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Victor: The summer of sequels is upon us. Spider-Man's already spinning his third spinoff. Soon we'll have Johnny Depp, guyliner and all, in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. And down the road, to name a few, Matt Damon Bourne again, Live Free or Die Hard, Rush Hour 3, Harry Potter 5, Ocean's 13 and Hostel: Part 2. There are more colons and digits in Hollywood this season than many proctology students see in a week.

Johanna: Clearly, we need a new word for a sequel to a sequel – a resequel? A triquel?

Victor: A cynicalcashgrab?

Johanna: Sometimes a lucrative one, that's for sure. Spider-Man 3 grossed $148-million (U.S.) in its first three days, shattering box-office records. So now we must ponder another number: Industry insiders are predicting 2007 will be the $10-billion year, thanks not only to the boys of summer (Spidey, Captain Jack, Harry Potter, Jason Bourne, Danny Ocean et al.), but a strong late-winter box office: 300 alone broke $200-million. I think lots of Hollywood suits will be getting house No. 3 and jet No. 3, not to mention wife No. 3, after this summer.

Elizabeth: But really, how often is wife No. 3 as good as the original?

Victor: I hope you know we just lost several subscribers in Bountiful, B.C.

Elizabeth: I actually loved Spider-Man 3, if only for Tobey Maguire's Forelock of Evil, and Sam Raimi's perhaps tasteless decision to model him after a certain mid-century genocidal dictator.

Victor: That movie had more filler in it than a tin of cat food from China. I also thought it ethically questionable that the writers didn't give any credit to Johanna for quoting her own motto after a fourth vodka: “I love being bad – it makes me happy.”

Johanna: So true! But sometimes sequels are like that second vodka – they deepen things, or sharpen them up. Can you imagine The Godfather without Godfather Two? Alien without Aliens? But when the movie is rushed, as it usually is in a cynicalcashgrab, things get bloated and dull. Especially trying: When No.'s 2 and 3 are shot simultaneously, such as with The Matrix, Back to the Future, and – uh-oh – Pirates of the Caribbean.

Victor: I've found that swishily swashbuckling serial lots of camp fun, but have never quite been able to get over Johnny Depp looking like a guy who's just stumbled off pill corner in Vancouver's Eastside. As for Shrek the Third, it obviously aims to charm, but am I the only one who thinks the story of a chartreuse-coloured ogre is feeling a little tired now that even John Baird's gone green?

Elizabeth: I still love the ogre, thanks to the three Teutonic pigs and the saucer-eyed Puss in Boots. I have a feeling we'll be seeing Eddie Murphy in Shrek 58: Escape from the Glue Factory, because Scary Spice is certain to get all child-support on his ass.

Victor: If we'll pardon the pun.

Elizabeth: You won't find me in the line for At World's End. I feel like I was at life's end after the eternal Part Two. I might be persuaded, however, by the presence of Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow's dad. After all, I hold out hope he'll be the second Mr. Renzetti.

Johanna: A sequel to your husband, how clever of you.

Victor: What is it with otherwise sane women shivering their timbers over scrawny old Keith Richards? Talk about dead man's chest.

Johanna: Keef aside, I concur about Pirates: Yo Ho No. I'm also squeamish about Oceans 13. Oceans 11 was amusing enough, but the smugness in Oceans 12, if hooked to a generator, could light up Vegas for all time.

Elizabeth: At least Julia Roberts isn't in it. That takes the gums out of smug.

Johanna: But you can catch her niece, Eric Roberts's daughter Emma, as gumshoe tween Nancy Drew. I wonder which gene she inherited: self-destructive like dad or self-aggrandizing like Aunt J?

Victor: I think you two are dissing Julia simply because she has a mouth that's wider than her forehead and laughs like a braying donkey – and that's just plain mean. As for Ocean's 13, I see a continuation on the theme of vapid, confusing and absolutely full of eye candy. The whole prospect leaves me feeling vaguely fatigued and deeply, deeply horny.

Johanna: How funny, I feel the same way about The Bourne Ultimatum. In the four hours that the first two Bourne films were passing over my eyeballs, I enjoyed them, but two minutes after I left the theatre I could remember almost nothing about them.

Victor: My problem with the Bourne franchise, which overall I think is smart and slick, is that I can't take the whiskerless, cherubic Matt Damon seriously as a trained-assassin leading man. Okay honey, you go out and play government secret agent, but only if all of your homework is done.

Elizabeth: I always want to ask him if I'm maximizing the potential of my RRSPs.

Johanna: I'd love to see Steve Carell do a parody of Damon as Bourne. They're kind of parallel-universe twins. But then, I'd be happy watching Carell do almost anything. I'm strangely optimistic about his summer pic, Evan Almighty, the successor to Bruce Almighty, which starred Jim Carrey. Instead of doing a straight sequel, the filmmakers kept the premise and switched the cast, which I think could work.

Victor: I hope you're right. Carrey as God was fun. But Carell as a modern-day Noah, called by God to build an ark, all the while trying to tame a beard that grows a foot a day? Look around at the men over 40 you know. Hollywood should not be portraying the need for hair removal as a joke.

Elizabeth: Does God always have to be played by Morgan Freeman? Did He decree this in a commandment I missed? Is Shawshank Redemption His favourite movie? How about Carrot Top as God? Minnie Driver? Robert Carlyle? Oh wait, he's too busy chasing zombies.

Johanna: After playing a junkie and a stripper, being a zombie might be a good move for Carlyle. He was furious in Trainspotting and sweet in The Full Monty, and is now starring in 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to the spicy 28 Days Later, in which Great Britain becomes infected with a “rage virus” that turns otherwise mild-mannered Wensleydale lovers into flesh-chomping undead.

Elizabeth: Wait, have they announced a Spice Girls reunion?

Johanna: One horror sequel at a time, please. In 28 Weeks Later, the rage virus is allegedly “contained,” which means the U.S. military has corralled the Brits into compounds. It's gross but relevant. By the way, why are zombie stories so wise? Remember how great the first Dawn of the Dead was, so trenchant about consumerism?

Victor: I think it has something to do with Hollywood excelling at what it knows. Which would also explain why it's remaking a perfect film like Hairspray – this time, minus Sonny Bono, Mink Stole, and Pia Zadora reading from Alan Ginsberg's Howl. And Divine replaced by John Travolta? L. Ron Hubbard would make a prettier drag queen.

Johanna: Here's another odd remake: Rescue Dawn, Werner Herzog's fictional retelling of a Werner Herzog documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly. It's about a pilot gunned down in Vietnam who escapes a POW camp, only to be nearly killed by the jungle. Apparently, Herzog almost killed his stars as well, Christian Bale and Steve Zahn. They speak of this film in near-death whispers – when they speak of it at all.

Victor: I'm curious about Hostel 2, given Hostel's snuff story of Yankee backpackers lured to an operating room in Bratislava well-stocked with scalpels but fresh out of anesthetic. This time, three college kids get invited to what they think is a spa.In fact, says the promo material, they're about to become “pawns in the fantasies of the sick and privileged from around the world.” Dudes, these foreigners ... ouch! stop that! … don't like us.

Elizabeth: I'm thinking Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix might be even creepier than Hostel 2, and not just because it has the tremendous Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge, and Ralph Fiennes as that scamp Voldemort. Still, will the sight of Fiennes sans nose be enough to erase the mental picture of him playing hide the oxygen mask with some stewardess at 30,000 feet?

Victor: I'm sincerely hoping not. It's the image of Daniel Radcliffe, after his starkers West End debut in London, that makes me wish my brain had a delete button.

Johanna: Now, if it's Americans abroad you want, there are lots to choose from: They wander the City of Light in Paris je t'aime. In 2 Days in Paris, Julie Delpy brings her boyfriend, played by Adam Goldberg, home to meet her parents. Delpy co-wrote, directed, and cast her actual parents. L'hilarité s'ensuit!

Victor: If anyone's funnier than the Bratislavans, it's the French. (Note to Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe, Stéphane Dion and the House of Commons official-languages committee: That was a joke.)

Johanna: Just wait until Jeff Goldblum, as a CIA operative, tails Parker Posey around Paris in Hal Hartley's new film, Fay Grim. And across the channel, all-American cutie-pie Anne Hathaway dons Empire-waisted gowns and an English accent to play Jane Austen in Becoming Jane.

Victor: I never forgave Hathaway for treating Heath Ledger so coldly in Brokeback Mountain just because he lassoed her husband and engaged in a little hobby horse with the guy. I'm predicting even less warmth from I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, in which two straight guys – Adam Sandler and Kevin James (of TV's The King of Queens; no comment) – tie the knot to top up their benefit plans. Its casting alone dooms this film to derision: No real gay guy would marry either of these two, even if he came with unlimited root canals, bridging benefits at 50, and all of Pride Week (yes, including both weekends) as a stat holiday.

Elizabeth: Meanwhile, what do we straight women have to look forward to? Bruce Willis in Live Free or Die Hard, the only summer movie to steal its title from a state motto.

Victor: It also sounds uncomfortably close to “Live fast, die young and leave a great-looking corpse,” albeit with a democratic-priapic twist.

Johanna: I don't understand why they're blowing the dust off Willis's John McClane after all these years – has his restored hairline finally reached its 1995 level, which is when Die Hard With a Vengeance came out?

Victor: At least he's aware of hair maintenance.

Johanna: That was Die Hard No. 3, of course. No. 2 was Die Harder (1990), my nominee for worst sequel title ever. To get to Die Hard No. 1, you have to time travel back to 1988. My clothes from that era have come back in and gone back out of style three times. And what's with the musty Rush Hour 3? The first two were nine and seven years ago. Gosh, do you think Hollywood could be – gasp – out of ideas?

Victor: How dare you say that, the very summer studio execs are also breaking away from sequelitis by giving us a remake of 1979's Halloween, starring Brad Dourif, who's been the voice of Chucky in a mere half-dozen Child's Play movies; 1408, a hotel horror flick that will be the 53rd film based on a story by Stephen King (I'm not making that up); The Invasion, in which Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig go at Invasion of the Body Snatchers for the third time (maybe they'll update it by podcasting those spores); and The Simpsons Movie, which – okay, so maybe it's been on TV since Johanna first wore those burlap hot pants she had on last week – has never had feature-film treatment. The rest of us talk “reduce, reuse and recycle.” When it comes to originality, moth-eaten plot lines and decades-old ideas, Tinseltown walks the walk.

Johanna: In terms of reuse, this summer there are also two films about toys (Transformers and Bratz); one about a video game (DOA: Dead or Alive); a sequel to Daddy Day Care (Daddy Day Camp); and yet another animated penguin pic (Surf's Up)

Victor: Not to mention the new Michael Moore doc, Sicko, billed as “a comedy about 45-million people with no health care in the richest country on Earth.” It should prove especially thought-provoking now that Manufacturing Dissent has shown Moore's got lots in common with Oliver Stone. By the way, since when does Dubai not have health care?

Johanna: Hollywood has always mutated like one of its own shape-shifting villains. Threatened by TV, the studios gave us epics. Threatened by VCRs, they ramped up special-effects technology. Now, one of the main reasons to see a film in theatres, as opposed to on DVD at home where the floor's less sticky, is for the spectacle.But spectacles cost money; a sequel is an easier sell. Which is why the summer movie I was most looking forward to, Across the Universe – a 1960s-era anti-war musical set to Beatles tunes, directed by Julie Taymor, the mistress of lush visuals – has been pulled; while the film version of Underdog, starring a CGI-enhanced beagle voiced by Jason Lee, should arrive right on schedule, Aug. 3.

Elizabeth: Well, Johanna, if it's music you want, you can hold out for La Môme – I can't wait to see Marion Cotillard inhabiting the spirit of the Little Sparrow in the Edith Piaf biopic. But I might have already spent all my pocket money on the movie I most want to see, Knocked Up. There, I've said it. I can't wait to witness the reunion of Judd Apatow, who directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and British Columbia's own Seth Rogen, who played Virgin's stoner, Cal (“Seriously – you framed an Asia poster?”). In Knocked Up, Rogen's a wastrel who impregnates a high-flying career woman (Katherine Heigl, from Grey's Anatomy). I'm already in line.

Johanna: If we do cross the $10-billion mark this year, I'm blaming you. And I hope someone taps a calculator and tells us what it cost to get there. I'm talking production costs, marketing costs, and COSTS TO OUR SOULS.

Victor: You'll have Michael Myers to help you get your head around that one. In the Halloween remake, he's apparently going to be “pure evil.” Step aside Iranian despots and North Korean strongmen sporting double chins and Dame Edna glasses. We're being taken over, one remake, sequel and theatregoer at a time. Some days it feels like those Communist dictators have it (almost) right: We have nothing to lose but our brains.