2018 Movie Preview: Ready When You Are!

Hey, 2017, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

It was by pretty much every imaginable yardstick, a crazy year – it definitely was at the movies. 
Even after The Last Jedi, revenue was down nearly 3%, after a summer that saw a drop of 10% – making for a three-year low. There were some terrific films to be sure: Get Out, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, It, Blade Runner 2049, Thor: Ragnarok, Coco, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and of course, the sublime The Shape of Water numbered among my favorites. But plenty of films I was looking forward to did not bear fruit: looking over last year's "most anticipated" list, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets bombed – I still haven't seen it – as did The Dark Tower (fondness for the material makes me never want to see it) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. And everyone's pretty much on the same page that Alien: Covenant and Justice League left a lot to be desired. 

So here we are, ready to set sail once again. And in reviewing the calendar ahead, I gotta say I'm not getting the best feeling about the releases to come. There are a lot of "Eh, maybe..." candidates, but less than a dozen I'd get excited about for opening weekend. Now much of this will change, as gut reactions can often miss, and there are bound to be plenty of surprises – the really sensational pictures that no one expected, that seem to come out of nowhere and take the culture by storm. Those are the ones I'm always most delighted by – the sleepers. But as it stands now, summer is worrisome, and there's no as-yet identified December Savior to help salvage a year's worth of lackluster receipts like we had this year. Meaning the holiday season is looking weak, too. But hey – I love being wrong! So here's what I'm most excited by:

Black Panther (February 16th) – Creed's Ryan Coogler knows how to get an audience excited, and as Thor: Ragnarok and Doctor Strange have proved, Marvel still knows how to keep the recipe tasting fresh, and this cast – and that trailer! – are looking pretty damn fantastic. Sure looks like a winner to me!

Annihilation (February 23rd) – This was one crazy, crazy book, which must have given writer-director Alex Garland all kinds of grief adapting, but his Ex Machina was absolutely amazing, so I'm ready to follow wherever he goes next. Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh will be the ones enduring surreal and mind-altering flora and fauna.

Isle of Dogs (March 23rd) – Wes Anderson returns to the animation fusion of his beloved Fantastic Mr. Fox, and if you're a fan of Anderson's visual style and eccentric whimsy, you're already in line for this one, his first feature since The Grand Budapest Hotel. 

Ready Player One (March 30th) – Yes, it's true: spring is feeling more and more like summer. Steven Spielberg's long-awaited adaptation of Ernest Cline's widely embraced pop mash-up virtual reality novel is the closest bet to a sure thing out there. Given how much the novel was influenced by Spielberg, it's almost as if Stephen King wrote an episode of Stranger Things. Promises to be wildly entertaining. 

Avengers: Infinity War (May 4th) – Did someone say "Summer?" After Black Panther (above), Infinity War is the epic culmination that all the previous 18 Marvel Universe films have been leading up to. And did fans ever love that trailer. After a couple of tepid behemoth bad guys in the last couple of DC films, we're getting a genuine Bad Guy in Josh Brolin's Thanos. Expect absolute super-sized insanity that will leave jaws agape. 

Solo: A Star Wars Story (May 25th) – After three of the most successful Decembers in box office history, is Disney really going to let us have a holiday season without a Star Wars movie?!? Especially given the incredibly troubled road it took to get this Han Solo stand-alone completed? Pinch-hitter Ron Howard has my vote of confidence, but coming virtually right on the heels of The Last Jedi, if Solo isn't completely superb on every level, the new breed of cranky, fickle fans will be lightspeed-quick to dump all over it and calls of "too-much too-soon" will fill the galaxy. We still haven't seen a trailer yet (maybe Superbowl?). I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the next 30 days we see Disney push this out to December. We'll find out soon, either way. 

Deadpool 2 (June 1st) – The so-called black sheep of the Marvel family, Deadpool was a riotous success in every sense of the word. Much like The Punisher, these days I'm a lot more turned off by the excessive gun-enamored breed of superhero – I'd rather see powers and cleverness than ammo-fetishization. But Deadpool is also funny as hell, and unique. Plus this time we get (again!) Josh Brolin as fan-favorite cyborg Cable, so barring any unfortunate misjudgments of tone, this should be another smash hit. 

The Incredibles 2 (June 15th) – Fourteen years is a long time between movies, but Pixar does their own thing - after all, there were thirteen years between Dory movies. The cast's all back, and writer-director Brad Bird is a pretty amazing cat, so there's every reason to expect Mr. Incredible's Mr. Mom hijinks to be a massive success. Just make damn sure we get plenty of Edna Mode, dahling. 

Alita: Battle Angel (July 20th) – This one almost fell into my maybe bucket, and it could easily go wildly wrong. But this script is one of James Cameron's passion projects, and handing the wheel over to Robert Rodriguez could make for some cool stylistic collisions. My fondness for these two is topping my trepidation of those ginormous CG anime eyes. My biggest fear: this could be another Ghost in the Shell.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (November 16th) – Potter fans are a loyal bunch, and I absolutely loved the first Fantastic Beasts film, kicking myself for having missed it in theaters. That won't happen this time. Plus the word "Crimes" in the title conjures up hopes of a darker, more perilous Empire Strikes Back chapter, full of villainous deeds. Will the world accept Jude Law as a young Dumbledore? Will Johnny Depp start to look less like Roy Batty? Positioned just before Thanksgiving, this will be a juggernaut. 

Mary Poppins Returns (December 25th) – Wow, here we are, Christmas already! Will this be another Beauty and the Beast? A box office colossus? It's a real gamble, and a Disney sacred cow, to be sure. But it seems everyone's given their blessing, from Julie Andrews to Dick Van Dyke, who even has a part. But it's been 54 years! It's a heck of a cast, and the presence of Lin-Manuel Miranda is comforting. It's a little late in the holiday season, though – worried that's going to cost them. But fans are curious and Disney knows families better than anybody. But it better be practically perfect in every way. 

So there you have it. See? Doesn't exactly feel like a banquet, does it? 
And while I mentioned it above, it bears repeating that this is (at this writing) going to be the first December in three years without a Star Wars movie. It's really becoming a holiday tradition for folks now, and to veer away from that cadence feels risky. Because after three years, I for one am going to feel the void.

"But what about...?!" Yes, all those others. These are the ones that certainly each have the potential to be huge and successful, but which for some reason just don't quite feel like they have the secret sauce. They all feel a bit lackluster somehow, and I certainly hope marketing successfully makes me feel differently about each of them before opening day...

Pacific Rim: Uprising – I enjoyed the trailer, and the idea of John Boyega as the son of Stacker Pentecost is a fun one – but without the giddy eccentrics of Guillermo del Toro, it’s hard to get too excited, still – it’s hard for me to stay away from anything involving giant monsters and robots duking it out.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – When that first Jurassic World trailer hit with that “Great White Sharkbait” moment, a hit was born – and there’s nothing in what we’ve seen so far from this sequel that even comes close to that. Plus, that title. Expect a big push to find a similar marketable moment – they’d better. These guys pretty much own the July 4th time-frame, so they’d better sell us on more than “dinosaurs running from a volcano.”

Ant-Man and The Wasp – Will the Marvel streak continue? The first Ant-Man was a pleasant surprise, and little is known about the plot, other than Scott Lang’s now juggling both being a dad and a superhero (see Incredibles 2, above, for emerging summer theme), and we’ve got Michelle Pfeiffer, Laurence Fishburn and Walton Goggins joining the MCU. Definitely rooting for them to pull this off.

Mission: Impossible 6 – The last Mission was fantastic, and we’ve got all the members of the band back together. It will be interesting to see Tom Cruise back after The Mummy and find out if the IMF can still find a place to seem relevant in the insane chaos of the modern world.

The Predator – With Shane Black at the helm, this has every chance of being fantastic, as he was in the original Predator, for cryin’ out loud. But fans will tell you Aliens and Predator sequels have not fared especially well, so hoping they’ve got a dynamite script and the right kind of fresh spin for this quasi-reboot. Shane, don’t hold back.

Aquaman – Jason Momoa was one of the bright spots of this year’s Justice League, and with horror-maestro James Wan (The Conjuring films) directing, let’s hope for all kinds of edgier thrills. The cast has everyone from Nicole Kidman and Willem Dafoe to Dolph Lundgren. If we can somehow avoid too many awkward underwater dialogue scenes, this could be fun and exciting – but a Christmas movie…?!

And that's all, folks. You know me – those genre flicks always have the strongest pull, and nothing I've mentioned here's likely to be much of an awards front-runner, so there will undoubtedly be plenty of other fantastic surprises and more serious offerings we didn't even consider today. Not trying to sound like a broken record, but we truly need our escapes more than ever, so here's hoping 2018 is made up of equal parts thrills and satisfaction. Enjoy responsibly.