Coming soon to a theater near you: More of the same!

Recently, as my wife and I sat in a darkened theater waiting for the start of yet another Hobbit movie—the sixth, if memory serves—the previews came on the screen, tempting us with a festival of “new” films.

And every “new” film preview, every single one of them, was a sequel to some other film that is now old.

There was yet another Mad Max movie (the 4th), proof that post-apocalyptic Australians don’t die. Or even fade away.

There was yet another Terminator film, (also the 4th, not counting the TV series), with Arnold yet again living up to his stubborn oath, “I’ll be back.”

There was yet another Hunger Games feast being offered, even though we had barely cleared the table after the first Hunger Games snack.

But the previews weren’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

Because here came yet another Jurrassic Park joyride. And yet another Avengers smackdown.

And the return visitors kept returning.

Because in flew Supergirl, yet another Kryptonian expat trying to hide her super powers behind eyeglasses. And Peter Pan, battling yet another pirate in Never-ending-land.

And, believe it or not, R2-D2 and C-3P0 clanking along yet again in a galaxy not nearly far, far enough away—the eighth episode, with two more threatened. Will the Force ever NOT be with us?

Previews of sequel after sequel after sequel, like endless echoes bouncing off canyon walls, each hoping to lure you into chasing a ghost voice that never dies.

At long last the previews were over and our long-awaited sixth-generation Hobbits scampered across the screen, but I found it hard to concentrate on the plot. I was calculating how many reincarnated lives I would have to live before I finally get to the end of all these sequels.

I realize that film sequels have been around almost as long as the originals have been. A century ago, 1915’s “Birth of a Nation” was followed up only a year later with the first film sequel of all time: “Fall of a Nation.” Mercifully, those filmmakers resisted the temptation to keep going with sequels like “Nation 3: It’s Fallen, But It Might Get Up.”

Since then, sequels have become the name of the game. Some movie franchises have remained somewhat manageable in their remakes—like the three Godfather flicks—but too many have spun out of control:

Six Rocky films. Ten Halloween flicks. Twelve visits to Friday the 13th.

But it gets worse. Much, much worse.

James Bond keeps cheating death in film after film, despite an occasional new face—a total of 23 times and counting.

Godzilla has roared back a total of 28 times.

And Sherlock Holmes? Seventy actors have played him in more than 200 films.

So by now we should have made our peace with the ghosts of movies past, present, and future, right?

But still, though sequels have been with us for a century, whenever you went to see a film in all those other years, at least you occasionally got to see a preview of something new and original along with all the re-chewed, regurgitated up-and-comers.

But apparently not anymore, because when my wife and I went to see that sequel Hobbit film, all we saw was yet another preview of yet another sequel, over and over again, with not a single preview of something new and completely original.

Call it the Hollywood hiccups. Acetate reflux.

Because the new rule is that old films never die. They just go into remission for a while before metastasizing somewhere else.

I came out of that theater with the seen-it-before sequel blues, so I thought maybe I’d just read for a while to clear my head.

When we got home I picked up Time Magazine, where the first article I read featured General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is waiting for orders to lead American troops—yet again—back into Iraq.

I sighed. If you liked the first two invasions, you’ll love Baghdad 3.

“This is my third shot at Iraq,” he was quoted as saying. He went on to add that key figures this time around would require “a combination of courage, luck and leadership to manage their way through this”—proof that Dempsey is pretty lousy when it comes to writing a gripping trailer tagline to sell his sequel. I was hoping for something like, “Desert Déjà Vu: Mission Re-accomplished Again.” But no. Not yet. Give him time.

I turned the page, and there was an article about an astronaut named Scott Kelly, an American preparing to set a record by working on the International Space Station for a full year in space starting in March.

Whew! No sequel there, right?

Except that Scott Kelly is the brother of Mark Kelly, who has been to space four times already. To make matters worse, Scott and Mark are twins, so not only will Scott’s “Kelly 5” flight be a sequel to his brother’s, both guys have been sequels of each other since birth.

I put down the magazine and turned on CNN, which was already gearing up for yet another national election, still almost two years off. And although elections are expected to be sequels of a sort, this one was going to be a sequel in spades, because the political preview front runners seem to be yet another Clinton and yet another Bush.

The candidates hadn’t come up with the taglines for their trailers yet, but it’s just a matter of time:

“Clinton 2: This Blue Dress Is Stain-Resistant.”

“Bush 3: The Final Lowering of the Bar.”

I turned off the TV with a sigh and headed to the sanctuary of my shower to wash the gummy pall of the movie theater from me. Maybe there I could shed this insistent sticky shroud of sequelitude.

But there on the shampoo bottle were those fateful words:

“Lather. Rinse. Repeat.”

---