Recent Hollywood announcements regarding remakes and reboots seems to have swollen the constant trickle of web- grumbling on the matter into a rather more impressive torrent of outrage.

The sad thing is that it's impotent outrage (I should also note that it's ironic to see the likes of fark.com constantly re-use the tag-header 'Hollywood has run out of ideas'). Most of these embittered rants are American in origin, so I wonder if the US has somehow been infected by that grim British fatalism has been making us turn up the radio and get on with our knitting since the Blitz.

There is something that you can do about remakes and re-boots. Don't go and see them.

I know it's a mad and crazy idea, and it may seem glib, but as long as we keep attending these movies, Hollywood will keep making them. Hollywood's core business is to take all the risk out of movie-making, and its business has never been anything else.

Not only would producers like to remake the same movie over and over, they would actually like to make just one movie, one time, and then rent it to us on an hourly basis like dialysis. I can't fault them for this, because they are businessmen - reducing costs and maximising profits is their part of the deal. Quality control is ours. We are the ones who are neglecting our duties, not them.

Because if we didn't let them flog us warmed-over concepts year after year and swell their coffers, they would stop up this deluge of unimaginative shit, and be forced to look elsewhere. This is actually what normally happens when a cinematic trend dies - people vote with their feet and get producers sweating again to find new angles, new ideas, new writers...

In the echelons of power at the major studios, they must be wondering when the hell their luck is going to run out as regards re-treads, because there's no evidence that it is; enough explosions, enough sex-appeal, enough nostalgia, enough CGI and enough of our favourite actors and we wander in loyally like lemmings to have our feathers plucked yet again. Then we go home, fire up a browser and shout out in blogs that we're mad as hell - omitting the part about 'not going to take it anymore'.

I therefore dare you to fuck with the fundamental forces of nature and not go and see at least 2 films and at least 2 TV shows in the next 12 months that are re-heats or reboots of product that has already had its chance. And I don't care who's in them either, or how interesting the trailers look.

If you're going 'meh, yawn' at the idea of making that little sacrifice and encouraging your friends to do likewise, please stop complaining about remakes and reboots. You may not even mention in comments that you approve of those who do complain. Because you are personally green-lighting and financing recycled celluloid. You're just not getting the Havanas.