2013: Sequels Galore, yet Again

After the smorgasbord of great Hollywood movies I was treated to last year, with several thoroughly enjoyable films, whether they were blockbusters like The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall or The Amazing Spider-Man or awards bait like Argo, Les Miserables or Life of Pi, nearly everything out this year, at least for the first half of it, inevitably feels like warmed-up leftovers.

This is no small part owing to the fact that for yet another year in succession, the market is being flooded with sequels, prequels, and reboots.

Iron Man 3, for example, which will kick off both the U.S. summer movie season of 2013 and "phase 2" of Marvel Studios' films, which is designed to lead into the sequel to The Avengers in 2015, looks like a pretty solid action movie, but coming as it does off the heels of a movie as huge as The Avengers, it inevitably feels like an inferior product. The same may be said for Thor: The Dark World, but considering that there has only been one other solo Thor movie and considering further that TTDW is out much later this year, the feeling may have subsided by then.

People talk about Man of Steel as the next big thing having Christopher Nolan's name on it and all, but the trailer has done very little for me, personally. It's just a lot of things blowing up and a guy flying, which is not anything we haven't already seen before. Not only that, but rather than take the opportunity to introduce characters from the comics like Darkseid or Braniac, it seems that Warner Brothers have instead recycled General Zod from the 1980 sequel to the original Superman movie. Finally, people seem to forget that while Nolan's name is on the credits, it's Zack "Sucker Punch" Snyder sitting in the director's chair. The best I can feel about this film is cautiously optimistic, but again, it's not lighting my world on fire.

Twentieth Century Fox, the last of two studios that actually still have the rights to make films based on Marvel Comics independently of Marvel Studios, will be coming out with The Wolverine this July, but one wouldn't know it, looking at their marketing material, or the dearth of it. Star Hugh Jackman's series of awards nominations for his work in Les Miserables is the kind of publicity that can't be bought, and yet, all Fox has to show audiences of the upcoming film are a couple of pics of shirtless Hugh and a one-sheet poster. Not only that, but considering that a lot of the X-Men film buzz these days seems to revolve around Bryan Singer's returning to the X-Men franchise with next year's X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Wolverine seems all but forgotten. If people are as indifferent to this film as I am, Fox only has itself to blame.

Then, of course, there are other sequels/prequels flooding the market like G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Fast and Furious 6, RED 2, A Good Day to Die Hard (which is actually already in theaters), Grown-Ups 2, Monsters University and The Smurfs 2, among many others. While I'm looking forward to the Trek Sequel, I must say there is little else on the upcoming slate of films that is singing to me, save perhaps for Guillermo del Toro's giant-monsters-vs-giant-robots film, Pacific Rim. Even that film looks like Godzilla meets Transformers.

Truth be told, the film I'm most looking forward to this year is Ron Howard's Formula One epic Rush, which is actually less likely than any of the films I've mentioned to set the box-office on fire. Apart from being a Formula One fan, I can't help but be excited by a film that is actually trying to show the audience something new.