Don’t get me wrong: I LOVE Disney. A lot. You could call it an obsession of mine. I’m actually writing this article while wearing a "Finding Nemo" shirt, and no, that was not planned. This year was the first time I had ever heard of the D23 EXPO, a convention on August 14-16 at the Anaheim Convention Center, where the big names come together to celebrate the past, present, and future of Disney for its biggest fans. And those fans brought back some incredibly crucial information, not the least of it being the list of upcoming Disney and Disney/Pixar movies to be released over the next few years. Exciting much?

Not as exciting as you’d think when you see the list. Sure, there are some things that I’m absolutely thrilled about. "The Good Dinosaur," "Zootopia," and "Moana" all look promising, as does "Coco," Pixar's look into the holiday, Day of the Dead. Every other future movie that has seeped out of the convention, however, is either a sequel or a remake. Every one of them.

Here are the movies coming directly from The Walt Disney Company (not Pixar) in the next two years:

• "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015)
• "Zootopia" (2016)
• "The Jungle Book" (2016)
• "Alice Through The Looking Glass" (2016)
• "Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" (2017)
• "Moana" (2016)

Four out of six of the newest Disney movies are things that we've all seen before, which isn't necessarily bad. I'll be first in line, lightsaber in hand, to see "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," and the poster for the live-action version of "The Jungle Book" gives me chills, but I can't say I'm particularly excited about the rest. "Alice in Wonderland" (2010) was mediocre at best (I'm still not over the creepy CGI dance that Johnny Depp does at the end) and it certainly doesn't deserve a sequel. And the "Pirates" franchise has been over for years; even the fourth one had been unnecessary, let alone a fifth. I feel like the studio wanted to make another movie and just went, "Eh, sure, let's go with 'Pirates' again." I think that's how most fans feel about it, too, despite the Orlando Bloom comeback.

If you went back to an age where Disney was churning out new ideas left and right, you wouldn't see four movies released in a single year like that. But when you're coloring in the lines instead of starting from scratch, the process is a lot quicker, and the result is usually worse than the original. Most of these movies will be greeted with a dull "might as well" instead of legitimate excitement.

Now I turn to Pixar, arguably my favorite company of all time, and I’m concerned by the almost lack of originality from the company that spun the movie world on it’s head with "Toy Story" and continually pushed the limits since then. Pixar’s most recent release, "Inside Out," is a triumph; it’s witty, emotional, innovative, and charming. It’s everything that Pixar has been to us in the past.

Apparently, Pixar is sticking with the past, quite literally. If you look at the next six movies ("The Good Dinosaur," "Finding Dory," "Toy Story 4," "Coco," "Cars 3," "The Incredibles 2"), four of them are sequels. Four. Precisely the number of times I’ve seen "Inside Out" in theaters. I think I speak for everyone when I say that Pixar and I both have a problem. "Finding Nemo" I'm not too worried about. Though I highly doubt this movie is going to come anywhere close to the original, I trust Ellen DeGeneres to deliver because, well, it's Ellen.

"Toy Story 4" is a different story, and that story ended. It ended perfectly in "Toy Story 3." Andy went away to college. We cried. The toys lived happily ever after with Bonnie. The end. It doesn’t need anything else. To be fair, the "Toy Story" franchise has proven me wrong about not needing a sequel in the past, but at this point they're just reaching for familiar characters whose plot lines have already run their course to infinity and beyond.

All of those original Pixar movies were incredibly, well, original, but now Pixar is borrowing its own genius until it becomes stale. The same thing goes for Disney as a whole. These companies rose to the top because of their fresh ideas, and now that they’re at the top, they seem content to drift along, trying to repeat success by literally just repeating their most successful movies. Yes, all of these movies will easily reach the top of the box office and bring in millions of dollars that the companies need, but in terms of art, Disney and Pixar are doing color-by-numbers of their own masterpieces.

If you want to argue that sequels can be masterpieces and that Pixar never fails to disappoint, I would have to concede to your first point. Your second point, however, can be cut down immediately with "Cars 2." That movie was made for younger boys and easy money, and what you're left with is poor cinematic quality, even from a company as consistently competent as Pixar.

To put it in Walt's words, The Walt Disney Movie needs to "Keep Moving Forward," instead of simply relying on the past for an easy win.