Jul 02 2009
2009 Summer Movie Halftime Report
If you consider the summer movie season to be May through August (and for the purposes of this article, we will), we’re at the halfway point for this summer’s movie releases. Maybe it’s my terrible short term memory, but the summer of 2009 is one of the most disappointing summers I can remember in terms of quality movies.
I’m not necessarily saying that every movie released is bad, but the movies for which I had high expectations have for the most part been horrible. Even worse, it seems as though the bad movies are making boatloads of cash, meaning that summer blockbusters will continue to suck. And spare me the “they’re supposed to be mindless fun” argument; summer movies can be fun and actually good, too. Still, we’re only at the halfway point, and there are definitely several movies (Public Enemies, Bruno, and Harry Potter, for example) that I’m still looking forward to. I’m not going to touch on every movie released so far this summer, just the notables. Keep reading for the 2009 Summer Movie Halftime Report.
Alright, let’s get right to it. The summer blockbusters so far – except for one – have SUCKED. They weren’t kind of meh, they weren’t average, they SUCKED. I’ll start with the blockbusters.
Watchmen
I don’t care if it was faithful to the graphic novel (it sort of was) or if overrated, Mr. Style-Over-Substance Zack Snyder did as good a job as anyone could have with the source material, Watchmen was a cardboard bore. Aside from the opening credits, nothing from the marathon of a film was particularly memorable. I doubt I’d ever want to watch it again.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
A “real” director in Gavin Hood and the exploration of one of comics’ most tortured, complex, and charismatic characters has to make for a good movie, right? No chance. I thought Wolverine was the worst movie of the summer, and unfortunately, as I’ll point out below, I was wrong. Nevertheless, Gavin Hood and Hugh Jackman pressed their asses together and unleashed a steaming pile of feces on Wolverine, Deadpool, and logic.
Terminator: Salvation
I was more pumped for this than any other movie this summer. Bale seemed to have taken the role of John Connor seriously, and McG said all the right things in interviews about the Terminator mythology and how this was going to be more than just an action movie. Either he didn’t know what he was talking about, or he flat out lied. This movie was laughably bad, especially Skynet’s revelation of its plan to Marcus – thanks for spoon-feeding your audience, McG. I saw a midnight showing of this movie, and I’ve never felt so owned in my life. What a waste.
Transformers 2
Ladies and gentlemen, your first half summer 2009 worst movie. By a landslide. I love all the Bay fanboys who try to defend this movie. “It’s supposed to be stupid fun! It’s supposed to be hot Megan Fox and giant robots killing each other!” It wasn’t fun, it was boring and aimed at eight-year-olds. What was the purpose of Sam’s dogs humping each other? That’s funny? And even if you sit through this visual diarrhea for the action scenes, so what? Was the action really that much better than it was in the first movie? And good lord, could anybody tell what was going on? I think I saw about seven Megatrons before I had a seizure. Thankfully, I came to just in time to see John Turturo’s Sector 7 g-string. Thank god they carried that hilarious goof over from the first film. THERE IS NO DEFENDING THIS MOVIE, IT IS AN ABOMINATION.
Onto the others…
Year One
I didn’t see it, but every single person who did said it sucked.
Land of the Lost
Ditto.
This article isn’t all negative. There were some movies that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many, and they weren’t movies I was really, really looking forward to (which may be my own fault). Let’s get to those.
Star Trek
Good lord was this a good movie. Not Dark Knight good, but pretty close. I had never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life, and after this film, I think I want to start watching some old episodes. Great action, great story, and totally rewatchable. You see, Michael Bay? Movies can have lots of explosions, pretty actors, and still employ things like, uh, I don’t know, cohesion and plot. Star Trek more than lived up to the hype and so far, is the movie of summer 2009. I can’t wait for the sequel.
Up
I can’t really rely on Pixar to make or break my summer in terms of movies, but they did it again. Up was incredible. I think it may have actually been a bit too heavy for kids (the wife can’t have kids and dies? Wow), but it was a touching, ORIGINAL story with breathtaking animation. Pixar : Dreamworks :: Dogs : Cats. Pixar is definitely going to get a movie nominated for Best Picture in the very near future, especially with the Academy expanding the number of nominees.
The Hangover
Todd Phillips’ answer to the Apatow monopoly was even funnier than anticipated. Sure, it’s tough to not be funny when your story is about a bunch of guys on a bachelor party in Vegas, but seeing as how bad so many movies are these days, it was great to see an R-rated comedy live up to the hype.
Moon
Not the greatest sci-fi flick, but definitely one of the best I’ve seen in awhile. If I had to describe this movie in one word, it’d be “refreshing.”
And for the movie I really, really want to finish:
Drag Me to Hell
I saw the first 20 minutes of Drag Me to Hell and I was really digging it (I like Sam Raimi’s tongue-in-cheek silly horror style a lot), but my friend and I had to leave because all the dickheads in the theater wouldn’t shut up or turn off their phones. We left the theater and got our money back. Never, ever see a movie in Times Square. The “people” who attend those theaters are uncivilized and inconsiderate.
Really, I think we’re at the point where theaters should have set rules in place as to what’s acceptable. Not universal rules for every theater; each theater can make its own rules. And if you break the rules, ushers escort you out. I would travel far and away to see movies at the theater with the strictest rules.
And by the way, texting during a movie isn’t as bad as talking on the phone, obviously, but it’s incredibly distracting and rude. People can’t put their phones away for two hours? Amazing.
So there you have it: the 2009 Summer Movie Halftime Report. I’m hoping that the second half of the summer will be much better; it’s tough to imagine it being much worse.
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- A Look at Ten Awesome Summer Vacation Movies
Your introduction seems to be a bit exaggerated. You say all but one movie sucked yet applaud at least four. You say this is on par to be the worst movie summer but all the previous summers had their share of hits and misses. You say watchmen wasn’t very memorable and Snider is overrated. The man has directed two adaptations and a horror remake that are faithful to the original and that’s very rare in Hollywood and deserving of applause. I never read the graphic novel and I can visualize every scene in the movie. Either way I am looking forward to hear what you have to say on the summer’s second half.
@tony
All but one of the “blockbusters” sucked; Star Trek was the good one. Wolverine, Watchmen, and Terminator were terrible. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear. My bad.
My point is, really, that there were a few movies in particular (Terminator Salvation, Wolverine, and Watchmen) that could have been INCREDIBLE, and not only were they below average, they were BAD. So to me, the summer lineup has been incredibly disappointing. I acknowledge it may be my own fault for gettinf fired up about movies that I should have known would suck.
As far as the movies I applauded, well, you pretty much know what you’re getting with Pixar, so no surprise with up. Moon was good, not great, and Hangover was hilarious, but that certainly can’t redeem summer 2009.
And as for Snyder, I respectfully disagree. Visually, his adaptations were great, but there’s no soul, no substance to anything he does. Maybe accuracy isn’t always the best thing – the story was presented in a certain medium to begin with for a reason. 300 was awful – it was like a video game, with the “coolest” parts in slow motion. I didn’t give a shit about the Spartans when they died – not because I knew they would, but because they were all interchangeable, cardboard caricatures.
Dawn of the Dead was pretty awesome, though. I’ll concede that.
I do appreciate you reading and your comment. Let’s hope the second half of the summer is better. I think it will be.
Watchmen was not a summer movie, by your own standard of May-Aug. It came out in early March
Drag Me to Hell was actually my biggest disappointment this summer. Cardboard Raimi. Really. And so many people sing its praises that I wonder whether I’m not stuck in some kind of reality distortion field. But there were 8, that’s right, 8 prominent placement ads in this film. It was an hour and a half of soul-dead commercial fluff and 30 of Raimi flair. Not a stellar return to form if you ask me.
@ Kenneth Silver
That is disappointing to hear. Like I said, I only saw the first 20 minutes or so. Still, it was enough to pull me in. I still plan on seeing the rest of the movie, so I hope I end up liking it better than you did.
@ Mel
Whoops! Quite an oversight on my part. Does it count if the lingering aftertaste was still present in May?
I loved Watchmen. Now, I didn’t read the graphic novel. I do know that this has been called the most faithful adaptation of all time and from watching Snyder’s podcasts that he was insanely attached to the details of getting things right. Every backdrop had to have the exact right color scheme that the novel had, for god sake. I was pulled in by the story. It interested me seeing someone lose humanity completely. The whole “Destroy some to save the majority” thing was a cool plot in my opinion. I know I walked out of that movie in awe. Obviously you do not agree but I really did enjoy it.
Terminator… my god. Rise of the Machines was, for the most part, the exact same movie as T2. The plot was almost exactly the same, right? Even the way they showed things were the same (there’s a good comparison out there that I’ll try to find). And yet… Salvation managed to be more predictable than freaking T3. How the hell do you manage that?
Transformers wasn’t a good movie. But I enjoyed the hell out of it. After a long year of college, I got to come home and get my wisdom teeth pulled. The first time I left the house after getting them out was to go see this film and it was just fun as hell for me. Definitely not worth seeing it again until the DVD/Torrent comes out for it but… it was a good time for me.
Star Trek and The Hangover I saw three times each I enjoyed them so much. Saw The Hangover the third time last night and I walked out of there with my cheeks sore from laughing so damn much.
Land of the Lost looked like crap. I’m willing to give it a shot though because it has Danny McBride. Year One looks decent, maybe.
Drag Me To Hell didn’t interest me at all.
UP was just… astoundingly good. It somehow topped WALL-E. Not even sure how it did that. And is it a testament to how amazing Pixar is that you can only compare their movies to other Pixar movies?
@ Josh
You’re right about T3 being just like T2, but with a dead Sarah Connor and a new model of Terminator. The T-X? Skynet would name its newest model the T-X? Are they trying to market it? Ugh.
I think a lot of people would disagree with us, but whatever: I, too, though Up was better than WALL-E. And WALL-E was outstanding.
I’ve seen The Hangover twice, and I liked it much more the second time. I would see it a third; it’s that funny.
As for Transformers, I can understand the circumstances. And as for Watchmen, I admittedly may be too hard on that movie. I think I may like it more as time passes. But really, graphic novel comparisons or not, I was so disappointed. I am glad you liked it, though.
Thanks for reading.
Your good movies were great. I LOVED Star Trek, and I too have never seen a single episode/movie from them. My mom loved the series growing up, but like I said, I hadn’t seen it. I mainly wanted to see it because I love JJ Abrams (Alias is one of my fav TV shows of all time), and I knew he could pull off a big movie like Star Trek and make it watchable AND understandable. My first IMAX movie, too.
UP was great, too. But I agree that it was kinda too much for younger kids. At the theater, there were about 3 kids with their mom behind us and were crying and saying, “I thought you said this was supposed to be funny!” in the first 10 minutes of the movie. I felt bad for the kids! I’m 22 and was weeping. Tough stuff from Dreamworks.
The Hangover was just hilarious. I actually thought the funniest part was the end credits with the pictures. But Galifinakis pronouncing “re-TARD” was a close-second.
I luckily have missed out on the shitty blockbuster movie portion. Maybe I have a knack for avoiding train wreck movies, but it is nice to watch a movie where you can “turn your brain off”. But I personally like leaving a movie in which I can actually talk about/quote for a long time after viewing it. I really want to see Moon (Sam Rockwell is badass), but it is hard to find a location to see it.
@Laura: Agreed. There’s 4 must see sci fi films this year: Star Trek, Moon, District 9, and Avatar. Sadly, Moon and District 9 are unlikely to see a wide release meaning the large majority of people won’t be able to see them. =\
@Madison: I’m unsure of who actually owns and operates this site but is there any change we could see something done about how badly it’s coded? Such a simple layout should not cause my MacBook to jump 30F in temp and make it impossible to scroll smoothly. I love this site but the coding issues make me not want to visit. That and the horrible commenting system. You guys should consider something like Disqus or IntenseDebate if you’re using WordPress (which I believe you are though I’m not sure). Either way, good article minus the Watchmen stuff. lol
@ Laura
If you like sci-fi and also Sam Rockwell, definitely see Moon. I didn’t love it at first, but it really seemed to resonate afterwards. I think I want to see it again, actually.
@ Josh
I am really excited for District 9, and I don’t know if my expectations could be any higher for Avatar.
As for the site, I am just a lowly writer. Nattyb runs the site and takes care of all the tech stuff. You seem to know what you’re talking about (I am clueless when it comes to this stuff) and we do indeed use WordPress. If you have any suggestions, just go to the “Contact” page and email Nattyb. I am sure they will be appreciated.
Also, what is wrong with the commenting system? Let me know; maybe we can make some changes.
Thanks a lot for reading.
The comment system lacks replies. That’s a must-need feature nowadays. It’s archaic. No way to track your messages, no way to see where you posted. No way to know if someone replied to you. I will contact Nattyb though. Thanks.
I couldn’t expect less from JJ Abrams with Star Trek..just look at Alias. Amazing and now I understand the Trekkies when I didn’t have NO background knowledge of the series. Fell in love with Spock. I know total geek.
The Hangover was a real surprise. Actually, a relief after seeing Transformers 2. See no blinding, expensive explosions were needed to make agood film.
I did think Drag Me To Hell was good. Not Army of Darkeness good, but refreshing from the crappy horror movies coming out lately. A simple plot with some good acting and directing. (I’m obviously not lookkng forward to Sorority Row). Some guys behind me were texting and the lights were distracting. Thankfully the usher came in and warned them not to. But then again I live in deep south TX.
@ karolina
I finally ended up seeing Drag Me To Hell, uninterrupted. I thought it was great. Like you said, not Army of Darkness great, but I was entertained throughout.
[...] far as movies go, the summer is gone. Back in the beginning July, I wrote about the state of the the first half of 2009’s summer movies. Overall, it was pretty disappointing. Aside from Drag Me to Hell, Up, and Star Trek, there [...]