Reboot: Successful
With the help of producer / project overseer Christopher Nolan, director Zack Snyder has been charged with completely rebooting the Superman franchise. In many respects, Snyder is faced with an even bigger task than Nolan was when he rebooted the Batman franchise. People may love Batman, but Superman is nothing short of an American icon. Erasing fans’ memories of the original films may be a tough task, but with Man of Steel, Snyder at least comes close. This is a very good first chapter and origin story, which should pave the way for a new series of Superman movies. The best is likely yet to come and I can’t wait.
Why Earth?
Once anointed “the next Spielberg,” director M. Night Shyamalan has failed to impress much of anyone with his past few movies. After the success of Signs in 2002, his films have continued to decline, perhaps bottoming out with The Happening and The Last Airbender in 2008 and 2010, respectively. For his new film, After Earth, the director tries something he hasn’t done since he first exploded onto the scene in 1999 with The Sixth Sense… he lets someone else write the script.
A Little Too Sober
When The Hangover came out in 2009, it was a massive hit that even garnered some minor Oscar buzz, a rarity for a gross-out comedy. A lot of the credit had to go to the film’s clever device of having its three leads backtrack through a night of debauchery to figure out what happened to their missing friend. It was a clever plot device that helped the film standout from other comedies, but was kind of a one-shot deal, as evidenced by the sequel’s failure to repeat the formula. Now the Wolfpack is back for The Hangover Part III, a movie that purposely tries to go in a different direction from its predecessors, but may have ended up going just a little bit too far.
He’s Back on His Own
Iron Man 3 kicks off what Marvel Studios has dubbed Phase 2 of their superhero series after Phase 1 successfully concluded with last years The Avengers. It is fitting that Phase 2 should kick off with a new Iron Man movie since it was the 2008 original that first kicked off the series. Jon Favreau, the director of the first two films, takes a back seat here as a supporting player and hands over the reins to writer/director Shane Black. Black previously worked with star Robert Downey Jr. on 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and he puts his stamp on the franchise early as Downey opens the film with a voiceover narration that sounds suspiciously similar to the one from their previous film together.
Michael Bay Goes Low(ish)-Budget
After exploding and demolishing everything he could over the past six years with his Transformers films, director Michael Bay decided to scale it back some. The result is Pain & Gain, a low-budget—by Bay’s standards—black comedy based on an outlandish true crime story, which proves that Bay can still tell a story with human characters and not just robots. Well, human may be somewhat of a stretch. The three main characters of Pain & Gain are members of the human race, for sure, but they are so far out there it is hard to imagine them being based on real people.
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