Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2018

On the subject of The Fantastic Four, I think it's astonishing how rich and vast the subject material has been so thoroughly squandered if not outright trashed through the three movies. The Silver Surfer and arguably the Human Touch in the first two movies are the only things Fox even came remotely close to getting right. Dr. Doom has to rank in the top 3 worst realized comic characters in movie history.

 

I think Marvel Studios is acutely aware of that, and I would bet that MCU Phase 4 (following Avengers 4 next summer) could well retire the other characters for awhile while rebooting Fantastic Four and maybe having Spiderman as a guest star. There's a lot they could do -- I've heard a teenage Wolverine in the past (using an 18-year-old Hugh Jackman replacement) is one potential idea.

Uh, Wonder Woman made about $822 million last year, which is more than any of the Superman-related films did (save for the Chris Nolan Dark Knight films). There's clearly a big audience for female-hero films. And I would bet the new Wonder Woman 1984 film will do very well. How they're gonna bring back Chris Pine, I have no idea. Evil twin? Clone? Distant relative? Mysterious lookalike? Flashback? Alien replicant? Beamed down from Star Trek? Who knows?

 

when they say they will bring back Pine could it just not be a flashback? Like they have said Shane is coming back to Walking Dead and that has to be a flashback.

 

Ant Man and the Wasp will do just fine. The first film was excellent and this will build on that. It's no Infinity War and won't take billions but they know that and are not expecting it.

Captain Marvel will be huge though. Firstly the MCU is really ready for its first female led film and that will be a factor and it's will also act as a prequel to IW2 as she will be central to defeating Thanos.

bookmark this page and we'll come back and see I'm right in 9 months.

as for the future, Disney have barely scratched the surface of the material they have to make Marvel films. I'm looking forward to many great films for decades to come.

if you don't understand why these films will be popular for years to come go and read some Norse mythology or Greek myths. Same thing and a universal fascination.

 

Why can't Pine just be the original character's grandson?

No, the 2017 movie didn't say Steve had kids - but it didn't say he didn't have 'em, either!

 

Keep it in the family eh
DC pushing the boundaries!

 

That's actually what they did for the TV show. Its 1st season is set in the 40s and the rest of the shows are in the 70s, so they just changed "Steve" to "Steve Jr."!

Not saying that's what they'll do NOW, of course, but it's obviously an option!

 

The leaked on-set/production photo shows Pine in 1980's period clothing.

 

These big-budget blockbusters are all roller coaster rides more than they're actual cinema, so of course the studios are going to gravitate toward outlandish comic book adventures, since comics were essentially storyboards for that kind of adventure for the last 50+ years. It's really easy for even the dumbest I-only-got-this-job-because-my-cousin-owns-10%-of-the-studio Hollywood executives to see how a comic book will convert into a movie. They don't even have to read, just look at the pictures!

 

Don't all movies begin as comic books? That is, as storyboards that tell everyone what to build, paint, illuminate, say and photograph?

 

If only comic book movies were a little more carefully planned out that way. It's almost as if CGI removes the need for intricate staging and planning. They can all just throw it together post-production.

 

Pretty much, most large blockbusters these days are entirely storyboarded before filming begins.

 

i don't agree with that. The genius of Marvel is how they have taken the original source material and changed and adapted it, sometimes quite significantly, to create a film that makes sense.

something like Watchmen falls short as it is literally a page by page conversion of the book. I like it but it would have been better if they had adapted it more to the screen.

it is not as easy as taking a comic book and making that the storyboards. It needs good writers and directors to bring it to life. The ones that are bad is when they just put the comic on screen.

 

why not a threat so threatening (the threateningiest threat ever) that it demands the peeps from Marvel and DC joining forces, along with the gang from Peanuts, Crocket and Tubbs, the horn section from Chicago, the Full House cast, and even the Mystery Men?

 

Just thought I'd post my friend's review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

 

Teleprompters are a good thing!

 

I think they thought that in the making of Solo, too, and that didn't quite work out. Story and character are more important than anything else.

I agree, only I would go a step further and say that they also cast actors and created characters that audiences could connect with and empathize with -- even the villains -- and I think this is what put them well ahead of their competitors in the action/adventure arena.

 

Only if DC were so lucky to have a studio behind them that knows what they’re doing.

 

The incredible success of Marvel on film kinda surprises me, even though I was a Marvel teenager. The Marvel superheroes aren't as iconic as either Batman or Superman. Only Spider-Man came close.

And many of the Marvel characters are ensemble members, who existed primarily in team comics like AVENGERS, X-MEN and FANTASTIC FOUR. This would seem to be a disadvantage, as the Marvel filmmakers had to incorporate more and more characters who each have their own superpowers, origin stories and fatal weaknesses that have to be summarized in a two-hour movie.

While reasonably faithful, I didn't much like the X-Men or Fantastic Four movies. Kid stuff, I thought, so there's really no redeeming it without going down the Christopher Nolan frowny-face path. So I was surprised how well the Avengers ensemble films came off. I would not have guessed they could find another level to take these films to, but they did. They somehow removed the essential silliness from the concepts without killing the fun.

 

Marvel was in the right place at the right time with the first Iron Man. As DC/Warner went darker and darker with their superhero films, Marvel delivered easily-digestible superhero adventures. Then they got bought out by Disney and put out The Avengers, which seems to have captured the zeitgeist for including so many superheroes in one film. Because it wasn't like Marvel was delivering hit after hit, some of those early Marvel films like Iron Man 2 are nearly unwatchable even if you enjoy superheroes. But they had a vision for a shared universe and stuck with it despite some misses, which is rare in today's Hollywood.

 

There is that one little problem... bad taste and bad creative choices.

 

Note that those are Fox movies, not Marvel Studios per se. Marvel has cooperated for the last couple of films a little bit, but so far there's no crossovers between the two studios. Fox makes the creative decisions on the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Wolverine, and Deadpool characters. In fact, Fox prevents Disney/Marvel from even using the word "mutant" in their films and TV series. If Disney buys Fox, this problem will go away.

 

Not necessarily box-office hits but here are what The Guardian considers to be the best movies of 2018:

Best films of 2018 so far

 

i watched Incredibles 2 last night in 3D. i enjoyed it very much. it was as fun as i hoped it would be and i thought Baby Jack Jack pretty much stole the show.

 

Some of those movies on that list opened in 2017. I wonder what criteria they used to include them as 2018 movies?