Sequels, Prequels, Reboots, and Series

It's interesting to me how there often appears to be this air of negativity around sequels - yet this weekend Hangover 2 (2012) set box office records for a 5 day opening of a comedy and an R-rated film (beating another sequel, Matrix Reloaded (2003)).
- Sequels and prequels should be expanding on an original story, continuing a story, or giving us background to a story we have not yet been exposed to. This unfortunately is not often the case. What we instead see is a production company trying to make a quick buck while a movie name, specific actor(s), or movie franchise is "hot". With this in mind we then see this idea of having to "one-up" its predecessor in some way, shape, or form with the results usually being not so great.
- Series, like James Bond, or Harry Potter usually come from previously written books, so a decent groundwork is already set down for a movie. What usually gets in the way of those movies being good or great is poor direction, poor casting, and poor editing.
- Reboots - we seem to be seeing more of these as digital special effects, new actors, new direction, could, in theory, revive a previously good, but otherwise limited (for whatever reason) movie. I think there is a place for all of these types of movies, but, in most cases (at least for the first 3) the product compared the original will be inferior. This is not to say that sequels, prequels, reboots, and series are not entertaining -in fact, in some cases they great productions. A recent reboot that,in my opinion, was very entertaining and well made was Star Trek (2009). In fact, I would rather watch it over Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) any day of the week. Examples of a sequel/series that are not in the inferior category are; The Godfather, Part II (1974), and the various James Bond movies.

I really like horror movies, and as my wife has pointed out on several occasions, over half of the movies I own could be considered horror, but it is this genre that I generally believe has driven sequels, prequels, and reboots down to almost laughable status. It seems that an every borderline decent horror film can launch multiple sequels which often results in dumbing down characters, and very lame stories.