Summer blockbusters
All the top movies for the wettest months
WELCOME to the Hollywood multiverse, because that’s what the list of top 10 blockbusters to see this summer looks like, an everincreasing series of fictional universes. This year it’s virtually impossible, though there are a couple of exceptions here, to find a major blockbuster movie that isn’t part of some expanded, or expanding, universe. Whether it’s monsters, superheroes (of the DC or Marvel variety), Transformers, apes, space adventurers, or sexy lifeguards, it is the franchise that rules – and the expanded universe is where the franchises are going.
BAYWATCH MAY 29
A lot has changed since the heyday of Pamela Anderson in the 1990s when Baywatch was a cult hit. One of the main changes is that nowadays skin-baring beach scenes tend to be more about ogling the dudes than the dames. Enter Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and his rippling muscles, tattoos, and poster taglines like “The beach just got sexier”. Johnson and Zac Efron are the stars in what substantially seems to be more of a crime caper comedy than an extended Baywatch episode. And, of course, the film knows how to play its original source inspiration for laughs. “Everything that you guys are talking about sounds like a really entertaining but far-fetched TV show,” says Efron’s character in the film’s trailer.
WONDER WOMAN JUNE 2
Signs are starting to emerge that, when it comes to critical approval, Wonder Woman could be about to trounce her DC Universe predecessors Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Suicide Squad. Tweeters who have seen the film are saying it’s good, though, without the lasso of truth, it’s hard to know how honest a review we’re getting. One critic has already given the Amazonian princess four out of five stars, saying it’s “dark but funny too”. Gal Gadot, who played Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman, returns to the role as Diana, warrior princess of the Amazons. The film’s director, Patty Jenkins, was also behind the brave and mesmerising film Monster, starring Charlize Theron as the real-life, death row female serial killer Aileen Wuornos – so don’t expect it to hold its super punches.
THE MUMMY JUNE 9
Monsters are back – and not just in the quirky, recently-released Anne Hathaway movie, Colossal. Universal’s The Mummy is just the first of its planned series of monster universe films. It’s partly a reboot of the old Brendan Fraser adventure movies, but also something more. The Hollywood heavy-hitters Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe have been brought in to take on a particularly terrifying female Mummy played by Sofia Boutella. Cruise, 54, is still looking like he’s barely out of his tweens and must have been drinking some ancient Egyptian youth potion. He’s also
bounding around doing action stunts so risky it led one blogger to declare “The Mummy stunts featurette proves Tom Cruise is batsh** insane!” Five best friends from college (played by Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer and Zoë Kravitz) go on a bachelorette/hen weekend in Miami. What could possibly go wrong? The latest in a string of female-led comedies triggered by the runaway success of Bridesmaids in 2011 looks like a riot, but with a dark twist. It’s even kicked off some controversy, with some commentators concerned at the laughs being got from the death of a male stripper. Optimus Prime has gone rogue, Mark Wahlberg is back and the Transformers universe, like every other movie universe, is expanding. On one level this latest Transformers is more of the usual – explosions, laughs, groans, camp portentousness – but pumped up further. It promises to be, in other words, just the kind of metallic pantomime we’ve come to expect from director Michael Bay. Rob Bricken, writing for sci-fi website Gizmodo, said the trailer suggested that the film was set to be “the new Michael Bay-iest thing I have ever seen”, which echoed what he said about the last Transformers film. The trailer, he also observed, “indicated” to him ”that it may be the most insane Transformers movie since Dark Of The Moon”. Back in 2014, Wahlberg predicted Transformers: Age of Extinction would be the biggest hit of the year and it was its highest-grossing movie. Will The Last Knight deliver the same? It’s certainly, with its young audience appeal, in with a strong chance. In the form of 20-year-old Tom Holland, finally we get a proper Spidey who looks like the kid he always should have been. The last two Amazing Spider-Man films may have left fans feeling mostly a little tepid, PAGE 10 SUMMER’S HOTTEST TV but, given Holland’s performance in Captain America: Civil War, there’s a good feeling about the new spider on the block. Again we’re really looking at a more expanded universe. Spider-Man will be joined by other Marvel Comic friends: Robert Downey Jr, who has played Iron Man, Maris Tomei will be Aunt May and Michael Keaton plays the Vulture. The eighth film in this critically-acclaimed franchise takes us, violently and bloodily, towards the kind of ape-dominated world Charlton Heston crash-landed on in the 1968 original. “I did not start this war,” declares ape leader Caesar in a recent trailer for the film. “But I will finish it.” Such trailers have delivered hints of what is to come. There’s even been a teaser with a Charlton Heston voiceover, in which he speaks the words of William Faulkner: “I refuse to accept the end of man. I believe he will endure. He will prevail.” But this film belongs to Andy Serkis’s Caesar and
Woody Harrelson’s military colonel, a human bent on wiping out the apes. Not much, outside Star Wars, beats the Planet Of The Apes franchise for sheer compelling, and sometimes absurd universe development.
DUNKIRK JULY 21
They still make them, then, those big historical war movies – or at least Christopher Nolan has made one. Amid the flood of summer monster and superhero movies, Dunkirk, the story of the evacuation of Allied troops from the beaches in 1940, stands out like a sore thumb: serious, ambitious, and, if its trailer indicates anything, utterly gripping and moving. It’s all the more remarkable because Nolan, director of blockbusters like the Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar and Inception isn’t known for this kind of film. And the names involved say something about the gravity of intent: Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy. Though there is, for the One Directioners out there, also Harry Styles in his first screen role – possibly set to bring a whole audience to the cinema who might otherwise have not been drawn to a film about Dunkirk.
VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS AUGUST 4
Luc Besson’s latest film, a kind of Fifth Element remade for the 21st century, reputedly cost a whopping £160 million to make – and you can see quite a lot of that there on the screen even in the spectacular trailer. Based on Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Meziere’s classic comic book, it stars Dane DeHaan (A Cure For Wellness) and model Cara Delevingne, and features an appearance by Rihanna, as a shape-shifting entertainer. DeHaan’s Valerian is rocking the Leonardo DiCaprio Romeo look, arriving on-screen dressed in a flower-print shirt. The whole thing looks even more gloriously insane than The Fifth Element – yet perhaps now is exactly the moment for such a film. As Besson said recently: “The funny thing is 20 years ago I was weird. Some people followed [The Fifth Element] at the time and it was a good success, but not huge. And 20 years later the world got as weird as me so now we match. I think this one will be easier to catch.”
THE DARK TOWER AUGUST 18
It’s taken a long time to get here – almost a decade in on-off development – but Stephen King’s epic fantasy series is finally about to make it to the screen. Roland Deschain, the 200-year-old “last gunslinger” will be played by Idris Elba and the Man in Black by Matthew McConaughey. But don’t expect a close following of the original series, only something based on and inspired by it and, if King’s comments are anything to go by, it will keep the classic opening line: “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.”