Columbia
2012 is all over and the Mayan prophecy killed us all. Luckily, we at Planet Fanboy slipped this into our system prior to the day we all died, so the cockroaches have something to read as they feast on our corpses. So pull up a seat, Scritchy and Scratchy, and learn about the year that was.
2012 opened nicely. Qui-Gon Jinn looked death in the eye and slowly let death win in "The Grey." But he did it in a very picturesque way while reciting poetry in his head, so it made for a terrific movie.
George Lucas finally let loose with his "Red Tails" project and it wasn't very good but we all got to shrug our shoulders and say "well, that is absolutely the last time George Lucas will make any news this year."
Fox
We thought we were absolutely finished with found footage pictures, but "Chronicle" came out of nowhere and blew our socks off with one of the best superhero origin stories in a long while. (Surprise: it's a supervillain and, no, eff you, that's totally fair the movie's been on iTunes for months now.)
"Ghost Rider 2" proved that Nicolas Cage still hasn't hit rock bottom. Maybe he should just start a kickstarter campaign to pay off his huge debts and leave the movie-going public out of this.
Disney spent nine zillion dollars on adapting "A Princess of Mars" into "Dune" meets "Tron Legacy" and thought changing the name to "John Carter" would help. It wasn't a terrible film, I mean did you SEE what Lynn Collins was wearing, but that could only entertain us for so long. Luckily good movies were just around the corner.
That's right "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" was released just a. . .oh, wait, sorry, wrong yearly wrap-up. Yes, "21 Jump Street" was released just a week later and was far funnier than it had any right to be. This was followed by kickass dystopian females ("The Hunger Games") and kickass dystopian Indonesians ("The Raid: Redemption.") If Katniss Everdeen should ever find herself in a locked-down high-rise building, we might be on to something. (I think I just came up with the premise of "Silver Linings Playbook 2: Golden Linings.")
Next thing ya know we were all on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s helicarrier playing Galaga. "Marvel's The Avengers" destroyed any reasonable expectations of how good a summer movie could be, collecting Earth's Mightiest Heroes in a fun and funny adventure that can rank with "Jurassic Park" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
"Avengers" was so awesome that the back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back suckage of "Battleship," "Men in Black 3," "Snow White and the Huntsman," "Prometheus," and "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" didn't matter. Nothing could damage the glow of "Avengers."
Fox
Well, that's not exactly true. "Prometheus" had so much potential (and it LOOKED so damn cool) that Ridley Scott's blunder still kinda stings. Should Scott and company try to re-launch that ship once again, they'll find no safe harbor on Planet Fanboy! We have spoken!
The summer rounded out with great comedies like "Ted," "The Campaign" and "The Dark Knight Rises."
What? What? "Why so serious?" if I may borrow a quote. Listen, "The Dark Knight Rises" is an energetic film (anything with a propulsive Hans Zimmer score is going to get your blood rate up) but between Muffled Bane and the overwhelming amount of plot holes, the best thing to do is just to embrace the film as a big, lovable disaster. Like your drunk uncle. It's the drunk uncle of superhero movies.
The "smarter season" for Fanboy films didn't disappoint. "Dredd," "Looper," "Skyfall" were terrific and proved once and for all a theory I've long held: movies with double-letters in their single-word title are the way to go.
2012 ended with the biggest wet kiss to fandom in quite some time: Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey." To big fat Tolkien nerds it is a revelatory experience – for nonfans, a Bataan Death March of endless yapping, eating and walking through fields plus a laundry lists of swords with names.
On Planet Fanboy, we like swords with names.
We also believe in the theory of spontaneous generation, so hopefully the cockroaches kept some food in the fridge. There's a good chance we'll be back again next week.