First up this summer, as it has been the last eight years, is a Marvel movie; this time a third Captain America film with Captain America: Civil War on May 6. Really Marvel Movie XII, Civil War features most of the heroes of the Marvel universe splitting up and picking sides against one and other — one side for the superheroes having to register their real identities with the government and the other side against.
The Nice Guys, out May 20, is the rare summer movie this year that’s not based on any previous work. Written and directed by Shane Black who also wrote and directed Iron Man 3 and the wonderful Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys has a private eye and a mob goon, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe respectively, tooling around Los Angeles and getting into all sorts of Shane Black themed trouble.
The third movie of the recent X-Men movie series, but really the eighth in the overall franchise, is X-Men: Apocalypse out May 27. I’m a big fan of the most recent retro X-Men movies, the first taking place in the ’60s, the second in the ’70s and this latest one in the ‘90s with some of the characters from that decade I was realllllly into comics. My only concern here is that it seems like with Apocalypse the X-Team is fighting against an all powerful villain who threatens to enslave/destroy the human race. Which sounds a lot like Avengers: Age of Ultron from last summer to me.
WarCraft, based on the fantasy role playing game of the same name, is out June 10. Fantasy seems to be one of the hottest generas today with movies like The Hobbit and TV shows like Game of Thrones being fan-favorites. Except that there’s really nothing I’ve seen from WarCraft, which is admittedly not much, that makes it seem unique, or even all that different that what’s come before.
20 years after the original comes a sequel to the sci-fi alien-invasion action film Independence Day with Independence Day Resurgence on June 24. Now I’ve got no problem with remakes, reboots or relaunches, but it does seem to me that at this point to make a sequel so long after the original is a decade or so too late.
A third Ghostbusters is out on July 15. What looks to be more of a remake/reboot of the original, this time around all of the Ghostbusters are played by women; Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, and is being directed by Paul Feig who’s directed a ton of movies the last decade but will always be remembered by me and many others as being the creator of the highly influential Freaks and Geeks TV series.
A third Star Trek movie of the recent films Star Trek Beyond warps into theaters July 22. What’s interesting here is that this latest Star Trek adventure is co-written by geek-god Simon Pegg. What’s no so interesting here is that it’s being directed by Justin Lin who helmed three of the Fast & Furious flicks.
Matt Damon returns to the Jason Bourne role he originated 14 years ago with the aptly titled Jason Bourne July 29. Damon skipped the last Bourne movie with Jeremy Renner filling in as a non-Jason Bourne lead. And I don’t think anyone would argue that Renner’s The Bourne Legacy was as good as what had come before. That’s why I’m excited about this new Bourne movie that brings back Damon and director Paul Greengrass that made two of the other previous films so great for Bourne’s latest outing.
If Marvel gets to open the summer movie season then DC’s gonna close it out with Suicide Squad on August 5. Feeling a lot like Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad pares a group of disparate, and so-far unpopular superheroes together to fight some greater evil. But with Suicide Squad instead of the superheroes being the good guys, they’re really bad guys like Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Deadshoot (Will Smith) and, no joke, Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney). And while admittedly this might seem odd and strange, from what’s so far been released for the film Suicide Squad actually looks kind’a great.
The second season of the wonderful Star Wars Rebels animated series wrapped up last week on Disney XD. I’ve enjoyed this show since the first season and really appreciate how the creators of Star Wars Rebels have been using design elements that were created, but never used, for the original Star Wars trilogy. While this is a series seemingly directed towards children, see “animated” and “Disney,” non-the-less at times the stories of Star Wars Rebels have had a depth not present in most other series being produced these days.
The character of Punisher has a bit of a checkered history. He first appeared in issues of The Amazing Spider-Man where he was portrayed as a sort of dimwitted assassin who could be tricked into going after heroes like Spider-Man by less dimwitted villains. Over time the Punisher’s history would expand and be filled in.
As the Punisher comic series went on over the years he would be used to prop up lower selling comics titles. But as the Punisher appeared alongside the then very unpopular The Avengers and in the pages of the Vietnam war comic The ‘Nam he would lose more and more of his edge.
Maybe “nemesis” is too strong a word. Really, both Daredevil and Punisher want the same thing — an end to crime. But Punisher is willing to kill people as a means to an end whereas Daredevil is not — and will actively try to stop the Punisher from doing so. Which is where much of the two character’s conflicts arises.