On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Doug Henwood wrote:
> The point is that Hollywood doesn't want to do anything original - it's
> all III, IV...IX. Because it's safe and inoffensive.
Just to play devil's advocate, there is an argument to be made that popular culture has always consisted of variations on the same story -- that this is essence of folk tales and mythology, and essentially it's the same with Hollywood genre-stories, whether they are putting numerals on it or not.
My favorite exposition of this argument is by the Berkeley folklorist Carol Clover in her book _Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film_ (which is a lot less jargony than you'd think from that title).
Michael