Spring/Summer 2012 Films

I just got the latest issue of the film magazine I read and they feature 20 'big' films out this spring and summer:

The Dark Knight Rises
Ice Age 4
The Amazing Spider-Man
The Avengers
Men in Black 3
Prometheus
Brave
Snow White and the Huntsman
Battleship
Neighbourhood Watch
Dr Seuss' The Lorax
Dark Shadows
GI Joe: Retaliation
The Expendables 2
What to Expect When You're Expecting
The Bourne Legacy
Titanic 3D
Rock of Ages
The Dictator
Total Recall

Which of these are you most looking forward to? Or is there anything not mentioned there you want to see (they didn't mention The Hunger Games, presumably as it's out in the UK and US in a few weeks).

I'm looking forward to:
Brave - because it's Pixar, and not Cars
The Dark Knight Rises - because Christopher Nolan has done very well so far and will be interesting to see if he can break the usual third film curse with these franchises
The Avengers - because I'm a shameless Joss Whedon fanboy
I guess The Dictator could be funny if it's more Borat and less Bruno. The existence of Battleship and Titanic 3D just depresses me.

I'm surprised that Hunger Games isn't on the list. It's not guaranteed to be any good, but it's definitely going to be a huge blockbuster.

I'm curious about Brave but also nervous. The whole mess with firing the female director on the first Pixar film with a female lead has made me dubious about the project. Very excited for Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. Don't really care about the rest of the list.

Where's American Pie: The Reunion?! That film is going to be the bomb! Yes, I'm a sucker for the first three American Pie films.
The only other films I'll be watching in the cinema from that list will be Spiderman, Prometheus, and The Avengers. Even with those three films I'm not TOO excited.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Miriel

I'm surprised that Hunger Games isn't on the list. It's not guaranteed to be any good, but it's definitely going to be a huge blockbuster.

I'm curious about Brave but also nervous. The whole mess with firing the female director on the first Pixar film with a female lead has made me dubious about the project. Very excited for Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. Don't really care about the rest of the list.

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When it comes to Pixar I am never dubious (bar Cars as mentioned). The original director on Ratatouille left the project, and the end result was still fantastic. Frankly Brave is the film this summer I have the most faith in, Pixar are by miles the most reliable studio in US cinema today.

And as I said The Hunger Games isn't mentioned as it's out in a few weeks I imagine, and I guess they were looking at films out in the UK from April onwards.

I guess I'm more prickly about this than others because I'm a outspoken feminist, but it really rubbed me the wrong way how the director was fired because the whole story was something the director had been developing for years and was inspired by her own relationship with her daughter. She came up with the idea, pitched the idea and then worked on it for years only to be replaced by a man without half her credentials. This is Pixar's first movie with a female lead, and first female director and they go ahead and fire her. Ugh.

Who knows, it might be really great as Pixar films usually are, but I would have been way more excited about this with the original director intact. Plus, the trailer really didn't do anything for me.

I also heard that the original plots was way more focused on the mother/daughter relationship which I would have LOVED. I mean, how often do you get to see that kind of relatonship played out in animated films? You get glimpses of it here and there but never as the focus of a story. It's such a unique and vital relationship that gets so little coverage next to the typical father/son or father/daughter. But Brave in it's current state seems to be more about the typical princess-defies-tradition trope.

The only reason I'm excited about The Lorax is because I got meet the editor of that film and will hopefully be meeting him again very soon. He also edited Toy Story 2 and 3 so should be interesting. As a Spiderman fan of course I'm excited for the new one. From what I've seen of the trailer it looks great, but The Lizard was never one of my favorite villains.

As for The Avengers, I'm only semi-excited only because it seems to be taking forever for it to come out. I've been waiting for it since the teaser in Captain America (horrible movie btw). Another movie I'm excited for is Dark Knight Rises. I only saw the trailer and a little bit of what they were shooting in New York. I also wanna Snow White and the Huntsmen because I friggin' love Charlize Theron.

And I wanna be excited about Men in Black 3 but I know people working on that film that say it really doesn't have a script so who knows if Will Smith is really that good at improv. He's no Eddie Murphy (back in the 80s and 90s he'd improv alot of his dialogue and alot of it would make it in his films). We'll see.

Avengers and Dark Knight Rises are tops on my list. I'll probably see some of the others, but I'm not really super excited about them.