Sunday 10 February 2013

Looking Ahead - Movies 2013


DC's leading man gets a reboot in a new movie universe that owes a lot to the Nolan Batman reboot in style and feeling, which is not surprising given he helped write the script.



Last year I looked over the comic book movies of the year. This year I'm going to look over the movies that interest regardless of the genre, although don't be surprised if they don't stray far from the SF/fantasy area! All released dates are from IMDB and are correct at the time I write this.


Iron Man 3 - April 26th


I've had bad experiences with the 3rd movie in comic book franchises recently. Spider-Man 3 and The Dark Knight Rises were both a bit disappointing, and the long awaited 3rd X-Men never happened (it never happened!!).

Anyway, with Iron Man 2 being a holding film for Avengers, this is the first time we get to see a proper Iron Man sequel. Basing its plot off the remaining plot from the Extremis plot line, that wasn't used in Iron Man, we will should Tony Stark get closer to his armour than before in an attempt to stop a technological extremist. Saying that, it is good to hear that they won't be ignoring the events of Avengers, instead building on them. From the trailers, it looks like we'll be seeing a Tony Stark scared by the events in New York. I like the Marvel interconnectivity they are bringing to their movies, and just wish DC could manage something similar.


Man of Steel - 14th June

The Superman origin is perhaps one of the most well known superhero origin of them all, so it'll take some interesting scripting to make it both recognisable and new at the same time.
From the first trailer, we see a much more SF looking film, with Superman facing off against the US Army, and spaceships all over the place. However there is no sign of an older Clark in the trailer, leaving me to wonder how much of Superman's duel nature they will dwell upon.

DC, it seems, is hanging all its hopes of pulling off an Avengers type Justice League movie on the success of Man of Steel. I'd like to see a Justice League movie, but I'm not sure that following in Marvel's footsteps is necessarily the right move for DC. Still, they need some success after Green Lantern failed, and now the Nolan Batman franchise has come to an end.

The Wolverine - 26th July

As a Marvel film I feel duty bound to see this on release, but I'm not expecting a masterpiece. Origins was an ok film, that worked nicely(ish) into the film continuity at the time, but had its disappointing moments. The sequel promises to be set after the film that we don't mention, and draws from Logan's time in Japan. This part of Logan's journey is supposed to mark his move from primal berserker to honourable warrior. How well Hugh Jackman can pull that off remains to be seen.

No trailer as yet either, but hopefully one will be appearing soon.

Thor: The Dark World  - 30th October

The Thor sequel promises to draw much more on the mythical side than the first, with Thor going up against Dark Elves lead by Christopher Eccleston. The full cast from the first film are back, with the small exception of a re-cast Fandrell.

Not a huge amount around about the film as yet, not even a decent movie poster I could steal.



Pacific Rim - 12th July

Giant Monsters fighting Giant Robots!!!

For some reason this one passed me by totally until the first trailer came out. I'm now trying to avoid reading too much about it to keep the level of suspense up. I want this film to be awesome, but it has a lot of ways it could go wrong.

The robots look great, the right balance between looking cool and being something we could build in a few years. We don't really get any full shots of the monsters in the trailer, but big and stomps is really all you need.

If I could only see one film this year, this would be it. Not much pressure riding on it at all :)


Star Trek Into Darkness - 17th May

I think it's safe to say that Abrams' Star Trek is going where no one expected it to go. With the teaser poster coming from the same design school as Dark Knight rises, and the trailer showing a massive amount of death and destruction, this could be the darkest Star Trek to date.

I like where this is going, to be honest. It still has most of the trappings that make up Star Trek, but it is much more modern in its representation. Benedict Cumberbatch looks good in the villian's role, whoever that might be.



The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug - 13th December

I can't really not include the second Hobbit film in this list. I really enjoyed the first, sure it wasn't as epic as LotR, but it was exactly what I thought The Hobbit should be like. Not much more to say, other than looking forward to seeing Smaug in all his CGI glory. Nice to see Benedict Cumberbatch not sticking to one genre when playing villians!

This is a far from exhaustive list, just my top picks (to be honest, I'm hardly straying from the blockbusters now am I).

Other odd films I'm keeping my eye on:
Warm Bodies - Zombie Romance film, that I'm sure isn't going to be as interesting as the book.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones - Another Young Adult book adaption , that may well, again, fail to match the book.
Ender's Game - Another book adaption, and as yet not much information. This one has even more to live up to than the previous 2 films!
The World's End - An original film, and the 3rd in the "The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy" from Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.

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