My predictions for 2009 movies

I’ve written a surprising (for me) amount of stuff about movies on this site. Far more than I would’ve initially anticipated. I think it’s largely due to the fact that there have been so many sci-fi related movies lately announced by Hollywood. I’ve also noticed that Hollywood has amply demonstrated its capacity to use any material, no matter how shallow, as a vehicle for film making…as long as it can turn a buck.

With that trend in mind, I think it has become easier for the average movie consumer to decide pretty quickly what’s going to be schlock and what’s going to be good. A few movie stills or even the initial movie trailer can tell you right off how seriously the movie studio is taking that movie. I think it was pretty obvious to guess, for example, that Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li was going to be bad. I pretty much called it before the movie was released. The trailer looked really bad; nothing like what you imagined that Street Fighter world to look like. Everyone was so dirty, so gritty. And you can probably take that as an over-reaction of the film’s producers to the 1994 Street Fighter film that was so full of camp. It’s unsurprising to me that Street Fighter has a 0% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes (as of this writing).

Any sci-fi film has to do two things to ensure it can attract an initial audience. The film has to excite you at a visceral level. This doesn’t mean that the trailer should overwhelm you with lots of overdone special effects. The Star Wars prequels are unfortunately a good example of what happens to a film franchise that emphasizes special effects over a good script and acting. Second, the film has to have the earmarks of a good and serious production effort. That means hiring a good director, a good screenwriter, having notable stars and overall giving off the impression that the original work will be taken seriously and not as a flimsy means to sell movie-related merchandise.

So how do I think the major sci-fi movies of this year are going to do?  Well, here’s my thoughts on them.

Star Trek

This film will do well. Seriously. It will garner good critical reviews and make a killing at the box office. The old franchise needed a reboot and was increasingly going stale. It was a formula that worked with the Batman movie franchise and it will work here. It doesn’t hurt that the film is being helmed by JJ Abrams, who’s no stranger to filming untraditional films (he directed Cloverfield). The trailers look impressive and the combination of drama and the special effects really build anticipation for this movie. I will say that this film will be the runaway blockbuster hit of 2009.

Trailer for Star Trek (this one has Leonard Nimoy in it):

Watchmen

Watchmen will also do well. While it would’ve been easy to make this film campy, the producers are clearly taking this film and its material seriously. One of the biggest mistakes that I’ve seen in superhero films is that they deemphasize the story and focus too much on the special effects and the main character. That’s the wrong approach. Iron Man, for example, was a good story that just happen to involve a super hero. Tony Stark was as interesting outside his armor as he was in it.  The Iron Man movie would still be a good movie even if it only generically involved a rich and spoiled scientist who grows a conscience and uses his technical know-how to fight crime.The film would’ve worked even without the superhero.

The Watchmen will succeed even though the characters are unknown and even though the Watchmen franchise is unfamiliar to most of the viewing audience. There are opinions that certainly disagree with me; however, I stand by my statement.

The story by Alan Moore is a really good one, deconstructing superheroes as much as he builds them up. Further, the movie is rated R, another sign that the producers want to stay true to the material without watering it down.While I don’t think the Watchmen will do as well as Star Trek, I think it will get better critical reviews. It will still be a very profitable film, and deservedly so.

Watchmen trailer:

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

This movie will fail. I’ve pretty much have called that here. There’s a number of reasons why, and I talked about most of them in my earlier post about this movie. After watching the trailer, my opinion remains unchanged. Sure, Snake Eyes played by Ray Park is sure to attract his share of fanboys who loved his work in the Phantom Menace and the X-Men series. And I also acknowledge that Sienna Miller looks surprisingly good as the Baroness.

However, the main reason that this movie will fail is that the underlying material is weak. There just isn’t enough in the GI Joe comic books or the 1980s cartoon series to warrant a movie. Further, the world has changed. No one believes that terrorists can be fought using conventional forces like the Joes are in both the comic book and the cartoon. And retconning the Joes into a covert special ops force isn’t going to salvage the film’s credibility.

While this film won’t do as badly as Street Fighter, it won’t make back the gobs of money they’ve spent making and marketing it. I also think the critics won’t be kind.

GI Joe trailer:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

This film won’t be as good as the first one. Sure, it will make money, but overall, the film will be disappointing on several levels. One of the biggest draws of the first film was seeing how they were going to depict the Transformers. Some of the special effects in the first film were spectacular and largely covered over the fact that the film’s story wasn’t really that good.

Seeing the Transformers for a second time will be passe. Sure, you’re going to be impressed by the special effects, but that wow factor from the first film, where you were dying to see what the Transformers looked like, won’t be there. Megan Fox will be a draw only from the standpoint that she’s attractive eye candy, but don’t expect great acting or even the gratuitous stuff you can see in Maxim magazine. Hopefully, I’m not dashing your hopes for an examination scene involving a captured Megan Fox and a Decepticon with metallic tentacles. Sorry, but that just won’t happen.

Bottom line: the second Transformers will do well in the box office but will not come close to doing as well as the first.

Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen trailer:

X-Men: Origins

This film is probably the toughest one to call. I think it was a good idea to take the best part of the X-Men film franchise, Wolverine, and insert him into his own film. The origin of Wolverine has received quite of bit of coverage in the comic world the last few years and settles a lot of the questions many fans had about the character. The film looks like they are crossing concepts from the Ultimate X-Men with the Origin comic series.

Now for the bad. This film just doesn’t excite me. Maybe because it’s the fourth film in a franchise that is growing a little tired. There’s also a backlash from the third film where they killed off the Cyclops, Jean Grey and Charles Xavier. If you can so casually kill off three main characters of the comic franchise, chances are you don’t respect the underlying material that much. Mind you that I’m not advocating that you should religiously follow the source material every time, but I do wonder if this film is truly a film about Wolverine or a film that has a character that shares many characteristics of Wolverine but is ultimately just a pretender.

I think the film will do moderately well, largely because the legion of X-Men fans will hope that this film will redeem the major character deaths in the third film. I predict that that they’ll be disappointed.

X-Men: Origins trailer

Conclusion

Why am I so confident in my predictions? Largely because I have confidence in my instinct for such things and Hollywood has made it very easy to tell the difference between a project that loves the underlying material (think Lord of the Rings) and one that doesn’t (think Dungeon Siege).  After these movies have aired, I promise to come back and tally up a scorecard about how I did.