When a movie is chosen to be recreated or extended based on a good box office draw, the result is the "sequel".

With identical characters, stale references to no longer funny jokes, carbon-copy plots, and little purpose other than to make you spend more money, sequels are safe. You’ve seen them before. You’re even pretty sure that you will like the second one if you and most of America loved and went to the first one.

Sequels are enjoyable when they come in small doses – one or two a year – but not when they dominate the silver screen. This summer, six sequels and one remake showed up in the theatres with second helpings of warm apple pie, parodies of horror films, fast cars and faster talking, garrulous animals, the return of mummies and raptors that just never seem to die, and a bad, bad, bad, bad re-creation of "It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."

What I want to know is why Hollywood seems to think that just because we are not in school, we do not want to think at all. To Hollywood, summer is a competition to see who can create the worst movie with the biggest budget. The studios all tried to beat Pearl Harbor, but Planet of the Apes, The Mummy Returns, Jurassic Park 3, and Rat Race were no match for love among kamikaze Japanese fighter planes.

Why is it that winter saw the war against drugs in movies such as Traffic and Requiem for a Dream, and this summer saw Angelina Jolie fighting battles while wearing as few clothes as possible?

Of course it would be almost impossible for an entire summer to pass without a decent movie. A children’s film turned out to be one of the best movies of the summer in Shrek, and Moulin Rouge’s unique cinematography and choreography made for an amazing, though very bizarre, film.

The single greatest disappointment of this summer was the trend of having a great idea for a movie and not following through to the end of the final cut. From the previews, I was duped into believing that Pearl Harbor would be the most impressive movie I would ever see, but the spectacular bombing scenes failed to cover up a horrendous script, an unnecessary and unbelievable love triangle, and a random Oscar-moving moment by Cuba Gooding that was definitely not à la Jerry Maguire.

The second biggest letdown (and one of the last, since I pretty much stayed away from movies after wasting over seven dollars on Pearl Harbor) was The Others.

I think that anyone who saw it would say that they were scared shitless for the first hour and a half– literally on the edge of their seat, squeezing their friend’s hand until their whole body aches with fear, and screaming at the top of their lungs.

The Others prided itself on being original, and I would have enjoyed the movie immensely had it not had almost the exact same ending as The Sixth Sense two years earlier.

What I find most interesting is that the general consensus of both my friends and the critics agreed that this summer’s movies sucked, yet producers continue to create bad, bad films, many of them sequels.

People continue to buy tickets for such movies. Sadly, it seems people are willing to see a mediocre movie as long as there are people they recognize on screen.

This summer’s case in point was America’s Sweethearts, which should be titled "Just like every other Julia Roberts movie". But we all saw it anyway. We balk at seeing a movie that has not had its posters plastered on bus stops everywhere and a McDonalds’ endorsement.

Believe it or not, there are good movies out there that you may not have heard of, like Tortilla Soup and Ghost World. We complain so much about the quality of our films, but we are choosing what we see!

Bad sequels will continue to get made only if the original made money at the box office, which will not happen if no one goes to see it. This concludes your moment of zen, brought to you by Carrie Shapton.