I maintain a list of upcoming movies on my phone along with their release dates. It's a great reference; You'd be surprised how often release dates come up in conversation. Also, it's a fun way to keep track of all the different projects that spark your interest.
This, year, though... the list has gotten pretty long There are a LOT of exciting movies coming out this year, as well as some ridiculous ones, some fascinating ones, some promising ones, and SOME that I'm going to have to watch despite my better judgement.
Rather than subject you to the entire list, here's the top 20, with as brief an explanation as to WHY they're on the list as I could muster. If the movie has a trailer, I put in links so you could check them out for yourself.
#20 - Red Dawn (November 2nd)
They filmed the Red Dawn Remake back in 2009. Chris Hemsworth was in it, as well as Josh Hutcherson and Adrianne Palicki. I don’t imagine that the idea of a group of photogenic teenagers fighting an invading army is going to be any more believable this time around, but I'm still fascinated by this thing. First, the release was delayed by MGM’s financial troubles, the same troubles that sidelined Skyfall for so long. Then there was all this talk in the Chinese media that this movie was indicative of a sweeping American animosity toward the China, so they altered the invading army to North Korea in post production. Now it finally has a distributor, and is on it’s way. There hasn’t been a trailer or anything, and honestly, there’s no reason to think it’s going to be anything special. I think I’m just fascinated by the IDEA of it.
#19 - Expendables 2 (August 17th)
I don’t think anyone is going to argue with me when I say that The Expendables was not a good movie. I saw it in the theater, own the DVD... I’ve sat through this quite a few times, and I still couldn’t tell you a single line of dialogue from this movie. It’s like the opposite of a silent film: people are talking, but you don’t retain any of it, because it just doesn’t matter. That said, I love this movie. Of COURSE I love this movie. I don’t see how you can call yourself a movie fan and NOT love this movie. It’s the cinematic equivalent of banging your action figures together. Click the word ‘large’ next to the small poster up there to see it in full size... this is the movie I used to dream about when I was 11. the fact that they’ve added Chuck Norris and Jean Claude Van Damme to this steaming pile of awesome just makes it that much more ridiculous. It will very likely suck. I plan on smuggling in a burger.
#18 - The Bourne Legacy (August 3rd)
I like the Bourne movies as much as anyone. As much as the narrative started to wander, it was a fun, consistently rewarding series. Still, I just don’t see how anyone benefits from revamping the series under the director of Duplicity. Do we need a sequel THAT badly?
Still... Jeremy Renner. I absolutely love every single second of screen time this guy has ever had. Every time he shows up in ANYTHING, he’s the best part of that thing. I’m honestly less excited about this as a continuation of the Bourne series, and more because it’s Jeremy Renner starring in his own action movie. He’s absolutely awesome. I almost feel like the Bourne series isn’t cool enough for him.
#17 - Skyfall (November 9th)
I’m totally aware that not everyone likes the Daniel Craig James Bond. Honestly, it’s valid... it’s a real revisionist version of the character. There’s no gadgets to speak of, no suave banter... the violence is a lot more gratuitous, and James is actually kind of hard to like. Somehow, though, I really enjoy the result. There hasn’t been much said about this movie, other than it was going to be testing James’s relationship with Judy Dench’s M... I’m of the opinion that she’s going to have to step down and be replaced by a new M. You can see the trappings of the classic Bond slowly building around this version of the character: I’m expecting both Q and Moneypenny to show up in this one. James Bond movies don’t really need to win you over, though... you always know you’re going to see them.
#16 - The Amazing Spider-man (July 3rd)
Man, have I fought this movie. I wasn’t super loyal to the old Spider-man movies, but I was a staunch supporter of marvel getting back the full rights to all it’s characters so they can be folded into the marvel movie universe proper... so the fact that Fox still has the X-men and Sony still has Spider-man really bugged me. And of course, they have to crank out sub-par movies just to retain the rights, so naturally, any x-men or spider-man movies couldn’t be good anymore.
Except X-men: first class was probably the best one yet. One theory down. I just chocked it up to the fact that Matthew Vaughn directed it, as the guy clearly can’t make a bad movie. The Spider-man movie though... this was going to suck!
God, look at that cast. every single choice is PERFECT. If only this cast was going to be in a GOOD Spider-man movie! I mean, look at these early previews! It looks all twilight-ish!
Actually... this looks an awful lot like the comics. Maybe the type of teen drama they were trying to infuse it with actually fits better into a movie than the kinetic comedy of the old movies... still... the costume is different, and he moves weird. Sam Rami really had the MOVEMENT of Spider-man down...
He has actual web-shooters. He’s a teenage genius, just like the comics. The layers of guilt and angst are so familiar. The action looks so smooth and vibrant... and right out of the comics. Everything about this movie looks REALLY good.
I’ve completely run out of reasons to not look forward to this movie. I’m still hoping against hope that it will suck... but I have this sneaking feeling that it’s going to be fantastic and I’m going to be disappointed.
#15 - Total Recall (August 3rd)
I don’t go latching onto every remake that comes along, but I'm not against them either. Some remakes are really good (in fact, i usually site Fright Night as an example, and that happens to have Collin Farrell too). In this case, there’s quite a lot going on that should make this worth watching.
As much as the original movie had going for it: Paul Verhoven, gratuitous violence, three-boobed aliens, height-of-his-coolness Arnold, some of the best action movie one-liners EVER... the one thing that’s kind of lost in the shuffle is the fact that it’s based on the Phillip K Dick short story ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale’. A lot of Dick’s stuff has been made into movies, but it’s usually reworked as an action movie. The exception is Blade Runner, which is based on ‘Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep’, and even that is drastically reworked. The difference is that Phillip K Dick and Ridley Scott had a great deal of respect for each other, and were aware and appreciative of every difference Scott was putting into his movie. The result was two very different stories that are both strengthened by the existence of the other. None of the other movies based on Dick’s work have that sort of fusion of the two versions of the story into a more complete whole, and it would be fantastic to see that happen. There’s no real strong evidence that this movie is any closer to the source material than the Arnold movie, but even if isn’t, watching it from this perspective is going to be very fun.
#14 - World War Z (December 12th)
It's gotten quite fashionable lately to say that you're tired of zombies. they're so prolific in pop culture lately, I guess I can kind of see where they're coming from... but the fact is, good stories don't go out of style. Every time a superhero movie doesn't perform well, they say it's the end of superhero movies. And yet invariably, for every Green Lantern we get a Captain America. It's not superhero movies that are going out of style, it's BAD superhero movies. Zombie stories are no different. As uninteresting as Walking Dead is getting, the comic Walking Dead is still as amazing as ever. For every monotonous droning zombie you gun down in Call of Duty, there's the constant melee scramble of Dead Island. There's always room for awesome stories, and World War Z is a fantastic one. Based on the book by Max Brooks, the guy who wrote the utterly game-changing Zombie Survival Guide, it's an oral history of the world-wide zombie apocalypse. It's full of remarkably unique, human stories.
The movie has to share it's visual cues with the dozens of other zombie movies out there, and so it's already losing a part of what made it unique. Also, they're changing the setting slightly, so instead of a journalist collecting stories of the war after the fact, it's during the initial outbreak. I really don't know what this is going to do to the movie, but the fact is, Brad Pitt can do any movie he WANTS, so it's often a good sign for a project when he's in it. Add the fact that Marc Foster is directing it, and this becomes a very interesting movie to watch for.
#13 - The Dark Knight Rises (July 30th)
The question isn't why this movie is on the list, but what it's doing so far down. The Dark Knight was a uniquely fantastic movie, and anyone that's a fan of genre movies should be chomping at the bit to see Chris Nolan's seminal Batman cycle complete. The fact is, I'm actually worried that the expectations for this movie have been raised to the point where they're pretty much unreachable. As fantastic as Nolan's Batman is, make no mistake, Dark Knight was Heath Ledger's show. His Joker was instantly recognizable as one of the greatest character creations in film history, and a movie that was already really good rode the wave of that performance. without him, you're left with a still really good movie, but not nearly AS good... essentially, you get a sequel to Batman Begins. That's more of what I'm expecting this time around, a movie that's just about as good as Batman Begins.... which is to say, VERY good, but not one of the best genre movies ever like the Dark Knight.
Granted, if this movie really delivers on it's promise of being the end of Nolan's Batman, I might just eat my words. If Nolan has the balls to actually kill Bruce Wayne, then I take it all back. The man already just might be worthy of being counted on the lists of the greatest filmmakers in history, with Coppela, Hitchcock, and Orson Wells. If he actually does deliver on the expectations heaped on this movie, it's going to be legendary.
#12 - Lockout (April 20th)
#11 - Django Unchained (December 25th)
I was born in '79, which means I turned 11 in 1990. This means a few things for me: the Stone Temple Pilots will always be one of my favorite bands. Flannel is comfortable and looks awesome. Michelangelo is a party dude. Quentin Tarantino is one of the coolest directors there is. No matter how much the guy seems to love to hear himself talk, I'm still going to watch every single thing he ever does. This one looks to be very much in the same vein as Ingloreous Basterd, where we all enjoy watching vengeance be exacted on someone who really deserves it. This time, it's southern slave owners getting taken down by an ex-slave trained to be a bounty hunter. I have no idea if it's going to follow the pattern of his last movie, where it mostly became an elaborate talky instead of having a lot of action... I'm guessing it will. I also absolutely don't care. This will be awesome.
#10 - The Hobbit (December 14th)
I have a confession to make. I'm kind of done with the Lord of the Rings. I absolutely acknowledge that both the original books and the movies themselves are benchmarks in the world of fantasy and genre entertainment of the highest order, to say nothing of the fact that they are also among the greatest movies ever made. I'm just not as entertained by them as I used to be. Clearly, it's me... my tastes run more to sci-fi, and I just run out of patience somewhere. I can still watch them and be entertained, but nine hour marathons just aren't doing it for me anymore.
Which is kind of why the Hobbit is looking good to me. It's the same exquisite design, the same craftsmanship... but without the huge weight of the story behind it. the Hobbit was a children's book. It's simpler, sweeter. I can join my fellow nerds at the Tolkien table without committing to six courses.
Of course, there's also a very good chance that whatever is keeping me from really loving the Tolkien movies will pass, and this will wind up being one of my favorite movies of all time. That would be pretty cool.
#9 - Dredd (September 21st)
For people that only know of Judge Dredd from the Stalone movie, this might seem like a weird choice. The character debuted in the British sci-fi anthology 2000 AD in 1977. He's been an ongoing feature in that magazine ever since. He's a fantastic creation, a long-running fixture of sci-fi the likes of which you really don't see outside of Doctor Who, but with a decidedly Heavy Metal bent. If you can somehow get this character the way he REALLY is in the comic onto the big screen, it's going to be unlike anything you've ever seen.
Enter Karl Urban. There are only a few actors that manage to consistently be the best part of any movie they're in, but it can only happen so many times before you start to recognize that it MIGHT not be a fluke. He was very vocal early on about having read Judge Dredd comics since he was in his teens. Fans will recognize this for what it is... it's almost impossible to try to explain the nuances of this character to someone unfamiliar with him, but you IMMEDIATELY know when someone is getting him wrong. The thing Karl said that solidified this movie for me was his insistence that he would never do a Judge Dredd movie where Dredd took off his helmet. That was key. The movie has an actual Judge Dredd fan on board, and now, I can't wait to see it.
#8 - The Avengers (May 4th)
Remember the end of Iron Man, when Nick Fury showed up, and mentioned the Avengers? I do. I had never been really, truly overwhelmed by a movie before. I knew this was the very first movie Marvel had ever done on it's own, and there was a CHANCE they might try to do what I had been dreaming about my whole life, but I had never imagined it possible. To make a unified universe of marvel superhero movies? I had been casting and writing treatments for these things since I was 16.
And here it is. The Avengers. It's happening. I'm trying to be at least a little bit rational with my expectations about this movie... I really doubt that they can hold on to the cohesion of all the disparate elements going into this movie. Joss Whedon might be a reigning king among nerds, but make no mistake, this is a man that lives to make you fall in love with something so he can kill it and make you watch. There's almost certainly no way this movie can ever be as amazing as I want it to be...
But it's not going to matter. I'm going to be vibrating out of sheer giddiness for the entire thing. I'm probably not going to be able speak for several hours before or after.
#7 - Hunger Games (March 23rd)
I’m not going make you sit through ANOTHER anti-twilight rant by an angry hater, because by this point they make up about 15% of the Internet, but suffice to say, I’m not a fan. But there has been some good coming from Twilight, and that's the massive backlash against it. Twilight has illuminated a large audience for romantic fantasy, but most people that aren't obsessive fans have all recognized that the biggest weakness of Twilight is the weakness of it's heroine. A character can be uncertain, can be human, but doesn't have to be helpless. There are several stories out there that are certainly influenced by Twilight, but give us heroines that empower us.
The Hunger Games is a lot more than just the cure for Twilight, though. This story is fantastic, and it seems like it's being handled with exceptional care. It's been a lot of fun to follow the development of this project, and while I know I'll be sitting in the theater with a lot of twi-moms eager to fall in love with Liam Hemsworth, but I take a lot of comfort in knowing that, if this movie does what it just might do, they're more likely to fall in love with the version of Katniss that they find inside themselves.
#6 - Brave (June 22nd)
Pixar movies have been distributed by Disney forever, but they were finally purchased by them outright a few years ago. The shift was subtle, but noticeable... after a long history of making some of the greatest movies ever (anyone going to argue with that? didn't think so), they followed up Toy Story 3 with Cars 2. They're currently working on Monsters University, the sequel to Monsters Inc. You can't really blame Disney... it's obviously more profitable to use existing franchises with established audiences, but are you REALLY going to try to tell the studio that made Up that they can't make original stories? No. Of course you're not. They might be capitalists, but that would be utterly inhuman. The very fact that this is a new story from Pixar should pretty much be reason enough for anyone to get excited about it, but watching the trailer, I think I'd be excited about this story no matter who was telling it. I love celtic stuff. I adore stories about heroines overcoming society's expectations of them. Kelly Macdonald is one of my absolute favorite actresses in the world, mostly because of her voice.
These are small details, though. I don't know how often Pixar is going to be able to do these original stories anymore now that they are going to be working on all these sequels... but when they get a chance, they consistently make movies that can only be measured against the greatest movies ever made. This is the definition of must-see.
#5 - Looper (September 28th)
One of my favorite movies is Brick, a low-budget crime thriller written and directed by Rian Johnson. It was his first movie, and in addition to being the movie that cemented Joseph Gordon-Levitt as one of my favorite will-watch-anything-he-does actors, it also has the absolute best dialogue in anything, ever. Rian's new movie is the first time he and Joe have worked together since Brick, and the concept is just too cool to pass up. It's set in the near-future, shortly before the invention of time travel. The idea is that once time travel DOES exist, criminals that want to have someone eliminated will send them back to before the invention of time travel where hitmen called loopers kill them, and dispose of the body. It's a pretty genius concept and an application of time travel that honestly has never occurred to me. The twist comes when Joe's looper is sent his latest victim, and realizes that it's actually himself from the future. This is the sort of genre story idea that you just never get anymore, and the fact that it's coming from an actor-director team that I'm such a huge fan of just makes it all that much better.
Oh... and future Joe is played by Bruce Willis. Perfect :)
#4 - Iron Sky (April 4th)
I actually have no idea what's going on with this movie. It came out of absolutely nowhere. As best as I can figure, it's going to be some kind of limited release. It might actually be a European production... I couldn't tell you. All I CAN say is that this is clearly the sort of remarkably stupid idea that leads to pure, unfiltered, straight-from-the-rockies badassery. It purports that the Nazis had a base in Antarctica in 1945 where they started their space program.
I'm going to type that out one more time, so you get to read it again. Nazi space program.
It goes on to say that the Nazis landed on the moon in the forties, and built a base on the dark side where they prepared for their return. The final result is this: in 2018, Earth is invaded by Moon Nazis.
The sheer lunacy of this whole thing can only mean the movie will be either horrible beyond belief or an instant classic. It definitely seems to have it's tongue planted firmly in it's cheek. A lot of the other trailers feature heaps of anachronistic humor, and their depiction of the US president has more than a passing resemblance to a certain ex-governor of Alaska...
This is what movies are SUPPOSED to be like. Even if it totally fails, I'm going to love it, I can already tell.
#3 - Prometheus (June 8th)
This movie was originally conceived as a prequel to Alien featuring the "space jockeys"- the giant alien spaceman whose ship houses the original xenomorph eggs. I've talked to people who insist that if it DOESN'T have xenomorphs in it, then it will be a complete failure. I guess I can sort of see their point: Alien is completely awesome. Still... if this was just another Alien movie, I wouldn't be nearly as excited about it. I want an ORIGINAL Ridley Scott sci-fi movie... the same Ridley who gave us Alien and Blade Runner. The guy has a unique vision, and the notion of revisiting that vision is irresistible. The fact that the movie features Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson... just a PILE of awesomeness. Watch the trailer. With luck, this is going to blow my mind.
#2 - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (June 22nd)
If the title alone doesn't win you over, then there's not much I can do for you.
Seth Grahame-Smith wrote Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. He did NOT write Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters or any of the myriad other sub-par follow-ups. His actual second book was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which took the idea of working a fun genre conceit into a classic story and made it way, way better by using the life story of Lincoln, stirring in one of best versions of vampires in recent memory, and then spinning the whole thing on it's ear. The way he remixed the history of slavery in America with the secret existence of vampires running all the way back to Jamestown really has to be experienced. It is, simply, a great story. I have no idea how faithful the movie is going to be to the source material, but the source material is SO good, this movie has jumped all the way up to number 2.
#1 - John Carter (March 9th)
John Carter is based on Princess of Mars, the 100 year old novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the inventor of Tarzan. It was the first book of his Barsoom series. Before this, science fiction was best exemplified by the works of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells, which were masterful introductions of applied scientific IDEAS being used as the basis for fantastic stories. It wasn't until Burroughs Barsoom series that the idea of a science fiction landscape was applied on a massively grand scale. It creates some of the most titanic action and adventure sequences EVER, laying the groundwork for all the science fiction that came to follow over the next century. The character of John Carter is part of the genesis of so many amazing science fiction characters, from classic serial heroes like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers to Luke, Han and Kirk. John Criton, Starbuck, Commander Shepard, Malcom Reynolds... they all owe a tip of the hat to John Carter.
Princess of Mars has been a favorite book of mine for a very long time. It's a surreal experience... to have something so incredibly Metal exist before they even invented rock & roll, but there really is no better word for it. This book is METAL. It's like Burroughs was deliberately thinking "what is the most insane, ass-kicking thing I can write?" The sheer epic awesomeness of this book can't be overstated. Everyone needs to read it.
This version is being made by Disney, but not the Jerry Bruckheimer Disney. This is actually the Pixar Disney. Andrew Stanton, the Oscar-winning director of Finding Nemo and Ratatouille is making his live-action debut. This might seem a little odd from an action-movie standpoint, but trust me; this story sells itself, action-wise. What it means is that it's being stewarded by a MASTERFUL storyteller, and someone very familiar with the nuances of the abundant computer effects this movie will need. Honestly, I don't think I can think of a better set of circumstances for one of my favorite stories of all time to be hitting the big screen.
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And that's it. I'd LOVE to hear what you have to say about this list, or even better, what YOUR list looks like. Let me know!
