When my dad woke me up on a Saturday morning and told me we were going to see The Avengers, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I had seen all the trailers countless times, I knew the characters inside and out, and on Monday, I would hold the most coveted information a third grader could dream of: who was in the end credit scene?

Leading up to this, we had seen every Marvel movie in theaters. At this point, it was a tradition. Even at the young age of seven, as I waited in a line that hugged the walls of the cinema, I knew this was something new. Something fresh. Original.

Now, everything I see feels like a carbon copy.

It’s no secret that as the years have passed, entertainment has become increasingly reliant on reboots, remakes, and sequels — the “Big Three,” as I call them. Nothing is inherently wrong with these types of media. Humans are programmed to be cost-efficient — maximizing our profit while minimizing our expenditures. If enjoyment is our profit and time is our expenditure, then favoring media that has satisfied us before only makes sense.

Simply put, the “Big Three” are reliable.

However, the recent uptick in the number of recycled movies being released is cause for concern. So far in 2024, all 10 of the biggest box office hits have been sequels and remakes:

• Inside Out 2
• Deadpool & Wolverine
• Despicable Me 4
• Dune: Part Two
• Twisters
• Godzilla x King Kong: The New Empire
• Kung Fu Panda 4
• Bad Boys: Ride or Die
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• Kingdom of the Planet of Apes

Compare this to 2012, the same year The Avengers came out. Five of the 10 movies were originals:

• The Avengers
• The Hunger Games
• Brave
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
• Ted

If you look at the domestic box office over the years, it has become increasingly saturated with the same intellectual properties and fewer original concepts. The World Intellectual Property Organization defines intellectual properties as, “creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.”

I believe this can be attributed to two factors: the passage of time and studio complacency.

As time passes, fewer original concepts exist because more people have made content out of those ideas. Think about a time you had a novel idea, only to find out someone had already created it.

Even though this is a conundrum, I do not recognize it as a valid reason for the influx of recycled content produced by major film studios. The three most dominant studios–Universal, Walt Disney, and Paramount–make hundreds of millions, if not billions, a year. Walt Disney has made $44,703,354,475 from 1995 to 2024 in box office profit alone, averaging $1.5 billion a year.

The difference between Disney and its competitors in average yearly earnings is minimal, meaning all these major studios have the resources to create new ideas.

Instead, I believe the primary reason entertainment has become oversaturated with unoriginal content is studio complacency. Entities like Walt Disney, Universal Studios, and Paramount Pictures know their content is becoming repetitive and subpar yet continue to recycle the same content because they know people will pay to see it regardless.

In 2019, the first trailer for the new Sonic the Hedgehog movie came out. People absolutely hated it. The titular character’s design was ruined, and the outcry of fans forced Paramount to delay the movie to redesign his character model for the entire film.

After the redesign,  Sonic the Hedgehog was a massive box office success, making $302 million off a $90 million budget.

Obviously, the only language these major corporations speak is money. If we want to stop seeing empty cash grabs, we need to take a page from Sonic fans and stop paying studios until they create the products we want.