The top-grossing movies worldwide for 2011 -or- Sequel: The Sequel

As we near the end of the year I am indulging my penchant for lists. Here is Box Office Mojo’s 2011 Worldwide Grosses. It’s interesting to see how little North America played in the success of some of these films (eg. Kung Fu Panda 2 made over 75% of its take overseas). More interesting (or less interesting, perhaps) is how sequels have taken over:

  1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 No surprise on this one as all the HP movies have done well and this one wrapped things up. Spoiler: Everyone dies.
  2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon The third Transformers movie provides some evidence that there may be a deity as it did not finish #1.
  3. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Who knew Johnny Depp with eyeshadow could result in multiple billion dollar grosses?
  4. Kung Fu Panda 2 It was only a so-so hit in the U.S. but people everyone outside of North America love them some fat cartoon pandas.
  5. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 Vampires, sparkling, teen melodrama and yes, a sequel.
  6. Fast Five The fifth Fast and Furious movie. This thing has legs. Or wheels. Or something. Will Vin Diesel use this as leverage to get another Riddick movie made? You know he wants to!
  7. The Hangover Part II A movie that didn’t need a sequel gets one, sequel is huge hit. This is why we can’t have nice things (or original movies).
  8. The Smurfs Wait a minute, this isn’t a sequel! But it is licensed, so it’s almost the same thing. It made over $500 million. Why? WHY?!
  9. Cars 2 Uninspired sequel to another movie that didn’t need one. This time Pixar got a pat on the bum for being naughty, as it was their lowest-grossing movie to date. A sequel to anything but Cars would have been nice.
  10. Rio This isn’t a sequel. How did it get here? It’s anthropomorphic cartoon animals so it’s almost like a sequel to one of the thousand or so movies that can be described thusly.

Extrapolating, I am predicting that by 2015 all movies will be sequels and no new stories will be told. I look forward to Cars 7: Out of Gas in 2022.

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