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Sequel burnout or tired of new films 2?

Reboots aren't the reason for low box-office takings. This summer's originals are just as rubbish
Woody in Toy Story 3
Feel the burnout … Woody in Toy Story 3

The relative global box office failure of Sex and the City 2 may have surprised many – honestly, how can a film with its own official yoghurt fail? – but it's also opened the floodgates for a wave of mournful introspection from Hollywood. Apparently some have stated, with the gravitas usually reserved for state funerals, that Sex and the City 2 didn't flop because of its horrific reviews or straight-faced use of the term "Lawrence of my labia". No, it was because we're all apparently suffering from "sequel burnout".

It's not just Sex and the City. Shrek Forever After's opening was $30m (£21m) down on what was expected, while those with serious hopes of seeing Iron Man 2 beat The Dark Knight's opening weekend record were similarly disappointed. The argument is that people aren't going to the cinema because 11 of the films released between May and August are either sequels or reboots, compared with nine last summer. This downturn is obviously all the fault of the sequels. You can't argue with maths like that.

But that hardly seems fair. Yes, sequels are often criticised for being lazy and derivative excuses to wring more pennies out of an already tired idea, but is this year's batch really worse than anything else released this summer?

I'm not saying that sequels are better than original films. I wouldn't suggest that anybody goes to see Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back, for instance – especially if they haven't seen the first one, because a novice really couldn't hope to pick up all the complex themes and plot strands without a proper initiation. It's more that this year's crop of non-sequels happens to be just as uninspiring.

For all its faults, Predators has already whipped the film blogs and action fanboys into a state of near-delirium, and unless every single teenage girl in the country somehow manages to crash through the back-end of puberty at exactly the same time within the next month, Twilight: Eclipse is also guaranteed to do gangbusters. Contrast that with the smidgen of muted anticipation reluctantly doled out to the likes of Knight and Day and The Last Airbender and you can see that, if anything's going to be blamed for the relatively meagre box office takings this year, it shouldn't be sequels.

At least with sequels, people know what to expect. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore might be an unwanted follow-up to a nine-year-old film that people forgot existed eight and a half years ago, but at least it's a given that casual audiences will understand it from the get-go and only have themselves to blame if it ends up being terrible. That isn't something you could say about, say, Inception.

And let's not forget about Pixar, a company with a habit of making commercially unstoppable, critically adored films with dizzying frequency. This year it's releasing Toy Story 3 – not just a sequel to one of the most-loved movies of all time, but also a follow-up to what's widely regarded as one of the best sequels ever. Unless something has gone disastrously wrong, Toy Story 3 will almost certainly fare better in the year-end lists than the likes of Prince Of Persia or Robin Hood.

So let's try not to blame everything on sequels. Yes, they can be creatively lethargic, utterly cynical and little more than the transparent pawns of the moneymen – but isn't that sort of the point of all summer movies?

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