Action films (they will be full of color and general connections to the current state of political affairs).
Children's films from the "lame" production companies (usually Dreamworks and whoever put out Hoodwinked and Gnomeo and Juliet).
Sequels (self-explanatory unless you're an idiot).
I'm addressing specifically sequels since this summer, movies have covered all three. Cars 2, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Final Destination 5, Conan the Barbarian 3d, Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (seriously, this is happening).
Yeah that's Jessica Alba, the kiss of death with any film but that's another post.
Every summer, everybody complains. But the complaints are never as loud as when they're lodged against sequels. And the complaints are understandable. "It's the same plot as before", "They're not even trying,", "they're just repackaging the same movie for idiots". Yeah, that's all pretty annoying but it's all bullshit because every movie is a repackage. In a way, the studios are being more honest with us when they spit out a sequel.
Instead of giving us "new" movies that are repackages, the studio is saying "Look, let's be honest. We know you don't want the same thing you had before but we also know you'll bitch like an in-house soccer team promised pizza after a game but getting a ride home instead if we try to throw a provocative, emotionally-charged film at you. But then when we do give you brilliance, you won't come and bitch all summer that you just want to enjoy yourself."
Foreign? Fuck you I've got a sunburn!
I'm as cynical as the next liberal post-ad in a shitty job. I love film and I do feel a strange fury when a friend mentions how hilarious Hangover 2 is. But I'm also not stupid.
Every person on the planet who has watched more than one movie has had the Moment. The Moment when you're watching a movie and you're moved. That doesn't mean you saw Saving Private Ryan or Naked, it just means a movie touched you in a way that nothing else has. To be honest, for me it was Royal Tenenbaums. Cliche in two ways. On one side, cliche because I'm one of those people who loves "artistic films" but can't get into "indie" public domain movies like Garden State and then on the other, a cliche because I love the public domain of "artistic films". But with all that knowledge that film, since I was fifteen, has chosen for me any other film I've seen. The only reason I haven't watched every film derivative of Royal Tenenbaums exclusively is because I started living with a film-maker who made me watch the gamut. That Moment I'm speaking of can be a stupid, fart-filled comedy or a tear jerker of a drama but it guides every selection past the Moment.
We live in a society and, as a society, we live as a group and as a group there are films that maintain huge box office gross and box gross maintains what happens to the film after it premiers. This is why we're up to number three in the Transformer series and still at one for Happy Go Lucky.
Let me break this down a little further. We all like bright colors. We all get excited by explosions. We all cry when a nice person or dog dies. We all swoon when two people who are set up as not belonging together get together. We love references to our own life in wide or tight scope. You cut all of these into a film and skirt over a human being's "bullshit sensor" and you have a winner. It doesn't need to convince you, the movie just needs to give you any decent reason to love it. Just like politics.
So let's just say, for simplicity sake, the majorities Moment is Avatar. Bright colors, the character you've fallen in love with dies, it's kind of connected to the real world. We went fucking nuts, didn't we? Most money for a film evar! This same formula, that took a bunch of giant blue people and put them in a context that vaguely related to the real world, is applied to every movie.
I give you Super 8.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpzUCA5i6zY
(BTW, the company can go fuck itself for not allowing me to embed and not allowing any images on google. If that link doesn't work just search for the fucking trailer. Asses.)
Directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Stephen Spielberg. Who else is seeing this and not thinking "E.T.! I loved that movie when I was a kid!" or even Close Encounters. The Super 8 trailers are vague for a reason the same reason E.T. trailers are vague. And we as a populace remember and we go to see it for a little of that Moment. How about Apollo 18? A film built on the urban legend that the Apollo 18 mission did happen... and they found something. BUM BUM BUUUUUM. A little of that old feeling with a little new mixed in.
So what's my point? To put it simply, again, is EVERY film that comes out in summer, whether sequel or not, is a rehash of old films and at least sequels are the most honest of the bunch. They already got you with the first one and now they want you for the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next.
Don't fake, people. You loved the first Transformer and you threw your money at the second. You were fine with taking your kids to every Spy Kids movie "for the adult humor". And, please, you like gore but not so much to make you question your own levels of squeamishness so off you go to Final Destination 5.
Complain all you want about sequels but in the end, you're just getting what you'd want anyway.
The Moment.
Josh BROLIN! I am READY Men in Black 3! Roll me.
