You can never experience your first baseball game again, or the moment when you pedaled a bicycle without a parent running alongside you.
But the right summer movie can make you feel like a kid once more for two blissful hours.
It’s why the blockbuster season continues to draw movie goers away from those sun-drenched days and starry nights.
Even if, on occasion, they must suffer through a “Love Guru” or “Wild Wild West.”
WWTW kicks off its three-part summer movie preview with The Sure Things – films guaranteed to score big at the box office even if they don’t deliver the goods.
- “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (May 1) – Hugh Jackman’s hairy alter ego is first out of the summer movie gates, assuming you didn’t already watch him via that illegal download. The “X” franchise didn’t reach the heights of the first two “Spider-Man” installments, but it scored with its rogues gallery of mutants and socially aware subtext. But “Wolverine” director Gavin Hood (“Rendition”) has never helmed an action pic before. FUN FACT: The first “X-Men” comic debuted in 1963.
- “Star Trek” (May 7) – J.J. Abrams of “Lost” fame boldly goes where no franchise reboot has gone before. His mission? Win over new Trekkies without enraging Trek Nation. Good luck with that. It doesn’t help that the early clips feel more like “Star Trek: 90210″ than the space opera we know and love. FUN FACT: The original “Star Trek” series featured television’s first interracial kiss between William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols.
- “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” (May 22) – More top flight actors (Amy Adams, Christopher Guest, Ricky Gervais), more comedy aimed at the kiddie set. FUN FACT: The short-lived “Ben Stiller Show” (1992-93) featured Andy Dick, Janeane Garofalo and Bob Odenkirk of “Mr. Show” fame.
- “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (June 24) – Michael Bay. Sequel. Noise. More noise. Ka-ching goes box office. Scratch, scratch goes WWTW’s head. Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox return for another round of Transforming action and mayhem. FUN FACT: Co-star Megan Fox’s next film is “Jennifer’s Body,” a horror film scripted by Diablo Cody (“Juno.”)
- “Terminator Salvation” (May 21) – Few people cared about a fourth “Termnator” film until Christian Bale signed on as its star. Bale’s talent – and penchant for picking quality material, pushed the film into the buzz stratosphere. FUN FACT: McG, the film’s director, was born Joseph McGinty Nichols.
- “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (July 15) – Isn’t Daniel Radcliffe 30 by now? The workhorse franchise returns, and while the HP films are remarkably consistent -and keep some of the best character actors employed – the series isn’t gaining momentum as it should. FUN FACT: Co-star Emma Watson will be attending Yale University in the fall.
Wednesday: Summer ’09’s Risky Business - films which could be great … or could get lost in the blockbuster shuffle.
Friday: Best of the Rest - The indie films which could spell movie goers from the sequel and remake parade.
(Photo: Hugh Jackman bares his claws in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” the first big summer movie of ‘09 – photo credit: Michael Muller)
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It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is….I remember when “Seabiscuit” was being called a blockbuster long before it crossed the $100 M mark, and “Wild Wild West” being called a bomb even though it grossed $113 M…what will constitute scoring big at the b.o. for these films?
That stated, my fantasy fanboy self has the Wolverine (fun, supplemental fact: Wolverine debuted not in the X-Men, but in the Hulk, comic), Star Trek (fun supplemental fact: add the late Ricardo Montalban to the interracial kissing list), and Night at the Museum (fun alternate fact: the film’s Crystal the Monkey, “Dexter,” actually is listed as ‘actress’)
~ Dagnabbitt
I rely on the old standard for determining a blockbuster, with a little modification: Gross 2-3 times production cost or exceed $100 million, whichever is higher. Thus, Seabiscuit is a blockbuster and Wild Wild West is a bomb.
I dread the coming of May 8 and Melrose Trek, yet Son & I will be there opening day because we’re just that stupid about Trek.
We’ll also be there opening day for Revenge of the Fallen, because we’re just that stupid about big transforming robots, oh yeah. I’ll be a lot happier going into this one, though.