Summer Recap
So since summer is officially over I got to see every film on my Summer Preview list except for Lawless, The Watch, and The Amazing Spider-Man. I think that’s pretty good considering those were at the bottom of my list and my summer involved a lot of life changes for me.
After careful thought, my list of most anticipated films matched up well with how I would rank them, with some minor changes. Brave impressed me more than I was expecting. The Bourne Legacy disappointed more than the first trailer led me to believe. TDKR was very impressive but nothing I saw this summer was as good as Prometheus and Moonrise Kingdom.
For a recap here’s the Preview List:
10: The Amazing Spider-Man | 9: Lawless | 8: The Watch | 7: Brave | 6: The Bourne Legacy | 5: The Expendables 2 | 4: The Avengers | 3: Moonrise Kingdom | 2: Prometheus | 1: The Dark Knight Rises
And here’s how I would rank those movies after seeing them:
5: Brave
Tie for 3: The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers
Tie for 1: Prometheus and Moonrise Kingdom
So I know my ties may seem like a cop-out but because Prometheus and Moonrise Kingdom are vastly different from each other, I equally enjoyed them in completely different ways. Same with TDKR and Avengers.
Were there any other surprise films this summer that I should catch? What ended up being your favorite movie of the summer? So many good ones to choose from.
You and I have had this discussion offline. Avengers was my clear winner. Prometheus was disappointing. Dark Knight Rises was as well, but almost not as much because I half expected it to be a letdown. Didn’t see anything else. I do want to check out the others on your list once they hit the ol’ Blu-ray. Surprised that you rank Brave so high. I didn’t hear a bunch great about it.
CT, The Avengers was awesome. No doubt. And I’m aware of your experience with Prometheus and I know a lot of people felt the way you felt. In fact, Prometheus did what almost no other film I’ve seen do. It got mostly positive feedback from critics but it became a viral campaign by fans to bash the movie. It became almost instantly cool to make fun of the film. And it’s easy to pick apart a film when there’s a milliion blogs pointing out its flaws. But if every movie had that viral campaign and that amount of negative momentum, no movie could withstand it. I think a lot of people overlooked it’s obvious high points that make it a magnificent piece of cinema. And also almost every negative view of Brave took the “not as original as other pixar movies” or “it felt like a disney not a pixar movie to me” approach instead of actually watching the movie to simply watch the movie. Not judge it based on completely different stories with different filmmakers. I agree it’s not anywhere near WALL-E and some others but Brave was a solid story that deserves to be watched.
I didn’t see every major release this summer, but my #1 was The Dark Knight Rises, with Moonrise Kingdom a close second.
Two other films I really enjoyed this summer: Beasts of the Southern Wild and The Intouchables.
Hey Eric, I definitely want to see both of those too!