Summer movie preview: Season's blockbusters heavy on destruction, redemption
Thursday, April 18, 2013
By Katherine Monk, Postmedia News
Poor Earth. Every summer, it starts to look like a Wal-Mart on a Saturday morning: An overpopulated wasteland of cars, packaging and cheap promotion — and that’s just at the local multiplex. Summer movies depend on catastrophic spectacle, and while many movies offer seasonal fun in galaxies far, far away, this year the destruction takes place on planet Earth. From the self-revealing After Earth and the latest take on Star Trek, to Matt Damon and Jodie Foster’s Elysium, there’s an overwhelming sense of the apocalypse in the cinema zeitgeist right now that leeches right into the Brad Pitt — who also faces an end-of-times premise in World War Z. Fortunately, for every disaster looming on the deep blue summer horizon, there’s a superhero equally suited — in equally deep blue — for the challenge. Whether it’s a cop who takes on corruption in R.I.P.D or the Man of Steel himself, the viewer can rest assured help is on the way. Even art film lovers won’t be left out in the scorching heat as they can find air-conditioned comfort in a recreation of the Kon-Tiki voyage, or perhaps the company of Woody Allen, who brings a Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin comic drama to a theatre near you. Here’s a look at the highlights from the seasonal menu:
Iron Man 3 (May 3): With a cast that boasts Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Gwyneth Paltrow, not to mention Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall and Paul Bettany, Robert Downey Jr.’s latest outing as playboy Tony Stark looks from the list of credits more like an art film than summer fluff. But Marvel fans needn’t fear an explosive version of My Dinner with Andre. The movie directed by Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), who takes over from Jon Favreau, promises all the same outsider sarcasm that branded the franchise as edgy and decidedly human — for a superhero movie, that is.
Star Trek: Into Darkness (May 17): James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) finally gets to plonk his patootie into the captain’s chair on the Enterprise, which means this second chapter in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek origin story will put every Trekkie on familiar ground, which could be good, or bad, depending on how much licence Abrams takes with the holy Roddenberry gospel. Everything he did in the first movie, from casting the spiritually Spockian Zachary Quinto as the sympathetic Vulcan, to splicing in a few romantic love lines to keep the emotional stakes at red alert. may return.So far the buzz seems focused on the collapse of civilization on Earth, which the series assumed as a given, but never fully explored.
Fast & Furious 6 (May 24): Unlike most franchise movies, these high-octane vehicles seem to get better with each new model. Version 6.0 brings Justin Lin back into the cockpit as director with Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and the surging, forever bulging, Dwayne Johnson. Also back is Michelle Rodriguez, who apparently survived a very fiery crash without much scarring. No. It won’t make any sense, but the cars are shiny and go furiously fast.
After Earth (June 7): It’s a new movie from M. Night Shyamalan. Hey, where ya goin? Just because I said Shyamalan doesn’t mean you have to run away faster than Flash. The idea of a post-Apocalypse Earth came from the star, Will Smith, who approached Shyamalan to direct this dystopian fantasy about a planet where all human life has vanished, and the animal kingdom is back on top.
Man of Steel (June 14): Though director Zack Snyder didn’t win over a lot of fans with his bizarre, backward feminist story Suckerpunch, he’s still the go-to guy for special-effects-heavy epic drama, and nothing could suit his talents better than an updated take on the Canadian-born Man of Steel. With British star Henry Cavill (Theseus, from Immortals) starring as the dual lead of Clark Kent/Superman, we needn’t worry about a one-dimensional hunk mumbling through the pages of dialogue.
World War Z (June 21): Brad Pitt co-stars with the braindead — and brain-hungry — in this adaptation of Max Brooks’s (son of Mel) bestseller about an infectious disease that turns great swaths of the population into zombies. With Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction) directing this epic, mega-budget action-horror-drama hybrid, we can bet this baby will have a mutant look and some rather sharp teeth — which is kind of what you’d want from a summer zombie movie.
The Wolverine (June 26): He can sing. He can dance. He can host an Oscar broadcast and he can charm the ladies off their feet. But if there’s one thing Hugh Jackman can do better than anyone else, it’s snarling like a wild animal while flexing his mighty muscles. And now that Jackman is part of the production team on this venerable X-Men Marvel spinoff, he can flex his muscle on the whole movie, which bodes well for this compelling superhero character writhing with rage — and ultra-strong metallic implants.This chapter, directed by James Mangold (Cop Land), features Wolverine in Japan, where he finds his mettle tested in a variety of new ways.
The Lone Ranger (July 3): It’s a good thing the executives decided to unveil early that insane picture of Johnny Depp in war paint and a hat fashioned from a leftover from The Birds. We won’t be giggling for the first half hour of this new flick from Gore Verbinski that features Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the Lone Ranger.
Pacific Rim 3D (July 12): What’s summer without a full-on alien attack? Thanks to Guillermo Del Toro, your season won’t be without its fair share of spaceships and inconceivably loud explosions in the vacuum of space. What makes Del Toro’s vision distinct is his decision to use giant robots as Earth’s best defense, ensuring the mechanical arm of this movie has a sense of humanity… no offense to K.I.T.T., the Millennium Falcon or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. British hunks Idris Elba and Charlie Hunnam star in this European take on “maïs eclaté.”
R.I.P.D. (July 19): Splicing the genre pool wide open, this new movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges is a story about corrupt cops, and a new force of undead men in blue who decide to clean up the city. Mary-Louise Parker and Kevin Bacon also star, making this one a real curiosity.
Elysium (Aug 9): If you’re the kind of person looking for a truly smart summer blockbuster, you’ll be tickled to know Matt Damon and Jodie Foster headline Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9) sci-fi update on the Upstairs Downstairs concept, with an apocalyptic twist. The Earth is so polluted, only the poor folk call it home. The rich live in orbiting colonies, untainted by the seething riff-raff below.
KIDS COMBO:
Epic (May 24): Just when you thought the next generation was getting too big for its own britches, along comes a kids fable about a teenager who is shrunk down to insect level, where she encounters an entire cast of humanoid characters under attack. With Colin Farrell and Amanda Seyfried joining the stellar roster of vocal talent that includes Beyoncé Knowles and Steven Tyler, everything about this piece feels animated before the first pixel even hits the screen.
Monsters University (June 21): Consider it a prequel to the fantastically successful Monsters Inc., and a good bet for the box-office derby, as Disney goes back to old racehorses Billy Crystal and John Goodman for another run around the paddock as Mike and Sully, the two lovable monsters who make it their job to give kids nightmares.
Despicable Me 2 (July 3): A new villain comes to unseat the old, and recently transformed, Gru (Steve Carell) in this followup to the whimsical winner about finding empathy. One can only imagine what kind of role Al Pacino will play in the computer-generated denouement.
Turbo (July 17): It’s the little snail that could: Ryan Reynolds creates a slime trail through the theatre lobby as the voice of Turbo, a garden snail that miraculously gains the power to travel extremely fast, and rewrite every joke in the book.
Planes (Aug. 9): Because the box office, and the gas pump, prove we can’t get enough of Cars, here comes Planes, a new movie from the people who anthropomorphize engines. The dilemma in this fuming beast is family fuselage: A poor crop duster dreams of competing in an all-star aerial race to win the respect of his friends and family.
BRAIN FOOD:
The Great Gatsby 3D (May 10): Baz Luhrmann hasn’t made a feature film since the continental flop called Australia set him drift in an ocean of box-office poison. Since then, the director who rose to fame on the elevated heels of Strictly Ballroom has been busy making shorts. Judging from the high-intensity trailer for this new Leonardo DiCaprio-Carey Mulligan vehicle, scored to a shrieking cover of Happy Together by Filter, it won’t put its audience to sleep — which is what happened the last time F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Stutz Bearcat left the garage with Mia Farrow and Robert Redford in the front seat of a Francis Ford Coppola screenplay.
Blue Jasmine (Aug. 2): Woody Allen isn’t spilling the beans on the plot for this new movie starring Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin, and it doesn’t matter one bit. The very idea of these two sharing the screen under Allen’s tutelage makes the imagination wander is all sorts of charming, if inconsequential and probably random, directions.
REGURGITATED FODDER:
The Hangover Part III (May 24): Was it too much popcorn, or just the long car ride to the theatre? Your tummy may not be your best companion for this final (one hopes) chapter in the highly successful Hangover series. But cautionary tales about over-indulging in alcohol with scoundrel friends are a social good, however, so take a Gravol before you reunite with Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and the now ubiquitous Melissa McCarthy.
The Internship (June 7): Not since Wedding Crashers have Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn been able to backslap one another for the duration of a movie, but the wait is over. The two good ol’ boys resurface as out-of-work salesmen competing for an internship at Google.
The Heat (June 28): If the boys can have their silly fun, why not the gals, too? Paul Feig returns from his Bridesmaids honeymoon to direct Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in this story of two mismatched cops forced to work together. Think Cagney and Lacey with lots of expletives and physical gags.
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