This is not a movie summer to remember. At least not for the right reasons.
Just when people needed escapist distraction from grim reality more than ever, Hollywood has delivered the worst blockbuster summer in living memory, churning out one wretched sequel after another and a miserable lack of fun, feel-good fare.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Alice Through The Looking Glass, Now You See Me 2, Independence Day 2—Hollywood force-fed audiences (or tried to; they largely stayed away) some of the least-clamored-for sequels in history. Meanwhile, normally sure-fire players at the Hollywood table like Steven Spielberg stumbled with their bets.
The BFG was a surprise misstep for the director who seemed uncomfortable handling another artist’s voice and vision (Roald Dahl), and failed to conjure up anything like the same sense of wonder and emotion as his other movie about an unlikely friendship, E.T.
BOX OFFICE MELT: Summer Flops, Fading Franchises Plague Hollywood… https://t.co/C3yvJFyqW4
— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) July 26, 2016
Another admired director, Paul Greengrass, went through the motions efficiently with Jason Bourne, but the picture felt like a studio-dictated exercise in replicating earlier success—a facsimile of been-there-done-that brooding Bourne action with a “privacy versus freedom” political plot that felt passé.
Aside from Marvel, the comic-book movies were a bust. Batman vs Superman was supposed to whet appetites for the summer, but is up there with the most boring blockbusters ever made, a grimly portentous, incoherent calamity that sucked all the fun and excitement out of America’s two most iconic superheroes.
D.C Comics scored another mega-dud with Suicide Squad. Yes, I know it enjoyed a decent opening weekend, but the movie is a garish parade of freaks that tries achingly to be cool and edgy but succeeds only in being a wearying nihilistic mess. As for X-Men: Apocalypse, that was a tiresome rehash of familiar storylines with a blizzard of superfluous characters.
So thank you, Marvel for a brief ray of early summer sun with Captain America: Civil War, a witty, pitch-perfect popcorn movie that cleverly juggled an ensemble of appealing characters with a topical and exciting story full of surprises.
Marvel make it look easy which, of course, it isn’t, as evidenced by the swathe of summer stinkers, a curse of Hollywood’s chronic aversion to originality (blame the increasing importance of China and international markets).
When not clogging up the multiplexes with sequels, the studios attempted reboots and franchise launches, which all fizzled. The Legend Of Tarzan was a plodding, unimaginative adventure showcasing the dullest hero of the summer in the form of Alexander Skarsgard’s Tarzan (the bare-chested bore made it feel like a two-hour- long deodorant commercial).
The only lasting controversy about the all-female Ghostbusters reboot was how utterly ordinary it was, an unimaginative retread of the original that failed to develop any personality or point of its own.
A pity director Paul Feig couldn’t conjure any decent laughs but then it’s been a woeful summer for comedies. Neighbors 2 shows how hard it is for comedy lightning to strike twice, while Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates feels like a hangover from 2005—Wedding Crashers meets Superbad. Bad Moms showed some spirit, but was too hit and miss to get a Bridesmaids-style bandwagon rolling.
U.S. box office adjusted for inflation: Ghostbusters series pic.twitter.com/TsB9noLbzs
— murphy78 (@enjoy_murph) July 27, 2016
Even animation, which delivered the one original smash hit in The Secret Life of Pets, was something of a letdown, with nothing to match the craft and clever storytelling of March’s Zootopia. At least …Pets made good money and was lively and funny, but it didn’t come close to being a classic, while Finding Dory, also a smash hit, was nowhere near in the same league-under-sea as Finding Nemo.
The summer isn’t done with disappointments either. Word on director Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur remake with Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman is dire, and the $100-million movie is tracking to open as low as $14 million; yet another sword-and-sandals turkey.
You have to go back to 2003 to find a summer as creatively bankrupt. That’s when lucky punters got to see—or rather chose not to see—The Matrix Reloaded, Hulk, Gigli, Legally Blonde 3, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle Of Life, Bad Boys 2 and Daddy Day Care.
At least for all the abundance of crap there has been in the past few months, Eddie Murphy changing diapers was off the menu.
