May
The "summer season" starts off with The Avengers on May 4th. I've enjoyed the Avengers set up movies, which include Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America. Marvel's trying something interesting here, by bringing comic book continuity to the big screen. You won't need to have seen all the original movies to understand Avengers' plot, but you might get more out of it. I'm also reasonably certain that only the characters who haven't got their own films will get much in the way of introduction, since there just isn't time to do more than gloss over what we learned about the Big Four over five films.
The Avengers (5/4)
The rest of May doesn't look too promising. It includes a couple of movies that shouldn't exist: Battleship and Men in Black III, a Sascha Baron-Cohen comedy, The Dictator, that might be funny but might suck, and Dark Shadows, an update of the classic horror soap opera that I've never actually seen. I could be convinced by reviews or word of mouth to see some of those, but so far, I'm not optimistic.
June has more movies that I'm unsure about. Prometheus is Ridley Scott returning to the universe of Alien, with what was originally called a prequel and now is not? I don't know. There's also Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter which means that the second big "classic horror fusion" book made it to theaters before the trope starter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies did. Finally, there's GI Joe: Retaliation, which does a lot to earn my approval by apparently executing most of the original cast to do an in-continuity reboot. Granted, trailers can deceive, but somehow this doesn't actually look as bad as the first one.
GI Joe: Retaliation (6/29)
July has two movies of note. The first is the reboot of the Spider-Man films, The Amazing Spider-Man. This one gives me the same vibe that the Ang Lee Hulk did. It feels like they're trying to add depth and a character study to a superhero that might be better served without one. Look at the trailer to see what I mean.
The Amazing Spider-Man (7/3)
Its the scenes on the edges, things like making Peter's parents maybe victims of some kind of conspiracy, or the idea that Peter himself may have been engineered to become what he is. That sort of thing calls to mind the whole "Hulk as engineered by his crazy father" thing that was in Hulk. Granted, the fact that Hulk failed to do what it set out to doesn't mean you shouldn't try to be something greater than just a superhero action film, as exemplified by the other big film in July...
The Dark Knight Rises (7/20)
The conclusion to the Nolan-verse Batman trilogy brings in Bane and Catwoman to try and fill the shoes of Heath Ledger's Joker. I'm not sure it'll work, since Ledger's performance is what elevated The Dark Knight so far above Batman Begins, but with Ledger's death, the only choices were to re-cast the Joker or omit him from the film entirely, and I guess I can't argue with this decision. The Dark Knight was so well done that I'll see The Dark Knight Rises pretty much regardless of the reviews, since I want to see how it ends and to say goodbye to the Nolan/Bale version of the character. I imagine the next time we see the Bat, he'll be either be setting up or just flat out be in some kind of Justice League movie, especially if The Avengers does as well as most people expect it to.
August has three films that might, or might not, be worth watching. The first is The Bourne Legacy. Like GI Joe: Retaliation, this is an in-continuity reboot where they feature the same universe but without Matt Damon's Jason Bourne. Legacy follows another agent from the same conditioning program. A lot will depend on Jeremy Renner's performance as the new spy. The only thing I've seen Renner in so far was the two minutes he was in Thor as an uncredited Hawkeye. Of course, by the time Bourne Legacy hits the theaters, I'll have seen him in The Avengers and should have a better idea what I'm getting.
The second maybe in August comes out the same day as Legacy, and that's Total Recall. From what I gather, the new Total Recall will be closer to the original Philip K. Dick short story "We'll Remember it for you Wholesale." Given that the 1990 Total Recall was a straight up action flick, anything that brings us closer to the original short story and its examination of the nature of memory is fine by me.
Finally, a couple of weeks later we'll be getting The Expendables 2. Considering that I haven't gotten aroun to watching The Expendables in the first place, I'm really throwing the sequel onto the pile pro forma. Maybe I'll get around to watching the first one on Netflix or something which will encourage me to watch the second. We'll see.
Of course, the one movie I really want to see in 2012 isn't a summer blockbuster at all. The one I'm most looking forward to is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which hits theaters in December of 2012. Back to Middle Earth and Peter Jackson!
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12/14)
I can't wait!
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