Welcome to 2015, a year in which genre film-makers will be doing their level best to look back to 1977 (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), 1982 (The Legend of Conan) and 1984 (Terminator: Genisys). Oh and let us not forget Mad Max: Fury Road (riffing off 1979’s Mad Max and its 1981 and 1985 sequels), Cinderella (looking even further back to Disney’s 1950 animated classic) and The Jungle Book (doing the same for the Mouse House’s wonderful 1967 take on Rudyard Kipling’s fantasy fable).
Elsewhere, this year’s upcoming slate features a torrent of sci-fi sequels (June’s Jurassic World, November’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part Two), as well as the odd comic book movie based on pre-existing properties (Ant-Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron.) All in all, there’s not a lot of originality to look forward to, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has kept at least one eye on Hollywood in recent years.
Animated fantasies
Let us kick off then, by celebrating the fact that Pixar will deliver two original animated movies in 2015. The Disney-owned studio which gave us Toy Story, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Up and Wall-E has already debuted the trailer for Inside Out, which arrives in June in US cinemas (24 July in the UK), while we’ve just been treated to some new concept art for November’s The Good Dinosaur. Of the two, Inside Out looks closer to the spirit of the studio’s truly pioneering productions, with its vision of a young girl’s everyday life as seen through the eyes of the anthropomorphised emotions who live in the Star Trek-style “bridge” that represents her mind.
Then again, any half-decent animated movie about dinosaurs is going to be very hard to beat at the box office, at least if cinemagoers aged eight and under have anything to say about it. Might The Good Dinosaur be the new Cars – hugely popular with merchandise makers but Pixar’s least effective movie in terms of concept and realisation – or can Peter Sohn’s film about a 70-foot tall Apatosaurus who befriends a human boy transcend its slightly hackneyed storyline? Pixar has already delayed the movie once and kicked Up’s Bob Peterson off the project. That should be bad news, bar for the fact the studio usually knows what it’s doing in these situations. Brenda Chapman, who came up with the original storyline for Brave, was sidelined in favour of Mark Andrews on the 2012 Caledonian-themed medieval fantasy, which nevertheless went on to win the Oscar for best animated film the following year.
Meanwhile, Pixar rivals DreamWorks Animation is also showing signs of life. The studio’s films tend to come thick and fast compared to those of its peers, and can be a mixed bag beyond the Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon sagas. Yet Home, about a Steve Martin-voiced alien leader who brings his lost race of squidgy-legged extra terrestrials to Earth in search of refuge from their intergalactic nemeses, looks bright and endearing. Check out the short Almost Home, which shows what happened to the ever-optimistic space gang before they arrived in our solar system.
Flamboyant space opera
Unbelievably, cinemagoers still have almost a year to go until Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits cinemas on 18 December 2015. Will it be any good? JJ Abrams has enveloped the production in such a shroud of secrecy that it remains very hard to tell, but the signs are positive. The teaser trailer is on course to be the most-viewed of all time, and there has been so much hype regarding the use of real sets and animatronic characters that you have to wonder if Andy Serkis is quaking in his boots for fear of a negative reaction to his reported mo-cap based creation.
It would be almost impossible for a film-maker of Abrams’ talents working from a screenplay written with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi’s Lawrence Kasdan to create a movie any worse than any of the three prequel films. The key to The Force Awakens’ success, and with it the chances of a slew of sequels and spin-off movies being planned by Disney, will lie in the director’s ability to find genuine warmth in the cold recesses of space. A machine-honed, by-the-numbers Star Wars-lite movie simply won’t cut it, no matter how much money the studio throws at it. To keep cinemagoers happy, Abrams must deliver a dose of cosmic joy so pure and unfettered that it sets the midi-chlorians whirling like star-swept dervishes caught in the half-light of a departing X-Wing.
Also heading beyond the Earth’s borders is the Wachowski siblings’ considerably more garish Jupiter Ascending, in which the maverick film-makers imagine Mila Kunis (as if) as a lowly earthbound janitor who discovers her destiny has vast galactic significance. From the trailers, this one looks part The Matrix, part The Fifth Element, with a little bit of David Lynch’s Dune thrown in for good measure. After the disappointing box office of Cloud Atlas, you have to wonder whether the Wachowskis can ever repeat the success of the Matrix trilogy. At a cost of $175m, Jupiter Ascending might just be their last chance at a big-budget genre movie. Let’s hope the critics are kind and the cinema sales swift when the movie debuts next month.
Dystopian future visions
Into (slightly) more serious sci-fi territory now, and 12 June sees the arrival of Jurassic World, with Colin Trevorrow, director of indie time-travel comedy Safety Not Guaranteed, taking charge of the gargantuan prehistoric monster franchise developed for the screen by Steven Spielberg. “You just went and made a new dinosaur. Probably not a good idea,” says a suitably laconic Chris Pratt in the trailer, which probably tells you everything you need to know here. But hey, at least they dropped the brain-bendingly nutty “dinos with guns” idea.
Likely to score just as highly in terms of thrills and spills, even as the franchise itself limps into the futuristic sunset, is November’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part Two. The fabulous Jennifer Lawrence continues to do her damnedest to keep this long-running dystopian saga’s head above water, but ever since story-planners bid a sad farewell to the terrifyingly bloodthirsty Arena in 2013’s Catching Fire and began exploring the future dystopian nation of Panem in excruciatingly pointless detail, the whole thing has gone downhill. Director Francis Lawrence can throw as many hi-tech special effects at the screen as he likes in this adaptation of the second half of Suzanne Collins’ weak final Hunger Games book: unfortunately they’ll never escape the nagging suspicion that things were a whole lot better when this was just a well-tooled Hollywood rip-off of Battle Royale.
Elsewhere, May’s Mad Max: Fury Road has been picking up hype following the release of two gorgeous-looking trailers. Personally, I always wondered why the residents of future dystopian Australia never worked out that you could set up by the coast – possibly near a convenient source of water – and avoid the need for punky eye makeup and constant battles over dwindling petrol resources altogether. The new film, which stars Tom Hardy as Max, does look like an awful lot of fun.
May brings us Tomorrowland, the latest movie from Brad Bird of The Incredibles and Ratatouille fame. Starring George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Hugh Laurie and Judy Greer, the film appears to centre on a mysterious object that allows the user to travel instantly to another reality. Meanwhile March’s Chappie is District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s return to the streets of metropolitan South Africa in the company of a Short Circuit-style sapient robot and Die Antwoord members Yolandi and Ninja.
Arnie comebacks
This year might just mark Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last chance to return to the Hollywood A-list after a torrent of poor releases in the wake of his seven-year stint as governor of California. Both July’s Terminator: Genisys and The Legend of Conan, which is still slated for a 2015 release but may now miss the deadline after a series of delays, will see the Austrian Oak return to familiar territory. The trailer for Genisys suggests a time-travel plot straight from planet crazy, but at least the film-makers have followed James Cameron’s lead in their efforts to explain why Schwarzenegger’s T-800 appears as aged as the actor himself. Genisys has a decent supporting cast in Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke and Zero Dark Thirty’s Jason Clarke, but director Alan Taylor’s best effort is 2013’s middling Thor: The Dark World. The jury remains out.
Comic-book epics
Finally, no Week in Geek preview would be complete without a rundown of the coming year’s superhero stylings. Yet 2015 promises to be something of a calm before the storm, at least in terms of the number of new comic-book movies released ahead of an unholy smackdown of films set to arrive via Marvel and Warner/DC between 2016 and 2020. April/May’s Avengers: Age of Ultron looks the best bet to blast the genre to new levels of epic spectacle, with Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America et al taking on the villainous titular robot with possible help from newcomers Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). With Joss Whedon returning to the director’s chair and providing the whip-smart dialogue, the sequel promises to be the comic-book movie that superhero naysayers just can’t help enjoying, providing the endgame doesn’t descend too far into Transformers-style brain-battery this time around. Much will depend on whether James Spader’s CGI Ultron can equal Tom Hiddleston’s opulently evil Loki last time out. Marvel hasn’t got a great record when it comes to digitally enhanced bad guys, with this year’s Guardians of the Galaxy triumphing despite the presence of a particularly insipid Josh Brolin-voiced Thanos.
Next up, on 17 July, comes the much-discussed Ant-Man. With poor Edgar Wright having been unceremoniously dumped due to creative differences with Marvel, the movie could not have suffered from more rampant negative buzz – particularly in the UK – had it decided to follow the famously derided domestic battery storyline from the comics.
Replacement director Peyton Reed (Yes Man) looks like a shoddy stand-in for the co-creator of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. But Marvel is developing a reputation as a producer-driven studio capable of getting by without installing celebrated names to take charge of the cameras, much like the makers of the James Bond series, Eon Productions. Whether this means Ant-Man is all set to be Marvel’s Quantum of Solace remains to be seen.
Finally, we are in theory due to see the new Fantastic Four movie hitting cinemas in July following at least one significant rewrite. Fan ire over casting – the movie features Miles Teller as Mr Fantastic, Kate Mara as Invisible Woman, Michael B Jordan as The Human Torch and Jamie Bell as The Thing – would appear to be a storm in a superhero tea cup. The concern for me is whether director Josh Trank can deliver a fresh perspective on the superhero movie without overdoing the whole found-footage dynamic which (for me) ultimately rather ruined his previous effort Chronicle. It would also be a pity if the film-makers plumped for a rumoured “dark” take on what has always been a pretty bright and breezy superhero ensemble. But the new team can hardly fare worse than their distinctly throwaway big-screen predecessors, who floundered in 2005 and 2007 despite the presence of a pre-Captain America Chris Evans. And in Britain’s Toby Kebbell, Trank et al have a Doctor Doom who’s more than capable of stealing every scene he appears in.
