Summer Movie Preview

It's finally spring, so that means the build up to the summer movie season has officially gotten under way. I'm a Summer movie fan who loves big even movies with lots of explosions, huge budgets, and awesome special effects. The past few summers have been kind of underwhelming, in my opinion, but this year looks to be kind of cool, if only because there are so many films coming out based on some of my favorite comic books.

Anyway, let's take a look at some of the films I'm either definitely exciting to see or just intrigued or curious about:

April 29th: 

This looks... ok. I mean, it's a Fast and the Furious movie, almost all of which I've seen in the theater. This isn't a big Summer movie, but it's a decent looking mid Spring movie that might be worth a look. Then again, I'll probably just rent it.




May 6th:

This looks bad ass. Some of the story decisions sounds a little suspect (such as making Thor, Odin, and the rest aliens instead of gods), but the cast is good and the visuals look amazing. I'll be happy so long as Thor gets to smash lots of things with his hammer Mjolnir.

May 20th

Why not? I saw the original trilogy in the theater and mostly enjoyed them all, so I may as well see this one too. It looks like fun, has a great cast, and sounds neat. Also, my girlfriend is a huge fan of both the series and of Johnny Depp, so I'm sure she'll want to see it too.

June 3rd:

I dunno about this one. I loved the first two X-Men films, but thought the third was awful and that Wolverine solo movie to be pretty mediocre, albeit kind of entertaining. This just sounds like a train wreck. Still... that's not a bad cast, and Matthew Vaughn is a pretty good director, so who knows? I'm not expecting much, but maybe I'll check it out if I hear good things.

June 17th:

Hell yeah!

Green Lantern is one of my all time favorite comic book characters, and while I have some reservations with the casting of Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan and with the overly comic tone seen in the trailers, it still looks pretty phenomenal. I'm just excited that somebody is actually doing a Green Lantern movie as an epic science fiction film. I'll be there opening day in my Green Lantern t-shirt.

July 8th:

I don't know a whole lot about this movie, other than that it's a comedy film starring my boy Charlie Day from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He's the funniest guy currently on TV so I hope his movie is a huge hit. The rest of the cast sounds pretty awesome too, and Seth Gordon is a fine director who needs another big hit. I haven't seen a trailer (so far as I can tell, there isn't one online anywhere), and I don't think the above is any kind of official poster, but we'll see. Hopefully it's actually a real movie.

July 15th:

Would you believe me if I told you it was 2011 and Disney was actually releasing a hand-drawn feature starring Winnie the Pooh? When I first heard about this, I feared for the worst and assumed it was going to be some awful CG adaptation featuring Justin Timberlake as Christopher Robin and Jack Black as Tiger. I was very happy to be proven wrong. I might not see this, of course, but I still love the fact that it's being made and given a theatrical release. I hope it's a big hit.

July 22nd:

After Green Lantern, this is the Summer film I'm most excited to see. Like GL and Thor, I have some reservations about this one too (mostly the costume, which looks pretty awful), but I still have high hopes. I'm a big fan of Chris Evans and think he'll do a great job in the title role, and director Joe Johnson may have made a few turkeys over the course of his career, but I still love the guy for The Rocketeer, Hidalgo, and Jumanji. I also love the fact that they made it a period piece that takes place during WWII, since I'm sure there were plenty of executives at the studio who wanted to transpose the character's origin to Vietnam, Iraq, or some other more recent military action.

Anyway, I think it looks cool.

July 29th:

I'm not saying I want to see this movie, but I crack up every time I think about it.

August 19th:

This probably won't be very good, but I'm a Conan fan (the stories especially and the movies), so I'm curious. Maybe it'll be awesome?