And a one, a two — a one, two, three…four? Wait, FOUR?

Yes, four.

The summer season kicks off in early May when you’re talking about the movie landscape, and so it’s right about time to take stock of what’s in the offing this year. It’s kind of like the joke about presidential elections, “it just keeps getting earlier and earlier.” And so it does.

There are not as many sequels this year as last year, when seemingly every movie had a 3 on the end, but there are a fair amount. Guess what? This is not a new occurrence. Want proof?

Susan Royal: There is a substantial number of sequels coming out this summer: Rocky III, Grease II, Star Trek II, Friday the 13th part III.
Steven Spielberg: And Halloween III in the fall. Yeah, there are a lot of “twos” and “threes” coming out … The Jaws I designed was a one-time shot. And the sequel, Jaws II, proves only that you can make a few dollars just by applying mechanical science to a successful formula … I’m sure Grease II is going to be good, but Grease II is not a natural sequel, it’s a forced sequel. Star Trek II is more of a natural sequel. Raiders II will be another adventure.

That was Señor Spielbergo in the American Premiere, July 1982 issue during the run-up to E.T. and Poltergeist, so we can stop complaining about it because it’s simply not going to change. It’s a byproduct of companies whose main business is not making movies owning the studios, and as production costs continue to balloon, that’s simply impossible to weed out of Tinseltown.

Now, there are plenty of big-budget spectacles coming up this summer, just as any summer. If winter is where the studios win their prestige and credit as makers of fine films, summer is where the studios make all of the money that finances the Oscar© fodder. There will be popcorn sales. We’ll deal with May’s Iron Man, Speed Racer and Prince Caspian in a minute, but first things first, no?

No Time for Love, Dr. Jones

The main attraction of May is obviously the fourth installment of Lucas and Spielberg’s Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and Another Adventure with no Nazis Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We may well be moving into a Star Trek movie kind of even/odd scenario with Indy here. The hastily thrown together and predictable trailer seems to point us in that direction, at least, but I don’t want to write it off or poison myself or anyone against it before it’s even out. It’s just a simple fact that the best thing Indy does is kill Nazis (or throw them from dirigibles) in his adventures. He’s not the Raider of the Lost Ark, he’s Indiana Jones, Nazi Hunter. There was nary a Nazi to be found in Temple of Doom, just a lot of monkey heads and excised beating hearts, and that’s why it’s the weakest of the three so far. Well, that and Kate Capshaw. But that’s a different conversation altogether, and besides, Karen Allen is back reprising her role as Indy’s best girl, Marion Ravenwood. This is maybe the only move that kept me at least semi-interested in there being a fourth, because the furthering of the Indy and Marion story is compelling, while also dipping a cinematic toe in childhood nostalgia (hey, it’s Spielberg).
Indy is older now, and not as well able to keep up on his adventures as he was in the earlier movies. I hope they get all of the broken hip jokes out of way in the first act (I really hope the warehouse scene from the trailer is actually in the movie’s teaser section). Beyond that, Shia LaBeouf, playing Indy’s greaser sidekick, and Ray Winstone, taking up a kind of mix of the Sallah and Belloq characters, have joined the cast. Little is known about the plot except that it takes place in 1957 and Indy is trying to either get the Crystal Skull back from or keep the Crystal Skull away from the Russians, led by Cate Blanchett. Here is a fun Q&A with Lucas and Spielberg to whet your whistle. Directed by Steven Spielberg; Written by David Koepp; Story by George Lucas, Jeff Nathanson; Music by John Williams. It opens on May 22nd and will make a billion-trillion dollars.

Glurg, Glurg, Glurg

Iron Man, Marvel’s alcoholic superhero with a heart of gold entry, is up next (well, first on the calender). Robert Downy Jr. as Tony Stark is a good start, actually kind of brilliant casting, but my problem is that it looks too slick and “cool” for a comic book movie. It’s shiny. Even the leather-injected X-Men movies weren’t this shiny. It’s taking the movie out of the realm of the geeks and making it so cool people don’t feel like they have to take a shower after leaving the theater, and I’m not a big fan of that. Stan Lee’s obligatory cameo isn’t enough of a geek shout out anymore for me. But, that’s just me. And courting me and my ilk is surely not the way to make profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars, as there are only about 5 of us. The rest of the geeks want to be associated with the cool.
The big question, filmically speaking, I think, is, “can Iron Man function as a main character?” I don’t know. I like him best in the comics when he is with Cap with Spider-man, and obviously you can’t do crossovers because of how Marvel split up their universe. I fell for Spider-man the first time I saw him web-fly across the city, and maybe I still feel burnt by that fact and don’t want to be burned again by seeing Iron Man fly and turning into a 10 year old who can’t appreciate a good yet right there in the theater. I probably will, though. I probably will. Directed by Jon Favreau; Written by like 9 different people; Music by Ramin Djawadi. Opens May 2nd.

Oh, Trixie, Don’t be Such a Girl

There are countless ways to screw Speed Racer up. After the second and third Matrix installments, you’d have to bet on the Wachowski Brothers (or is it “siblings” now?) handily finding a few of those ways. But, if they found any, they didn’t put them in any of the the trailers. I groaned when I heard this was being adapted (literally, out loud). Even though it was a little before my time as a kid, it went into heavy replay on Mtv and Cartoon Network in the early 90s and I had a VHS collection of all 52 episodes taped off of TV. The show is 99.999% sensational 60s lameness, and all — ALL — of the plots are horribly silly and the characters, with their pet monkeys and helicopters, are barely able to exist as cartoons, let alone as real people. It will be one hell of a feat if it can actually be pulled off, but that still remains to be seen. They went out of their way to get the rights to the theme song and sound effects used in the original cartoon, and I would be surprised if they didn’t try some sort of splashy live-action version of the cartoon’s opening sequence. All of the casting seems to be incredibly astute, including Christina Ricci as Trixie and John Goodman as Pops Racer, but especially Emile Hirsch as Speed.
So, believe it or not, and I really can’t, aside from Wall*E, this is the big summer movie I’m looking forward to the most right now. Written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski; Music by Michael Giacchino. Opens May 9.

Two Books Down, Five to Go

The world’s second-most-famous seven book series returns this year in it’s second installment - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian comes just a year and a half on the heels of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, pretty quick for such an effects heavy sequel. The timing is good, as those child actors tend to age on you (except Michael J. Fox, who was actually 76 years of age when filming BTTF III), and once you grow up they throw you out of the garden of Narnia, like some fantasy version of Menudo.

This movie features a bit more for older audiences this time - as well as the still-quite-young Pevensie children, returning to a sort of alternate 1985 version of Narnia, girls not old enough to get into Forgetting Sarah Marshall to see Big Jason Segal’s …um, acting… can get hot and bothered over a potential (and legal, note for those who are old enough for R-rated movies) heartthrob in the person of Prince Caspian himself, Ben Barnes, last of the rightful kings (oh, that old yarn). Eddie Izzard also provides the voice of Reepicheep, ‘Chief Mouse’ and a fierce warrior on Caspian’s side, and sadly there are people out there whose loins just quivered at the mention of Eddie Izzard (what’s wrong with you people?).
Once again the children must call forward the people of Narnia in their LARP-meets-furries glory, to throw down the menace of the Telmarine King Miraz, who has usurped the crown of Narnia. Expect solid-to-middling CGI and a few fun bashes to the head with the morals of C.S. Lewis’s Christian allegories that are almost as good as Lord of the Rings. Directed by Andrew Adamson; Written by C.S. Lewis, Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely; Music by Harry Gregson-Williams. Hits theaters on May 16th.

Next: May’s counter programming

(Thanks to Amy for writing the skeleton of the Narnia preview. I’m sure she is getting ready to hit me with a cricket bat for adding so many bad jokes into it. She’ll be back later in the summer preview, keep an eye out.)