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| Courtesy of StarWars.com |
When I first started
developing this article I wanted to take the angle that 2015 was one of, if not
the most, anticipated movie year ever.
But when I thought about what that meant I realized that…well duh, of
course it is – with social media and the 24 hour a day news cycle everything is
hyped to the nth degree at a near constant rate. So, instead I took a look at the list of
expected and potential blockbuster movies coming out in 2015 and wanted to A)
compare that against a period in history and B) dig into what Hollywood has
become. I’ll start with the latter.
This year should
prove to be spectacular with the myriad of comic book, sci-fi, action and
adventure movies coming out. But when
you take a step back and look at the laundry list of films on the docket for
2015 you see a very specific trend: retread.
This is most assuredly nothing new for Hollywood – but this year seems
particularly pervasive. For example we
have new: Jurassic Park, Friday the 13th, Mad Max, Terminator,
Fantastic Four and Star Wars movies coming out.
Now, don’t immediately mistake my comment of retread as all bad…Star
Wars alone makes my slip into a mild excitement induced comma all by itself;
but with some of these series (FF & Terminator – as of recent) that were
failed attempts the last time(s) out it’s frustrating to see Hollywood fall
back on such titles to fill an already jam-packed year with movies that will
most likely fail utterly in the face of their competition.
Looking at Friday
the 13th and Mad Max; the elder-statesmen of the bunch and their
respective reboots have the potential to be grand gestures to their genre…but
this is unlikely and again – where’s the originality? I never much cared for the SAW movies, but at
least they were trying to be different for their time. These two films are trying to get tickets
sold on name recognition alone and that is a bad formula.
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| Courtesy of Universal Pictures |
Then we have
Jurassic World and Star Wars; undoubtedly the best two films of this group and
I even hesitated to put them in this category but facts are facts. Jurassic World will be the 4th
installment of the series and this time the park is FINALLY OPEN! Clearly with all the kinks worked out (at
least enough to get the park up and running this movie will probably be pretty
boring, right? Just two and a half hours
of smiling people hanging out with dinosaurs!).
Nope; apparently they went and bread some new super smart dinosaur that
can like do calculus and your taxes while you wait…plus eat people. The cast is outstanding and I wait with bated
breath.
Star Wars: The Force
Awakens is pretty much the holy grail of retreads. People have long anticipated the continuation
of this classic saga. But that
anticipation was mostly riddled with fear that George Lucas would once again
take a giant shit on our childhoods and we’d be forced to suffer through more
trade embargo debates while watching whiny children sob about their
intergalactic troubles. Not much is
known about the story of the seventh installment with only most of the cast
known and a mere teaser trailer to go off of; and I wouldn’t have it any other
way. This movie SHOULD be shrouded in
mystery; it SHOULD be something that when you walk into the theatre your eyes
and ears are working at peak efficiency to soak in every morsel of what it’s
about to partake of.
As retreads go 2015
has some definite possibilities for quality flicks and I sincerely wish them
all the best at the box office.
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| Courtesy of Columbia Pictures |
If you’re wondering
why Spectre – the next James Bond movie isn’t in the retreads list it’s because
this series (aside from the occasional hiatus for recasting) has been ongoing
and would not fall into that category.
The other avenue
that is popular in Hollywood these days is: stories that are for kids turned
into movies for adults. The Avengers
movie is something that huge swaths of people will see, millions and millions –
of which only a fraction will have ever read an Avengers comic. Years ago this would have angered me
intensely; like when Episode 1 of Star Wars came out and people all went to see
it, but I was still the geek kid outcast for being a fan and reading the SW EU
books…because that makes sense. But now
it’s exciting and I am hopeful that even a small percentage of them will become
interested in the comics and keep that industry thriving. Marvel is also doing another classic “let’s
take a not-so-popular/totally unknown character and make a movie” bit with
Ant-Man. I don’t mean to come across
annoyed at the direction the company is going, especially considering how much
better a job they are doing than DC in that department overall, but they may as
well have made a Moon Knight movie. The
only hope for this movie is that they make significant Avengers overtures
throughout with the plan to be for him to join that next installment.
Then there are the
teen novels that are rolling out into theatres: Insurgent, Hunger Games, Paper
Towns. I’m super happy that teens are
able to experience the books they enjoy in another medium and in the case of Paper
Towns, a book I personally am a fan of, very happy for the author as well. This explosion of the last few years was no
doubt ushered in by the success of Harry Potter and we will have to see what
direction this goes in the future.
In the annals of
history 2015 may stand alone with so many top-flight movies on the horizon; but
let’s take a look and see. For
consistency’s sake I decided to limit my spectrum to ten-year increments
starting with 1985.
As years for movies
go ’85 was pretty damn good. It had a
solid mixture of teen related films (sound familiar?) with The Breakfast Club,
Better off Dead, the Goonies and Mask.
There was a splash of Sci-Fi with Back to the Future and Re-Animator
(and to a much lesser extent Cocoon).
1985 also saw the release of the second Mad Max movie as well as The
Color Purple. By far the best comedy
movie released was Fletch which helped solidify Chevy Chase in the hearts and
minds of America’s youth. And it saw the
second-to-last Akira Kurosawa movie, Ran.
Skipping ahead to
1995 we start to get into epic territory; here’s a breakdown: The Usual
Suspects, Casino, Leaving Las Vegas, Braveheart, Toy Story, Apollo 13, Seven,
Heat, 12 Monkeys, Kids, Mallrats, Dead Presidents, Friday, and many
others. Now, it’s easy to look at this
list and say: wow, clearly 1995 was the greatest movie year ever! But you may be looking at this with the eye
of hindsight. For example: the Usual
Suspects wasn’t some highly anticipated blockbuster – this is pre-Xmen Singer
and 1995 was Kevin Spacey’s leap onto the Hollywood stage – before that he’d
done little in the way of big movies.
Leaving Las Vegas was a surprise drama hit and shocking winner of
Academy Awards. Toy Story was one of the
first of its kind in the full-length animation stories from not pre-existing
characters and no one knew if a non-Disney movie would be received. Seven, Heat and 12 Monkeys are all kind of
out there movies; and though in retrospect their casts look amazing – at the
time the main stars (other than Heat) weren’t that well known. Kids, Mallrats, Dead Presidents are all on
the independent, not for everyone side of movies but have become cult
classics.
So that leaves us
with Casino, Braveheart and Apollo 13.
These are the blockbusters of the year – these are the movies everyone
was waiting for. Gibson. Spielberg, De
Niro. Hanks. This is where the real rivalry with 2015
lives. At this point I’d still take
Avengers and Star Wars over these three…but we’ll have to see how it all plays
out.
And finally, 2005
where a more artistic turn in moviemaking appears with films such as: Brokeback
Mountain, Good Night, and Good Luck, Capote, Munich, Broken Flowers and
Thumbsucker. But there were also
blockbuster movies this year: King Kong, Batman Begins, Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire, Sin City, V for Vendetta and Star Wars: Revenge of the
Sith. Amongst the “blockbuster’s” it was
pretty hit or miss. Batman Begins was a
shockingly great movie – I say shockingly because of where the Batman franchise
had been left previously would not have led anyone to believe it could be
revived so amazingly. Harry Potter
continued that fantastic series and was expectedly very good. V for Vendetta blasted (pun intended) onto
the scene and continued to push Hugo Weaving into stardom. King Kong, Sin City and Star Wars III were
all disappointments; each would have been better off never having been made.
It’s fair to say
that each of these periods in history have claims to fame and quality movies
that were released. In the end, though,
it boils down to the confluence of quality that 2015 is bringing to the
table. It would be hard to argue that
2015 does not have a healthy lead – at this point – in expected quality movies
and whereas 1995 could give it a serious run for its money in total great
movies, we will have to wait and see what surprise films come out and make a
big splash.
For now, sit back
and enjoy the year ahead.
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