By April Walsh, @AprilMWalsh, contributing writer for www.LegendaryWomen.org.
Out with 2017 and onto better things, I say. This year, full of Hollywood scandal, was hard to take. And that was after a 2016 rife with the passing of all our favorite movie, TV, and music legends. As one clever soul on Twitter put it, “2016: Your favorite celebrities are dead. 2017: Your favorite celebrities are dead to you.” What better way to comfort ourselves than by revisiting old classics? By that I mean that this is a year of sequels, entries into franchises, reboots, remakes, and reimaginings. Then again, does that have to be a bad thing? I shouldn’t be so cynical. 2018 might surprise us all the way 2017 did.
Split, a sequel of sorts, certainly threw us all for a loop by putting M. Night Shyamalan back on the map after years of flops. Get Out was a socially aware horror from, of all people, comedy and sketch artist Jordan Peele. Wonder Woman was the first good DC film since The Dark Knight. IT was the best adaptation of Stephen King’s horror since Misery (his dramas and mysteries have always fared much better with critics). And Ladybird and The Disaster Artist came out of festivals to great acclaim. We’ll see how they do come awards season. For now, I’m looking forward to 2018’s movies with fresh eyes, even though most of the films are sequels, so let’s look ahead at what has the most advance buzz.
In January, you can either brush up on last month’s Oscar bait before awards season or check out some of the new releases. The Maze Runner: The Death Cure (January 28th) was originally supposed to come out last year, but filming was pushed back after star Dylan O’Brien’s on-set injuries, including brain trauma, a concussion and facial fractures that were severe enough to shut down production and that O’Brien wasn’t sure if he would quit the business. “There was a time there where I didn’t know if I would ever do it again … and that thought scared me, too,” he told Vulture last fall. “Nothing inside of you wants to go back to that. It took a lot of deep searching past those gut instincts that I was having just because of the trauma that I experienced to realize that I did want to finish it.” [1] The previous Maze Runner films received mixed reviews from critics, but were enough of a hit with fans of the book series and at the box office that this final film will surely do just as well.
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| Cast of 12 Strong. |
Another safe bet is
Paddington 2. The first film charmed the critics and the kids in 2014 and this one seems to be no different, with a rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes so far with UK critics weighing in. We’ll see how it does over here on January 12
th. If both of the above are a bit young for your tastes, there’s also
12 Strong (January 18
th), starring Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon. The war drama is based on true events about the 12-member team sent to Afghanistan after the September 11
th attacks.
In February, we can all breathe a sigh of relief as the international nightmare known as Fifty Shades will finally leave us for good with the terribly-titled Fifty Shades Freed. Now for the good movies: Marvel’s coming at us hard this year with three films, the first of which is Black Panther (February 16th). We saw the origins of Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther/T’Challa in Captain America: Civil War, when he went from Team Iron Man to Team Cap while also dealing with the death of his father, the king of the fictional isolationist African nation of Wakanda. “It’s shortly after Civil War has ended so he’s still in mourning,” Boseman told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s a feeling that he wishes that his father would have been alive to see it, if he would have given up the throne for being too old. That’s the ideal way. His mindset is one of guilt and unsureness because he doesn’t have him there… Generally, there is unrest because there’s no leader on the throne,” he said, describing the film as part superhero film, part political drama. The cast is more than up for the challenge with names like Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker along for the ride.[2]
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| Cast of Black Panther. |
This is definitely a turn of the page in film. After 2016’s viral tweets with #oscarsowhite, Hollywood seems to have been thinking more about representation. Now we have, arguably, the first black superhero film. Though some would argue that Wesley Snipes’
Blade trilogy did it first, it didn’t end up opening any doors or kicking off a trend in mainstream films. This is the first serious solo film based on a black superhero to have the cast and budget to likely win box office for the month of February for sure.
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| Jason Clarke & Helen Mirren in Winchester. |
But if you are suffering from superhero exhaustion, you could always take the kids to
Peter Rabbit (February 9
th). I’m not sure I recommend it. The trailer looks like Sony Animation took a turn-of-the-century children’s classic and gave it the plot of a house party movie. But it’s sure to make bank no matter what.
The Emoji Movie (which the world still hasn’t forgiven Sony for) grossed over four times its budget, after all. Looking slightly better is
Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built (February 2
nd) and I’m not just saying that because it stars Helen Mirren, though that is a big deciding factor. She’ll be playing Sarah Winchester: the grieving widow of the rifle inventor whose guilt drove her to commission a house with many oddities to appease the spirits of those killed by her husband’s invention.
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| Alicia Vikander in Tomb Raider. |
March has more to see, with about 15 big budget films vying for your attention, among them four extremely anticipated adaptations:
Red Sparrow, a spy thriller based on an award winning novel of the same name. It stars Jennifer Lawrence and we’ll be taking a closer look next month.
A Wrinkle in Time (March 9
th) based on the beloved novel by Madeleine L’Engle. The mixed-race cast (Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, among others) and large budget has drawn a lot of attention to the film. Here’s hoping it does better than the lackluster 2003 TV movie, enough to get the remaining 3 books in the series filmed. The
Tomb Raider reboot starring Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, and Kristin Scott Thomas opens Match 16
th and we’ll take a deep dive into that in March (get it? Because of all the spelunking?). We also have
Ready Player One (March 30
th) based on the popular 2011 Young Adult novel. Considering it has heavyweights like Stephen Spielberg directing and John Williams composing, I’m definitely looking forward to it.
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| Emily Blunt in A QUIET PLACE, from Paramount Pictures. |
In April, the pickings are a bit slimmer, with only seven big films opening.
The New Mutants (April 13
th) is not your average Marvel movie, though it is an installment in the X-Men franchise, but the film seems to be mixing genres, taking a more horror-oriented approach to this universe. With a talented young cast that includes Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Charlie Heaton, it definitely looks intriguing. Another eerie looking horror is
A Quiet Place (April 6
th), starring husband and wife Emily Blunt and John Krasinski who also co-wrote and directed. It involves a family trying to survive some post-apocalyptic future where the key to survival against some unseen evil seems to be silence.
May kicks of with Avengers: Infinity War on May 4th and, later in the month, Solo: A Star Wars Story on May 25th. I kind of think those dates should be reversed (“May the fourth be with you” and all that). We’ll be going into both in months to come. But I am sure they will rake in all the money, with any leftovers going to the fourth version of A Star is Born (May 18th) starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, provided it’s any good. June is sure to be dominated by Incredibles 2 (June 15th) and Deadpool 2 (June 1st), though with different demographics. The rest of the box office should be swept up by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (April 13th). Whether it’s good or not, people love their dinosaurs!
July gives us our final Marvel movie of the year in Ant Man and The Wasp (July 6th). We’ll get into the buzz on that (see what I did there?) when the time comes. Sure to do well with audiences (though perhaps not with critics) are The Purge: The Island (July 4th), a prequel and the fourth film in the franchise and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (July 20th) which, once again, takes amazing actors (Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski) and forces us to cringe our way through watching them sing and dance. Not a fan of the original, obviously. Your mileage may vary.
August and September are both famously terrible months for movies and I don’t see 2018 bucking that trend with such repeat treats as a Scarface remake (August 10th), a Predator remake (August 3rd), another Robin Hood (September 21st) and another movie about Christopher Robin (August 3rd). The last, though not a hit, was based on true events and real people. This, produced by Disney, seems to surround the fictional version of Christopher Robin as an adult who has lost his imagination and his childhood friends (Pooh, Piglet, and pals) come back to help him find it. This will either be the best or worst thing ever.
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| Jamie Lee Curtis returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode in HALLOWEEN |
The déjà vu continues into October with another entry into the
Halloween franchise (October 19
th), but going back to the original as a direct sequel, ignoring the 7 films that came after and Rob Zombie’s reboot attempts. I suppose you could call it a reboot or “reimagining” of
Halloween II. It will star Jamie Lee Curtis and be produced by John Carpenter and they claim they are trading the gore present in the other films for tension, as in the original. Those all seem like good things, so let’s hope they translate to a good film. Also on October 19
th is another version of
The Jungle Book (the sequel to Disney’s 2016 live action version isn’t coming until 2019), this time directed and produced by Andy Serkis (as Baloo in motion capture). I would say it’s unnecessary, but the voice cast (including Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, and Benedict Cumberbatch) intrigues me. Also intriguing is Sony Pictures putting out
Venom (October 5
th), unconnected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spiderman or Sony’s reboot with Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate, all three good actors, on board.
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| Cast of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald |
As for November, we’ll be covering
X-Men: Dark Phoenix (November 2nd) in depth that month, but as November kicks off holiday movie season, there’s plenty of others to see. For the whole family, there’s
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (November 16
th) to
Ralph Breaks the Internet (November 21
st), a sequel to
Wreck-It Ralph, and a 3D computer animated remake of
How The Grinch Stole Christmas (November 9
th) with the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch. For the grown-ups, there’s
Creed II (November 21
st), continuing the well-received
Creed starring Michael B. Jordan and written and directed by Stallone, who also reprises his role as does Dolph Lundgren as Drago, who is up against Jordan’s Adonis Creed, out for revenge against the man who killed his father. And on November 2
nd, there looks to be a well-cast version of Mary, Queen of Scots with Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie facing off as the two queens.
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| Emily Blunt in Mary Poppins Returns. |
Finally, in December, there are several long-awaited films. On December 21
st,
Aquaman will steal our hearts. Maybe just mine. I don’t even care of it’s worse than
Batman V. Superman as long as I get lots and lots of Jason Momoa. On Christmas day, we’ll finally see the Freddie Mercury bio-pic,
Bohemian Rhapsody starring Rami Malek. With the pending charges against Bryan Singer, he has been replaced with Dexter Fletcher, to my relief. I really didn’t want to boycott this film. Also on Christmas is
Mary Poppins Returns, starring Emily Blunt. Set in depression-era London, Mary comes back to help a grown-up Jane and Michael, with Michael’s children, re-discover wonder and magic. With a cast that included Dick Van Dyke, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, and Angela Lansbury, I’m really rooting for it.
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