2025 has been a year of cinematic excellence. “Superman,” “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” have kept audiences returning to theaters throughout the year, while live action adaptations of older movies such as “Lilo & Stitch” and “How to Train Your Dragon” have brought new fans to beloved stories. But the year of 2025 has also had a problem, movie-wise. A concerning trend. Sequels. Too many sequels.

Many of these sequels were box office successes, such as “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” “Zootopia 2” and “Wicked: For Good.” At the time of writing, nine of the top ten grossing movies this year are part of a larger franchise. That’s ninety percent. And if you go further down the list, out of the top 25 highest grossing movies this calendar year, two were original. Two. “Sinners” and “Weapons.” Which brings me back to the root of my problem.

There are too many sequels. And so many sequels achieving so much commercial success leads to more sequels. And more sequels means fewer and fewer original films. Even many of the non-sequel films that released out this year piggybacked off of successful IPs, like “A Minecraft Movie,” “F1,” “Superman,” and even “The Running Man.”

That’s not to say there weren’t any good original movies released this year. Like I said earlier, “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” were both acclaimed original movies, but those are two pretty apples in a bin of remakes, sequels and reboots.

Now this isn’t to say that sequels, reboots and remakes are necessarily a bad thing. Not at all, actually. But, they come with consequences when there is a surplus. Studios see the success of these sequels, and they become more hesitant to greenlight new, original ideas from younger filmmakers. After all, why take a risk on something new when you’re guaranteed to make money on something old? Not to mention the same formulaic storytelling (hero goes here, does this, gets in danger, escapes) that has pushed into the minds of audiences so much they have grown numb to it.

Sure, studios chasing money is a big reason for why originality is a dying art in film, but it’s not entirely their fault: the money they want so badly comes from somewhere. The audience—yes, you, the audience—are the ones funneling money into this machine of recycled stories featuring recycled characters. And I’m not against reinterpreting old ideas, but like plastic or aluminum, when you recycle something enough it loses quality. It loses luster. It loses that spark. And that’s the issue with all these reboots, and all these sequels, and all these remakes. They’re reusing the same thing so much, it’s losing the shine that original movies have.