Movies I Wish I Had Seen in 2020 (Part 1)

 

There’s a first time for everything. For the first time since starting this blog, I will not be doing a top ten list of my favourite films of the year, for reasons that are probably obvious. But, in case you were living under a rock the past twelve months, here’s the situation: the pandemic forced theaters to close, and Hollywood pulled nearly every major movie release. Now the majority of films intended for release this year are sitting on a shelf collecting dust, and that left us cinephiles with basically nothing new to watch. Sure, there were still some new films, most of which came out on streaming services or VOD, but it was inarguably the most atypical year in the history of cinema.

Instead of a half-assed favourites of the year list (which would include Bad Boys For Life, The Invisible Man, Colour out of Space, Borat 2, and that’s pretty much it), I’m going to look over some films I wish I had seen in theaters this year. This is not going to be a wish list of all the ones that were supposed to come out in 2020, though. I’m taking a totally different approach. Even if all the movies that were supposed to have been released had come and gone, these following movies are the ones I wish I had seen regardless, but none of them are slated for release, most of them aren’t in development, and some of them will literally never see the light of day. This alternate universe of anticipated films is totally unique and made-up, so I’m sorry if I get you excited for a movie that will never happen, but at least this is a more fun, imaginative solution to not having as many new movies to talk about.    

Movies I Wish I Had Seen in 2020 (Part 1: Superheroes & Giant Monsters) 

 

Fan art for a live-action Spider-Verse (not real)

Let’s start with two of the heavy hitters, Marvel and DC. 2020 is the first year in I’m not sure how many years (perhaps a couple decades or more) that a Marvel movie was not released. Wow. I didn’t even realize for just how long we’ve been inundated with Marvel properties on the big screen. The timing was pretty good, though, with the MCU’s Infinity Saga wrapping up in 2019 with Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home, and none of the post-Infinity Saga films had been released yet before theaters started closing. I’m not interested in much of what they have lined up, with one possible exception: a live-action Into the Spider-Verse-style story, with the current Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, meeting alternate universe versions of the web slinger, and eventually teaming up with them. We’ll have Tobey Maguire back as an older, wiser Peter Parker/Spider-Man, last seen in the 2000’s trilogy, we’ll even bring back Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man version, and we can have other fan favourites make their live-action debuts, like Miles Morales, Spider-Man Noir, and Spider-Man 2099. Noir has to be played yet again by Nicholas Cage (he voiced the character in the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). Throw in Tom Hardy as Venom once again too, just to spice it up even more. Now, this is all rumour at this point, but hear me out…this movie might actually happen, in some form, because the actors who previously played Spider-Man really are in talks to make appearances in the upcoming Spider-Man film set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It’s entirely possible we see some of this come to pass, and here are a few indicators: 1) Doctor Strange has already been confirmed to have a role in the upcoming third Spider-Man. 2) Jamie Foxx has already confirmed he’ll be returning to play the villain Electro. This character was previously one of the villains in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which was the second series of Spider-Man films with Andrew Garfield, and it has been very clearly established as not being part of the known MCU storyline so far. 3) Sam Raimi is directing Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness, which is going to be the final film in Phase Four. Mr. Raimi previously directed the first three live-action Spider-Man films for Sony. It’s right there in the title. Multiverse! I hope it comes out as great as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Another Marvel film I’d like to see that isn’t really being hyped up or rumoured at the moment would be a Daredevil film with the same cast and crew from the Netflix series, only given a higher budget. The show was excellent, for the most part, but it was a shame that they pulled the plug on it so suddenly after the third season, and it didn’t feel like they got a chance to wrap it up properly. Plus, with its connections and references to the MCU, it would be neat to have Charlie Cox back as the man without fear and team him up with some of the other heroes we know are out there. He said he'd be more than game to return to the role, and I think it would be a lot better than recasting the role. I wasn’t as into the other Netflix Marvel shows, and The Defenders crossover didn’t do it for me, but Daredevil himself was beloved enough by all that he deserves to come back for at least one more story, if not a few more. I don’t really want a whole other season of the show, just one tight two-hour storyline on the big screen. The rights have gone back to Marvel, so the ball is in their court now.

What John Krasinski could look like as Mister Fantastic

One last Marvel project that I know will see the light of day one day is a reboot of the Fantastic Four, but how’s this for inspired casting? John Krasinski as Reid Richards/Mister Fantastic, Emily Blunt (Krasinski’s real-life wife) as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Taryn Edgerton as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and Bryan Cranston as Ben Grim/The Thing. Now that cast would help make it a great movie—not that the cast for the mid-2000’s Fantastic Four films was all that bad, but those films didn’t quite hit the mark in adapting Marvel’s first superhero family, and they definitely pale in comparison to the Marvel movies of the 2010’s.

Switching over to DC for a second, I was pretty excited when a Swamp Thing TV series was announced, but it got cancelled after just one season, before I even got a chance to start watching. I’ve been avoiding it because I’m afraid I’ll love it and knowing there isn’t a conclusion will only hurt more, but you know what would be great? If they did a Swamp Thing movie with the same cast and crew, a higher budget, and do it as a sequel to the series but also make it stand alone so viewers don’t have to have seen the show to get it. The first season presumably covers his origin story, so just forge ahead with another storyline, and there are plenty of great ones to pick from. I love the comics, and wish there was more Swamp Thing out there. Another DC property I’d love to see instead of the upcoming Zack Snyder’s Justice League is an animated film adaptation of the Super Friends cartoon series (link to my review of the show: http://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/11/justice-league-review-or-is-it.html) It would be in total contrast to DC’s current theatrical endeavors being strictly live-action, gritty, and edgy, but it would be awesome to see the old cheesy heroics brought back.

A genre of films I love even more than superhero movies is giant monster movies, and 2020 dealt me a bitter blow: my most-anticipated film of the year (and of many, many years) Godzilla vs. Kong, was delayed until 2021. Recently, there was discussion it might go straight to streaming, which on the one hand would mean I get to see it sooner, but on the other hand, I feel like I’d be missing out on seeing it in a theater on the big screen with a crowd opening night. Watching it at home for the first time just wouldn’t be the same. As cool as it will be to see Godzilla and Kong battling each other for only the second time in cinematic history (the last match was fifty years ago), I have some other ideas for giant monster movies I’d like to see even more. One of them is Godzilla 1994, which I learned about only recently, and it almost happened for real, too.

Stan Winston's unused Godzilla design

Also known as Godzilla vs. The Gryphon, this unmade ’94 Godzilla film was supposed to be the first American adaptation, directed by Jan de Bont with a script by future Pirates of the Caribbean scribes Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot (the script is available online in full). In this story, Godzilla is an artificially-created species, which is one of the only aspects that I don’t care for, but other than that, it tells a suspenseful and exciting tale of Big G awakening and wreaking havoc on humanity before taking on the Gryphon, a worthy foe that was original to this story. The creative team made it to the pre-production stage, and even legendary creature effects creator Stan Winston got a chance to redesign Godzilla, but sadly, the studio got cold feet when the budget went too high, and Godzilla 1994 languished in development hell. Eventually, it got rewritten completely when director Roland Emmerich came aboard, and we all know how that went…Tristar’s 1998 Godzilla, ironically, ended up with a budget bigger than what was originally needed for Godzilla 1994, the redesign of Godzilla was rejected by fans (Patrick Tatopoulos created a more dinosaur-like creature, Stan Winston’s concepts were never used), and the reviews were poor. I’d love to pop over to an alternate universe where Godzilla 1994 is the first American Godzilla movie that was ever made, just to see how it would have turned out. I bet it would’ve been significantly better than what we got in this universe, but then again, we may never have had the current MonsterVerse from Legendary if not for Tristar’s abomination.  

The 2014 American reboot of Godzilla even borrowed a number of elements from the ’94 script, and it ended up being a lot better than the Tristar attempt. Godzilla (2014) also helped reboot the series in Japan as well, and we got Shin Godzilla a couple years later, but we also almost got a Gamera reboot around that time, too. There was a 2015 fan film released online, which sort of functioned as an extended trailer for a potential modernization of the giant atomic mutant turtle, and I would have loved to see a full movie version of that trailer. The villain Gyaos was made scarier than he had ever been in the past, and Gamera’s massive size and power would have been mind-blowing on the big screen. I was hoping Shin Godzilla would have led to a resurgence in Japanese Godzilla films, but I’m still waiting for the next one from Toho. Gamera may have had a chance at a resurgence, too, had the 2015 fan film led to an actual reboot. The only thing that would’ve been even more epic? If it was tied in to the current MonsterVerse.

But what would make me happier than any other giant monster film would be what I’m going to call The Daikaiju Royal Rumble. This throw down would be in the style of Destroy All Monsters or Godzilla Final Wars, pulling together all the greatest monsters from many different films and pitting them all against one another in one epic movie. What would be special about this one though is it would put together every major daikaiju from all the big franchises. We’re talking monsters that have never been in movies together ever before. Godzilla, Ghidorah, Mothra, Rodan, and King Kong. And we’ll have Gamera, who has never shared the screen with Godzilla before, but fans have always wanted to see the two monsters battle. We’ll even include Korea’s giant monster Yongary, and the Danish reptilian monster Reptilicus! There’ll be cameos from lesser known monsters, too, like Q: The Winged Serpent, and classic behemoths we haven’t seen in decades like The Rhedosaurus from Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, and speaking of behemoths, throw in the monster from The Giant Behemoth! Then in the middle of the climactic final battle between all of these monsters, a portal opens, and guess what comes through it? That’s right, the entire kaiju army from Pacific Rim! This movie would literally melt my brain from sheer awesomeness.

That’s all for today, but I have plenty more ideas for movies I wish I had seen in 2020, so tune in again soon for part two, where I’ll be covering unfounded sequels and some original ideas!