Have a hankering for men in tights? The Summer 2011 movie season is just for you.
Hollywood’s infatuation with superheroes reaches nerd nirvana with a barrage of comics-based heroes. Hollywood hasn’t hit 1.000 with comic book adaptations so far, witness that purrrfectly awful film starring Halle Berry, but superhero pictures are reliable blockbusters all the same. Just ask Batman.
Will Summer 2011 be remembered for kick-starting a half dozen new franchises, or the moment when audiences started tuning out these colorfully clad avengers? We’ll have to see. But for now each of these superhero films brims with sequel potential.
- “Thor” (May 6) – Marvel Comic’s golden-locked hero arrives with plenty of wind at his back. The film stars Chris Hemsworth, a relative unknown who wowed audiences during his big early scene in the 2009 film “Star Trek.” The man behind the camera isn’t an MTV video alum but a Shakespearean-trained actor/director, Kenneth Branagh. And the actress by our hero’s side is the Oscar-certified Natalie Portman. Will that be enough to sell a hero with less star appeal than Batman or Spider-Man? Never bet against a big man wielding a very big hammer.
- “X-Men: First Class” (June 3) – Movie prequels often fail to replicate the greatness of the original. Remember “Hannibal Rising?” “X-Men: First Class” should avoid such a fate. Director Matthew Vaughn proved he could deliver a dynamic super adventure with “Kick-Ass,” and the film’s main characters couldn’t be better cast. James McAvoy, playing a young, hirsute Charles Xavier, radiates braininess in every role he plays. And “First Class” should be the movie to make a fully-fledged movie star out of Mr. Magneto, Michael Fassbender. Setting the origin story in the turbulent 1960s could be enough of a wrinkle to separate the film from the flock.
- “Green Lantern” (June 17) – Ryan Reynolds seems born to play a superhero. He’s got that handsome mug, a way with a quip and abs that could deflect bullets before any super-empowering takes place. But “Green Lantern” seems the riskiest bet this season. The trailer is CGI drenched, and not in a positive way, and few outside the inner circle of Geekdom are familiar with the title character. The super ace in the hole may be Martin Campbell, the veteran director who brought the Bond franchise back from the dead with “Casino Royale.”
- “Captain America: The First Avenger” (July 22) – Chris Evans has the most experience playing a superhero. He flamed on as Johnny Storm in the mediocre “Fantastic Four” features. Here, his assignment is far more daunting – embody a superhero known as much for his moral certitude as his physical brawn.
- “Cowboys & Aliens” (July 29) – A few years ago few people would applaud letting director Jon Favreau have a crack at a super franchise. The guy from “Swingers?” What does he know about action adventure? Favreau’s “Iron Man” films changed virtually everyone’s minds on the subject. This adaptation of the 2006 graphic novel couldn’t be in better hands. And with veterans like Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford ready for action, “C&A” could be the late summer movie to beat.
(Photo: Chris Evans plays a spindly army recruit reborn as a military superman in “Captain America: The First Avenger,” hitting theaters July 22. Paramount Pictures.)
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
The pressure must really be on to make the next ‘Superman’ something special. The Man of Steel has a LOT of competition these days.
I have always said that a good director with a lot of common sense and the ability to tell the film companies to back off and let him make the movie the right way would be successful. Jon Faverau proved that and it seems some are slow to pick up on it. Others like Wolverine almost got it right but they wimped out in the end and left the results lack luster at best.
Just on the premise of the works and from what I’ve seen in the trailers,
I don’t think Thor will be a major hit. Sure it will take in a lot it’s first weekend, but as far as long lasting impact, I don’t think it will have what it takes. X-Men First Class looks awesome and if they can do for it what Star Trek did for that franchise I will be impressed.
I think Green Lantern will be respectable with Ryan Reynolds and Martin Campbell but we’ll see. I anticipate Captain America and Cowboys and Aliens so we’ll see.
The Thor movie though seems to be made only to introduce the character so they can make the Avengers film and really, thats OK. With all the back story out of the way they can dive right into the action from the beginning.
“Thor” looks like a hit already (judging from the foreign B.O.) but I am waiting for my childhood comic hero, “Green Lantern”. Ryan Reynolds was born to play Earth’s protector.
I would also like top see a major film treatment (not just TV and cartoons) of “Doctor Strange”. Heck, “Harry Potter’s” franchise is soon coming to an end so why not continue the magic with a superhero?
Looking forward to Captain America. From the previews it looks good.
I don’t really buy Ryan Reynolds as that Green Lantern, though. Not Hal Jordan, I mean. Kyle Rayner, maybe. But for Hal you need someone a little more, well, mature. Maybe Nathan Fillion (Hal is still a smartass, which is sorta Fillion’s claim to fame), and hey, since Adam Baldwin was born to play Guy Gardner, if they made more GL movies you’d get the Firefly fans in automatically. Reynolds is just a poor casting choice. No idea who’d play John Stewart (the black Green Lantern, I mean, not the Daily Show guy—his name is “Jon”); I kinda get the feeling he was based on some of Denzel Washington’s roles, but Denzel’s too old and his salary would instantly double the budget.
But still, a Green Lantern movie makes me happy. My biggest objection to the Batman and Superman movies has been that they’re emphatically not set in the DC universe, they’re set in ours. But you can’t very well do GL without the whole DC universe, quite literally: every Lantern patrols 1/3600 of it. You don’t even have a backstory without dragging in massive swaths of DC mythology—the Guardians of Oa, the Yellow Impurity (which, not to spoil anything, is actually the embodiment of fear itself, trapped inside the Lantern), Sinestro, and quite possibly the Book of Oa and Darkest Night.
Dear God I’m a nerd.
Personally I’m not excited about any of them. It’s like they started making films with the A-list super heros and now are down to the B and C-list ones.
This won’t have anything to do, I suspect, with how successful the two new Marvel movies will be, but I am impressed with what appears to be abundant nods to creator and Marvel great Jack Kirby in the look of these movies. The photo you use for this post, Christian, looks like something come to life right out of “Tales of Suspense” circa 1965-67. The Thor images we’ve seen so far – Thor holding his hammer above his head, the Frost Giants, the Destroyer, the Asgardian costumes – all look Kirby-inspired. So, that probably will have no effect on t he movies’ success with today’s young viewers but it sure is neat to see for us Marvel old-timers. That kind of respect for the material – if it is really there in the final, full movies – is fun to see.
Ooh, Kirby shout-outs: that is encouraging. One wonders, how long till they translate something Fourth World-related to the big screen? I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool DC partisan (no, not really, I’m actually squeeing like a fangirl on the inside). But I would like to see Darkseid in a movie sometime.
Apparently all the rooftop fights in those early Marvel stories are based in part on how the tough guys in Kirby’s neighborhood would rumble up there, since it would take longer for the cops to come. I don’t know if that’s cool or scary; maybe both.
The Thor costume looks great on screen, but its counterpart in the comics is very boring. It’s colorless mostley and looks like they jsut put different stuff on him that don’t match with each other. Chainmail and a cape. Sure, why not.
I’ll probably check out the Captain America movie. But I’m pretty much done with movies. PRetty much seen ‘em all.
I have a strong opinion about this critical topic. The only legitimate period for the true golden era of comics was 1965-1975. DC comics were generally terrible. Superman, Batman and Blackhawk were notible exceptions which kept them afloat. Marvel was far superior in making three dimensional characters of their superheroes due to the creative control of Stan Lee. Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were the artistic geniuses that make Marvel a multibillion dollar enterprise 25 years later.. Once the movies for the superheroes of this era have been exhausted, there will be nothing left. Sort of like what happened to music after 1989. I am looking forward to the Doctor Strange franchise.
“Chris Evans has the most experience playing a superhero.”
Uh, dIdn’t Ryan Reynolds play Deadpool?
Angel, Marvel’s “three-dimensional characters” were, by and large, a bunch of refugees from Oprah’s book-club. I’m sure their by-the-book oppression narratives (X-Men, we’re looking at you) would’ve been groundbreaking in 1963 when the series’ run began, but by the 70s it was completely ridiculous. If there’s a single aspect of Fantastic Four you don’t consider an insult to your intelligence, I’d be curious to know what it is, and Spider-man, though its boosters like to take credit for him being a superhero with “everyday problems”, was just going back over ground eminently familiar to Clark Kent pretty much since the first days of DC.
Also, Green Arrow, Flash, and Green Lantern were pretty good in the period in question (which, by the bye, is actually the Silver Age). The Atom, Jack Kirby’s own Fourth World, the Justice League and the Justice Society really came into their own around then…And there’s a good case to be made that DC’s greatest flourishing came a bit later, perhaps with the introduction of Ras al-Ghul in 1971, but certainly well underway by the Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985.
Hollywood might have the geek on, but some (many?) of us wish for the days when good movies were for adults and more or less a-political. I like Superman and I like Batman as movie icons. The first two Spiderman movies and the first Iron Man had their enjoyable moments. The X-Men movies were salvageable, but started the downslide trend into lame. A reboot of the Hulk in less than five years that didn’t galvanize anything? Should have been a warning sign. I refuse to watch any other superhero movies. Then again, I haven’t exactly been watching many of any movies for the last five years.
Hollywood, where did you dignity, your creativity, your spark go? The 60s poisoned you, the 80s almost redeemed you, and the 90s was the swan song.
Which good movies are those? I’m not being a smartass, I’m actually curious. Because the only good movie I can think of that I’d characterize as “for adults” is Dirty Harry, since only an adult can be expected to get the principle involved (it’s too subtle for children, that’s why Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert both called it fascist).
The Silver Age was the golden age?