Summer 2013 Review

Wow, this year still hasn't earned or achieved a turnaround in quality.


After a largely forgettable and/or awful spring movie season, where only a few films were able to stand out, we had to suffer through a summer season filled with high-profiled disasters, whose hooks were often filled with disaster footage: Car destruction, buildings being demolished, massive body counts, cities obliterated, and heroes not giving a shit. The only film to feature all of these detracting elements yet had a laugh about it was This Is the End. The rest weren't so lucky or able to keep people from frowning and being bored.


Now, a lot of movie critics and writers have already sent in there large walls of text about this season, so I'll try to be brief as much as I can and try not to repeat their praises and detractions. It will be kinda hard considering we just when through a massive sea of disappointment for four months.




The number one winner was another Marvel film, Iron Man 3. I enjoyed the feature and all of the kinks added to the franchise by writer/director Shane Black. Still, it wasn't truly earth-shattering. I blame the limp ending where they wants us to foolishly believe that Stark hangs up his power armor. It might be a fitting end for a trilogy but not for one of the cornerstones of the massive Marvel Film Universe.




Speaking of Earth destruction, there were a lot of that, with mixed to catastrophic results. First, there was Star Trek Into Darkness, the stupidly-named sequel to the popular reboot, that spent most of the time catering to fan service and wholesale cribbing from The Dark Knight and The Wrath of Khan. Its anti-climatic ship-crashing into the main hub of Earth led to much CGI destruction, which was then seemingly wiped away in the epilogue. The same went with Man of Steel, another audience filler that had many jeer or be spurned by its "efforts" (including myself to a very high degree). Its abhorring finale had Metropolis suffering a 9/11 massacre, sucking any fun a person could have for the dreadful film. Fast & Furious 6 didn't deliver as much as the highly entertaining fifth entry but made sure to wreck a lot of property and made the hero crew look like selfish assholes at the very end. After Earth featured a rehabilitated Earth, after an unseen apocalypse, but many didn't want to see it because they were too wise to accept sitting through Will Smith's nepotistic presentation of his son as an action hero, let alone another feature from M. Night Shyamalan. World War Z was a surprise, though it stunk as an adaptation. White House Down was skipped over because everyone remembered seeing another White House-attacked film this year (Olympus Has Fallen). Pacific Rim was very good but its hard sell of giant robots didn't wow the rest of the nation, only to instead do gangbusters in China. Elysium had some promise but the sci-fi health care issues scared everyone away. Then, there was The Lone Ranger; as expected, America didn't want to see a western in this day and age and they are sick of Johnny Depp's shtick. Oh yeah, I seriously forgot about this: R.I.P.D. was D.O.A.




The comedy genre continued to sink to lower depths. The Hangover: Part III was more horrendous than the second movie. The Internship was thankfully deleted quickly since nobody wanted to sit through a Google commercial. Peeples had no one buying a ticket; the same went for Girl Most Likely. Families were either burnt out or refused to head out to see The Smurfs 2 in 3D. And finally, Grown Ups 2 was the absolute worst film of the entire season. The only films to receive praise or good business were The Heat, This Is the End, and Blue Jasmine.




Animation took a big hit. Despicable Me 2 was my best reviewed and the one and only to be thoroughly liked (though its sitcom plot bugs me). Monsters University had a better world and funnier jokes but its soul-crushing theme ruined any chance to be stellar. Pixar gave us another sequel/prequel we didn't request for and not only were they unable to make it fully work, they decided to spread melancholy all over kids' dreams. Planes, a movie previously designed for a DVD release, was able to fly-by but without much fanfare. Turbo, however, came up dead last, proving that kids don't really care to see a snail as a hero. There was also Epic; jeez, what a turd.


Not every film ended up so bad: As coined by the New York Times, it was a summer for the B-movies. The Purge, Now You See Me, the as-mentioned comedies, and The Conjuring all were widely accepted. The surprisingly low-key The Wolverine was actually fine and indie fare like Fruitvale Station and Before Midnight drew crowds.


Of my top picks back in May, I saw six in theaters (it will be seven when I check out The World's End next week). Only one of them (thankfully my first pick) ended up being stellar. Will the fall schedule and picks be different? Find out tomorrow.