When all of the studying is over and summer break begins, hardworking students will need things to do. The summer movie season is one of the most profitable in Hollywood and for good reason — some of the best movies come out then. Let’s breakdown the various epic adventures moviegoers can experience in the next few months.
Kicking off the summer is “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” where Spider-Man faces a horde of new villains in one of three comic book movies coming out this season. Rounding out the trifecta is “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” a time-travelling epic which is ranking highly on nerds’ to-do lists and for good reason since it brings together the old and new X-Men casts in the same movie. “Guardians of the Galaxy” — a film which looks like perfection judging from the 2-minute trailer — will explore a rouge team of Marvel superheroes, with actors including “Parks and Recreation” Chris Pratt, Bradley Cooper as a talking raccoon with a mean streak and Zoe Saldana, who goes from blue in “Avatar” to green in this film.
Also in the epic category is “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” which kicks off a new trilogy of “Transformers” films — not to mention adding Dinobots into the fray. “Godzilla” promises to be the best the giant lizard ever with wanton destruction and an all-star cast. The movie includes Elizabeth Olson and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, names you might be familiar with if you’ve been following the next “Avengers” movie. There’s also the sci-fi epic “Jupiter Ascending,” created by the Wachowskis, who also made “The Matrix.” One look at the trailer and you know this new film — in which Mila Kunis discovers she’s intergalactic royalty — will be as original and mind blowing as the classic film.
But summer isn’t just a time for epic thrills. It’s also a time for epic laughs. In the comedy section, we have Melissa McCarthy in “Tammy,” a road trip movie that McCarthy wrote along with her husband, who direcs the movie. There’s also “Let’s Be Cops,” a buddy cop movie without the cops, which promises to be a R-rated laugh fest. Seth McFarlane follows up “Ted” with “A Million Ways To Die In The West,” a period comedy that has the potential to go south very fast. We also get a double dose of Channing Tatum after “Jupiter Ascending” in “22 Jump Street,” which takes Tatum and Jonah Hill to college.
And for tearjerker fans, we have a few dramas in the mix. “Begin Again” takes Mark Ruffalo to the street music scene with Kiera Knightley and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine. “The Fault In Our Stars” takes on the touchy subject of cancer from a teenager’s point of view — think a tween version of “50/50” without Seth Rogen. And as an added bonus, this teenager is played by Shailene Woodley, who has proven in “The Descendants” and “Divergent” that she can carry a film.
And that’s just scratching the surface of the summer. There’s also “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “Maleficent,” “The Expendables 3,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” “How to Train Your Dragon 2” and a sequel to “The Purge” — wait, what? Oh well, at least everything else will be epic.
Bradley Burgess
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