There has been a constant war against sequels, prequels, and remakes for a decade now, one draped in the flag of “Originality.” There are no original films anymore, they say, as everything is in someway derivative of something. Indeed, when looking at the top ten films of 2012 thus far, only two (Ted and Brave) can really be called original, while everything else is either a sequel or an adaptation of something else.  Taken 2, despite being a bland affair according to Mr. Hunter, opened strongly at the box office pulling in $50m. Then again, the Disney remake of a short, Frankenweenie, stumbled and was seen, undeservingly, by only a small audience. Despite that stumble it’s pretty safe to say that revisiting properties is still strongly in vogue and probably will be for some quite some time – but is that really a bad thing?

There’s a rarely talked about scourge worming its way through the studio system and reaching beyond it. It’s the comic book movie – in all of its harmless glory, the beauty of its spectacle, and the incredible nature of its dominance over other sub-genres. The truth is, no single comic book movie can do direct harm to an audience (except maybe Jonah Hex). The sub-genre has been incredibly helpful not only in bringing about a large amount of joy to the lives of billions but also in helping to usher in other “geek” properties to the mainstream. But we’re not talking about direct damage here. The insidious problem that comic book movies cause comes from their own popularity. Executives in the major studios and even those in the indie world are passing over original ideas simply because they aren’t comic books, and that’s a problem.