Movies to Look Forward to in 2022

 

Movies to Look Forward to in 2022

 

With 2021 thoroughly reviewed, it’s time to take a little peek at what’s lined up for 2022. It’s tough to get excited about new movies now with the way things are/continue to be, but hopefully most of these come out as currently planned, and some of them prove to be pleasant surprises. I’m not doing a top ten most-anticipated, because most of these I’m not really anticipating…it’s another year of delayed sequels and reboots, with few hopefuls among them.

I looked ahead at what is supposed to come out (emphasis on supposed to, since we live in such an unpredictable world now as far as whether or not things will be cancelled or postponed at the drop of a hat) and everything that’s coming out is either just a sequel or reboot to stuff I’ve been excited by and subsequently disappointed by in the past, or stuff I just don’t care that much about anymore. I thought about doing something similar to what I did in 2019 (see: The Only Sequel That Matters in 2019, https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-only-sequel-that-matters-in-2019.html) but there really isn’t anything I’m truly excited to see except for one original movie. Still, here is what I’m most likely to watch this year. I discuss them roughly in order of release dates but have neglected to include said dates since they are subject to change.

 

 

Scream

As of posting this, the fifth Scream film has already been released. Unlike the Halloween franchise, which put out a new sequel in 2018 that was just called Halloween and was a reboot, ignoring all other entries in the series except the original, this new Scream is actually Scream 5, following the continuity of all previous Scream films, but for some reason the studio thought it was a good idea to use the title model that’s become a trend now and just call it the same thing as the original. I don’t like it and I don’t agree with it, so I’ll just refer to it as Scream 5 for here onward.

I will see it eventually this year, but I’m not rushing out to theaters to see it, even though the reviews have been much more positive than I had anticipated. Usually a January release date is the first indicator that a horror movie is going to suck, but the pandemic may have erased all previous unofficial movie release rules. I wasn’t really looking forward to Scream 5 leading up to this year because original writer Kevin Williamson didn’t pen the script for it, and Wes Craven directed all four previous entries, with Scream 4 ending up as his last directorial effort before his death in 2015. I thought Scream 4 was the best since the original. We definitely didn’t need another one, but all of the original surviving cast members have returned for Scream 5, and the trailer made it look somewhat promising. I reviewed the Scream franchise in October of 2018, so I might squeeze in a mini-review for it sometime around Halloween, if it works out.

 

Jackass Forever

I thought I had missed this one, because it was set for an October 2021 release, but then they delayed it at the literal last minute. Now the fourth Jackass movie has finally hit theaters, and I probably will see it simply for the nostalgic memories of having seen Jackass 3D with my friends (and later with my dad) in the movie theater over a decade ago, and thinking at the time that was probably the last Jackass movie those guys would make, but now they’re back with the same kind of lame-brained, embarrassing, disgusting antics that they have been showcasing on film since the start of the century. I know what to expect from it, and I’m sure anyone who has seen any or all of the other Jackass movies (or MTV series) knows what to expect, too, so I don’t think I need to say much more about this one.

 

Uncharted

Coming hot off the heels of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Holland is taking on the new role of a young Nathan Drake, alongside Mark Wahlberg as his partner Sully, in a video game adaptation that might have some promise. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Uncharted games, but I played a couple of them and enjoyed their cinematic qualities, so as far as that aspect of the game goes it seems like it’ll be an easier translation to the big screen. The trailer I saw before No Way Home showed off some cool-looking action sequences, and while video game movies have been getting a little better in the past few years (or less bad, at least) I’m still not getting my hopes up for this one.

 

The Batman

When they first announced yet another new Batman movie, I wasn’t excited. The latest incarnation of the character played by Ben Affleck was more interesting than I thought he would have been, but the movies they stuck him in were either bad or terrible, so I wasn’t upset to hear Batfleck was dead and a new actor was being cast. The announcement of Robert Pattinson as the caped crusader really surprised me. I said what a lot of others said: “That guy from Twilight?” But then I saw him in some other movies (namely The Lighthouse and Tenet) and realized he might not be a bad choice after all. Then the first trailer came out, and it really impressed me. It seems the Dark Knight influence is there, but this is still a new take on the character and the world of Gotham, without it getting muddied by DC cinematic universe connections. The main thing that has me interested is the writer/director, Matt Reeves, who made the second and third films in the trilogy of Planet of the Apes films from the 2010s. He seems like the right guy for the job, so let’s hope we get a Batman who can deliver in the action scenes as well as the detective aspects, plus a Bruce Wayne who is charismatic and true to the character we’ve come to know in previous versions.

 

The Northman

This is the only new original film I’m looking forward to this year, and the only one I can say I’m truly excited about. Director Robert Eggers came out of nowhere with The Witch in 2015, a frightening period piece with the appropriate subtitle “A New England Folk Tale” and he followed it up with The Lighthouse, which was one of my favourite movies from the past decade. His next film, The Northman, is a Viking revenge story, and I haven’t needed to know more than that to be excited for it. The cast is stacked, with Alexander Skarsgard in the lead and supporting actors including Willem Dafoe (who was also in The Lighthouse), Nicole Kidman, and Anya Taylor-Joy (who was also in The Witch). I’m anticipating great acting, great cinematography, gritty realism, shocking violence, and thrilling action mixed with contemplative quiet moments.

 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

I’m sensing Marvel knows they need to keep including new important details to their upcoming releases because fans like myself are getting tired of the same old thing and need new reasons to keep coming back movie after movie, but their next Doctor Strange-centric movie has a few things going for it that have moved it from my disinterested pile to curiosity pile. First off: director Sam Raimi is behind the camera, and this is a big deal for a few reasons. He hasn’t directed a superhero movie since 2007’s Spider-Man 3, and guess what movie just came out before Multiverse of Madness? Spider-Man: No Way Home, which was all about the multiverse, and (spoiler) featured Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man from the Raimi films! Is there going to be a Spider-Man connection here? I think with a rumored 3-hour runtime there will be space for some web slinging action in there—not to mention Doctor Strange played an important part in No Way Home. Also returning is Scarlet Witch fresh off her adventure in WandaVision (possibly as an antagonist this time), and as the trailers have showed, an evil Doctor Strange will be showing up, too. There are certainly things about Multiverse of Madness that I’m not excited about (that title for one is pretty goofy and the idea of the hero fighting an evil version of himself has been done to death) but with Sam Raimi behind it and a long list of rumored cameos, hopefully that means it’ll be a spooky superhero epic.

 

Jurassic World: Dominion

I never got the Jurassic Park IV I dreamed of. For years after seeing Jurassic Park III way back in 2001 I waited for a fourth movie. I waited and waited for the return of Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm, to see new giant meat-eating dinosaurs like the Allosaurus and Giganotosaurus chasing helpless humans, maybe even to find out what happened to that lost shaving cream can on Isla Nublar, but the movie never came to fruition. What us fans got instead was the soft reboot Jurassic World, which showcased a dinosaur theme park open to the public, and was a fun enough monster movie, but far from the suspenseful believability of the original. Then the follow-up Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom tried to be different, but ended up being a weird genetic hybrid itself: part rip-off of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, part crappy monster-loose-in-a-house movie, part adaptation of the chunks of Michael Crichton’s novels that had not previously been realized on-screen. It was so disappointing and average I haven’t watched it again since seeing it the one time in theaters in 2018.

Jurassic World: Dominion is being delivered as the “last chapter of the Jurassic era” and bringing back the original cast, plus featuring lots of new dinosaurs running amok on the mainland. The trailer doesn’t look bad, but neither did the trailers for the previous two movies. There is promise, but I’m highly skeptical. I’m just not a big fan of this new Jurassic World-era…world, for lack of a better explanation. It’s over-the-top and dumb and fake-looking and silly, and it’s not Jurassic Park. I just can’t picture the old characters fitting in to this world, but my fingers are crossed that this comes as close to that fabled unmade Jurassic Park IV as possible at this point. 

 

Thor: Love and Thunder

I’m not sure which MCU movie I’m looking forward to more in 2021, this one or Doctor Strange (I’m sorry, but I do not care about the new Black Panther). I’m not really excited for either, but like with Doctor Strange, I’m mainly interested in a new Thor because of the director. The first two solo Thor movies were fine, but as the MCU has forged ahead, they’ve become increasingly irrelevant. Then Thor: Ragnarok came out of nowhere with its colourful, exuberant take on the hero, courtesy of director Taika Waititi, and he’s returning behind the camera for Thor’s post-Endgame space odyssey, which promises to go deep into comic lore and have some familiar faces (the Guardians of the Galaxy) and new ones (Christian Bale as a god killer), plus the return of Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster to allegedly take up the mantle as a female Thor. It’s all very intriguing, and I’m sure it’ll be a fun spiritual sequel to Ragnarok while following up the universe-altering events from Endgame.

 

Where the Crawdads Sing

Based on the best-selling novel by Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing is about Kya, known as the “Swamp Girl” who lives in the secluded Carolina marsh lands, and it mixes a murder mystery with a coming-of-age story. What the novel does best is showcase realistic characters in a realistic setting, and it has the makings of a great film, but what surprises me is the release date of July, which is quite a ways away from awards season. It just seems like the kind of movie designed to win Oscars, but the lack of buzz around it makes me wonder if the movie won’t turn out to be a big hit. As I read the novel I imagined it would make a good movie, so I’m curious to check it out anyway.

 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One)

I’m not sick of Spider-Man yet, and this follow-up to the unexpectedly-great Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has a lot of potential. The first movie seemed a bit odd leading up to its release. An animated Spider-Man movie, in its own continuity from the new MCU Spidey? It seemed like it would be aiming for a younger audience at first, but that wasn’t the case, and it caught everyone off guard with its unique, innovative visual style, making it feel ripped straight from the comics. Miles Morales more than held his own against the Peter Parker moviegoers had come to know over the past two decades, and we got to see all kinds of new versions of the web slinger work together to fight new and old villains in the first superhero multiverse story line of its kind—but it wouldn’t remain unique in that sense for long, as we were to find out with the live-action Loki series and Spider-Man: No Way Home. It’s interesting to see Across the Spider-Verse branded with a Part One in the title, suggesting there will be even more Spider people to come.

 

Creed III

The first Creed was a truly surprising and satisfying continuation of the Rocky franchise, following Michael B. Jordan as Apollo Creed’s son trying to enter the world of professional boxing with Sly Stallone’s Balboa in his corner. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, it was a hit, but Coogler went on to direct Black Panther, so Creed II was co-written by Stallone (who had created Rocky Balboa in the first place) and directed by Steven Caple Jr. who had yet to direct anything as high caliber as this. It was a solid sequel, even if not quite as solid as the first Creed, and now the third film has yet another new director: Michael B. Jordan himself! This will be his directorial debut, and I think it’s a perfect fit, given Sylvester Stallone both starred in and directed multiple Rocky films. The story is also by Ryan Coogler, so enough of the same creative team behind the previous two have returned to hopefully make it a strong conclusion to the trilogy.

 

Avatar 2

At first, the wait for a second Avatar film seemed like it would only be a few years—after all, James Cameron had waited over a decade to make it because he wanted technology to catch up with his vision for blue-skinned aliens on a jungle planet, and when it came out in December 2009, it was the biggest box office hit of all-time: a title it held on to for a further ten years. The sequel was announced right away, but then it ballooned into a franchise before the second one even began production. James Cameron wanted to make a bunch of them back-to-back-to-back, Lord of the Rings-style, and delegated writing duties to a team of writers (usually he just writes everything himself) before embarking on this insane project. It’s been over twelve years since the first Avatar, and while delays for movies have become commonplace since the start of the pandemic, Avatar 2 might be one of the most delayed sequels in history. Every year it’s been pushed, but I think maybe, finally, the second movie will be released this year. At least, that’s the plan, but I’m not going to get too hyped for it, even beyond the fact that it keeps being delayed.

A singular sequel to Avatar would have intrigued me, but a whole bunch of them, that are all just parts of a bigger story? It seems beyond excessive, and having so many of the cast members returning when their characters died in the first movie makes me question the integrity of James Cameron’s vision for these new movies. But, here’s the thing: James Cameron has only made two sequels in the past, Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and both of them are considered among the greatest sequels in all of cinema, so Avatar 2 has a lot to live up to. If JC has invested this much of his life into it, then it kind of has to deliver, but the Avatar love has died down during those intervening years, so who knows if we’ll ever get those Avatar 4 & 5’s. We’re at least getting Avatar 3 after this, so let’s hope that one feels worth seeing after #2.