By [Community member Cacophony did an awesome job recapping his thoughts of Summer 2012 movies on his community blog, and as a result, here it is on the front page for everyone to see! Great job Cacophony! You can get a chance to be featured on Flixist’s front page too, check it out here.]
The first thing that always comes to mind when I think of the summer blockbuster season is the inevitable montage of massive explosions that would make Michael Bay proud. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m expecting every movie I watch during the blockbuster season to be laced with the big booms, but I’ll go ahead and be honest in saying that every movie I saw this summer had its fair share of bangs, blams, explodey goodness. That’s because out of all the best and worst summer movies I saw this year, I really stuck to the action packed stuff. That’s just how it goes sometimes.</p>
With two major superhero movies coming out this summer, I knew I was in for both a treat and a challenge. The treat was that I was going to get to see the culmination of Marvel’s efforts to build a superhero team up movie that was probably not going to fail and the end to the fantastic Nolanverse Batman arc. The challenge, of course, being that I was going to probably have to sit down at some point and decided which one was best. Turns out I failed in that challenge since I think both are fantastic for their own reasons. However, I decided that I had to pick only one that could stand on top as what I considered the best movie of Summer 2012 and that movie was The Avengers.
Marvel did it, guys. They really, really did it. They managed to take a whole bunch of franchises and hulk smash them in together with a healthy dose of cameo characters to make pretty much the best superhero team up outside of printed comic books. I sat there for nearly three hours and was never at any point bored, wondering when things were going to tie up, or not grinning like an idiot. I could go on forever about the wonderful dialogue, the fantastic acting and character interactions, the great cg, or even all the pretty explosions that were on the screen at any given time. When it comes down to it, however, The Avengers beats out everything else this summer just for being the most fun I had in a theater all season long.
This was a hard decision for me. I enjoyed Prometheus for a variety of reasons. It looked gorgeous. It was filled with cool science fiction settings, gadgets, and ideas. It had David and some other people who were also cool but not nearly as cool as David. It had a great soundtrack. It was set in space and had evil aliens that wanted to mate with humanity’s face. There’s also that scene in that image up there. I want that holographic universe map in real life so bad.
Then there’s the other stuff that makes me sad. Prometheus was filled from beginning to end with so many nonsensical plot holes or actions that served only to push forward said holey plot that trying to understand what it was all really about hurts. I’m okay not knowing the answer to everything ever, but sometimes things just need to make some sense and some of the things that happened in Prometheus never will make sense even if it is explained. Then there’s things like running from the round spaceship in a straight line that just snaps you right out of the film and leaves you with your arms crossed and a skeptical look on your face.
So, no matter how cool parts of the movie was, I just can’t help but label it the worst movie of my summer on its flaws alone (Disclaimer: I know for a fact there were worst movies out there, I just didn’t see them, so Prometheus gets stuck with the label).
So, that’s my Best and Worst from Summer 2012. They aren’t the only movies I saw that fall into the 2012 Summer season, however, so I thought it’d be nice to talk about a few others real quick just because I can. Namely, I wanted to address The Bourne Legacy and The Expendables 2 because they popped into my head while trying to figure out which films sat where on the rankings list.
First, The Bourne Legacy. This film was never a contender for best movie, but I briefly matched it up against Prometheus for being the worst movie. Why? Well, again, I did like The Bourne Legacy. I liked Jeremy Renner and the convoluted conspiracy he was caught up in and I hope they make more Bourne-esque movies with him as the lead. However, the movie took forever to do anything and really dragged right up until its abrupt end. Still, I didn’t feel that was enough to say it was the worst so I’m mentioning the legacy of the extreme ways here instead.
Now, let me say a few words about The Explosionmuscles 2 (a.k.a The Expendables 2). I loved every second of this movie no matter how ridiculous it was. My girlfriend looked over at me quite a few times and simply shook her head and said, “Stupid” and I laughed in response. The Expendables 2 was everything it was supposed be. Lots of really strong men with big guns and muscles fought some other strong men with big guns and muscles and everyone exploded. It beat the original, like it needed to do, and it was just plain fun. That is, however, the reason why its sitting here instead of up there with the best: it did everything I knew it was going to do and that’s about it. So, I’m happy with it, but I felt it only needed a mention down here.
With our Summer 2012 movie season pretty much over, I’ve got plenty of movies I’m still looking forward to seeing and I’m curious how they will fair against the movies I’ve seen this summer (or still need to see).
Until next time, Summer.