Ralph Breaks the Box Office

See?  They don't need Pixar anymore!  Well, ol' Walt's cryogenically frozen head must be smiling right now in its chamber, awaiting a donor body like Mark Wahlberg or Arnold Schwarzenegger 20 years ago, for (Wreck-It) Ralph Breaks the Internet is #1 this weekend.  "The Simpsons" alum Jim Reardon helped to write this one, and Ralph Wiggum broke my brain many seasons ago with his various nonsensical musings.  It's all connected.  Of course, the Internet has won for some time now, and it seems to be resilient enough for just about any pop culture phenomenon, porn-based or otherwise.  But television still has the ability to crush dreams like nothing else.  Take Chris Hardwick, for instance, and his show, "@Midnight," a "Jeopardy!"-ish show wherein participants, usually celebrities of varying luminescence, try to "break" or "own" the Internet by coming up with their own descriptions of various Web-based microtrends, often torn from the very day's headlines!  The final winner of the show's prize is apparently "owning" the internet for themselves for about five seconds, then quickly relinquishing it back to its rightful owners... probably the big media companies, despite what "Silicon Valley"'s Richard Hendricks was trying to do... I'm still not sure what.  A people's Internet?  No more monthly fees?  I could probably use a little relief from my bills for a while, personally.  How about you?
Anyway, so that's one sequel.  Creed II is another, a continuation of the story of Rocky Balboa, as some of you might know... but with a twist!  Ivan Drago is back, and trying to ... horn in?  Trying to steal the show.  The Cold War might not be back in full, but I think even Putin might be smiling a little bit.  Oh, it's getting glasnost-algic in here... what?  What did I say?  Yes, as long as there be a Hollywood, it looks like there will always be a boxer's tale to be told.  Is that one of the seven?  Cowboy, astronaut, politician, boxer... I don't know the rest.  Rise-fall, fall-rise, Black Cop White Cop, and Stop That Wedding!  More "Simpsons" for ya.  But the public likes these boxer stories, and Hollywood likes what the public likes, and the actors like them because they have an excuse for working out for the part.  Miles Teller and Jake Gyllenhaal, for two.
So, there seem to be three sequels this weekend, and four remakes.  We got The Grinch, there's A Star is Born, there's Driving Miss Daisy, and another remake of Robin Hood.  This time, it's the Kingsman kid himself, on loan away from Matthew Vaughn.  How'd he manage that?  And didn't Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe already do a definitive enough version of all this already?  Or even Kevin Costner to a degree?  No, apparently not.  It's just one of those stories now, like The Mummy or Tarzan or Sherlock Holmes or Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, a perennial that can be re-told innumerable numbers of times.  Oh, and I should add The Joker, as in Batman's most profitable arch-nemesis.  Isn't he getting his own series now or something?