Summer Blockbusters? Don’t Mind If I Don’t!
…hasn’t Tim Burton made this film like ten times?
Listen, it doesn’t matter the year because summer always follows the same damn formula. Every June needs a Green Lantern. Each July has gotta have its own Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. And all the Augusts I’ve ever known require at least a dose of G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, or something similarly forgettable.
What I’m trying to say here is that though summer typically brings the biggest blockbusters of the year, it also corrals in some of the worst crap, most unoriginal ideas and stupidest sequels known to man. 2012, though featuring some potentially fantastic fare this year, is really no different. Don’t believe me? See for yourself:
Dark Shadows, May 11
Get ready, cause we’re about to bear witness to a Depp-starring blockbuster’s failure to cross the billion-dollar box office mark! That’s the way it looks so far, it seems, which is a shame considering that for once he did a big budget film not produced using Disney’s “translate it into every language on Earth, no matter how badly the story and script suffer” motif.
You sank my memories of Friday Night Lights!
Battleship, May 18
So, it’s a movie about aliens, conceived from a board game, starring a pop star who’s never not on the radio, the guy who played John Carter (who?), a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue model and the least effective Jedi in any of the Star Wars prequels…awesome. Buy your tickets now, folks, so you can pick a good seat before they’re all…ah, who are we kidding? No rush.
Pretty sure Mr. Garrison invented this already in South Park
Men in Black III, May 25
Who? Who asked for this? Nobody, that’s who. And yet, ten years after the last sequel watered down a once-original concept, here comes Will Smith for another $50 million paycheck. You’ve got some nerve, Columbia. Even if you somehow managed to re-animate Tommy Lee Jones’ corpse, why’d you have to sucker Josh Brolin into coming along for the ride?
Your target audience: middle-aged people pining for their youth, and Broadway fans laughing at the source material
Rock of Ages, June 15
True story: while they may have claimed scheduling issues, neither Anne Hathaway nor Amy Adams were willing to portray a weak-willed woman who finds herself seduced by Stacee Jaxx, a character played by Tom Cruise. Can you blame them? After all, who would want to play Katie Holmes? HEYOOO!
Still…Keira Knightley’s a classy dame
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, June 22
Hey, look everyone! Steve Carell made a movie again. Now, let’s all get our courtesy laughs ready to go because—wait a minute! Carell isn’t on The Office anymore…not only that, but The Office kinda sucks now! Does this mean we can all finally stop pretending that any film he’s done outside of the Apatow banner is worth a damn? Yup.
This film takes Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires a little too seriously
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, June 22
Is this the one where James Bond and Han Solo fight some aliens that show up in a genre where they don’t belong? NO?! In all seriousness, I accept the fact that I just incurred the wrath of every fanboy in the land. But truthfully, it’s hard to get excited about this when another Lincoln film comes out later in the year, starring Daniel Plainview no less.
Yeah, that’s what Spider-Man needed: a second origin story from more than a decade earlier
The Amazing Spider-Man, July 3
Forget the fact that Columbia waited only five years to reboot this series since the last film came out. The real question you should be asking is “Why is Andrew Garfield impersonating Hayden Christensen to play Spider-Man?” And don’t get me started on the double origin going on here either! No one gives a damn about Peter Parker’s stupid unknown parents.
We’re going to be in the next Ice Age before they stop making Ice Ages
Ice Age: Continental Drift, July 13
Ice Age! GO AWAY! Please, just become extinct immediately before all of your starring voices become even less relevant than they already. Or, at least take a sequelizing cue from The Land Before Time and turn yourself into a direct-to-video series so that both myself, and everyone else who rarely ever goes to Target, can forget you exist altogether!
Here’s where all the funny jokes in Family Guy disappeared to for the last two years
Ted, July 13
If you don’t call yourself a fan of Family Guy, and aren’t interested in hearing Seth MacFarlane say the F-word repeatedly, then steer clear, at all costs. If these things apply to you, however, then you are clearly like me, have no life and live for the chance when Monday comes (because we’re too cheap for cable and resort to Hulu for new Family Guy episodes).
Agree? Disagree? Whatever, just let me know down below…
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Elijah Bates is a contributing writer to CBS Local.
Want to see what does get Elijah excited? That’ll cost you $50 plus the motel room, but a cheap substitute is his writeup of Vince McMahon’s Top Five Wrestlemania Moments.
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