being pushed off the shelves to make room for the comic books, then people will surely complain.



I don't know if it's "really wacky," but your French is coming along.

Not just Universal but many movies churned out sequels year after year. The Thin Man series, King Kong and even a lesser known series like Dr. Kildare. Some even came out the same year.

It's kind of funny how people complain on and on about every movie having 10 sequels nowadays when sequels have always been made. People these days don't bother to research anything from before the Internet and think everything is a new phenomenon they came up with. Anyways, I don't mind sequels as long as they know when enough is enough.