It's Been Done.

In the madness of my moving and packing, I have officially packed away my DVD player, PS2, and Xbox 360. This means that I have to watch regular television. Yes, there are far worse fates than watching television, but it also means that I am once again exposed to commercials, which is a little foreign to me.

I saw one commercial, today, that was truly jarring. Apparently, as of today (or yesterday, or some time recently) you can purchase the DVD or Blu-Ray of Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2.

Yes. Let that sink in. Smell it. Taste it. Root around in its hideous mess.

Now, let's think logically about this. This is a sequel to a movie that starred primarily latino actors doing voice work for a bunch of CGI dogs who make bad puns and discuss how hard it is to be a lapdog for a spoiled princess. I am sure it's chock full of fart and poop jokes, which, don't get me wrong, are great, but it's not enough to carry a whole movie. Which leads me to my inevitable follow up question: why in the hell do we need two of these movies? Hell, why did we need the first one? Why do we need a third "Fockers" movie? How many more Scream movies are they going to make? I thought the whole idea was that was a trilogy. Why the hell are they doing a fourth?

So just for funzies, let's take a quick peek at what's out there right now:

- True Grit, a re-make of the John Wayne classic. Yes, it was fantastic, and if anyone can pull of a remake, it is the Cohen brothers.

- The Green Hornet - This one double dips: it was both a television show and a comic book.

- Little Fockers - I don't even have to go there. The first movie was great, but yeah, that's all I want to say.

- Tron: Legacy - I have to admit, I really want to see this one. It may be derived from a movie made nearly thirty years back, but I feel like they're at least going about it the right way. Plus Daft Punk does the soundtrack, so it can't be that bad.

- Yogi Bear 3D - Of course, used to be a pretty legit cartoon, but I heard the movie is so bad even the kids don't give a damn. Might be the very worst movie made all year. Might well be the worst idea for a movie I've ever heard, and it makes me shed a little tear when I think that Tom Cavanaugh agreed to do it.

This is just of movies that you could go out and see tomorrow. I won't try to catalog the number of re-makes, re-workings, adaptations, or needless sequels are out there from the past few years, or are in development. Naturally, this makes me think: has the state of entertainment gotten so dire at this point that we can't come up with decent original movies, and if we do make decent ones, can't we leave it at just one? I know, I know, everyone makes their money opening weekend, and the current economic system of movies is to churn out as much drek as humanly possible. I just wish it were a little more sustainable.

However, there is another way of thinking about this that I don't know if many people consider, and that is that the amount of borrowing ideas is not entirely unique to movies. I would never think to re-write something like Hamlet, nor would I try to change punctuation of an e.e. cummings poem and try to re-sell it as another poem. I suppose the closest comparison on the literary front would be adaptations like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" but having read both the originals and the re-imaginings of both those titles, I can tell you that a NUMBER of liberties were taken with the originals. Still, aside from parody, you don't see a lot of replication of work in the literary community. Yes, I realize in music it is much more prevalent; a point that was driven home with a vengeance when I saw a couple of cover bands last Thursday. So I suppose in that respect, re-making a movie is pretty comparable to covering a song. Despite that similarity, cover bands make money and get people to come out at shows, but the primary difference is they're not re-recording albums from the bands they cover and selling those.

So what are your thoughts? Is this whole movie-remake gripe limited to me? Should I look at it like theater arts, where people re-imagine and re-invent plays all the time? Or am I just a crotchety old coot who should just be happy they still make movies and that I can then get them months later on Netflix and gripe about how much I didn't like them to the internet?