2024 & 2025 Movies: No Favourites, No Anticipation

 

Year-End Recap for 2024 & Upcoming Movie Preview for 2025: No Favourites, No Anticipation

 

This might seem like it’s going to be an incredibly pessimistic way to say goodbye to this year and bring in the next, but I don’t think it will actually be as hopeless as it might initially seem. In 2020, I couldn’t really do a favourite films of the year list, and I didn’t do a most-anticipated list because there was no way to know if any movies could be anticipated. Half of my Most Anticipated Movies of 2020 list became Most Anticipated Movies of 2021 because so many release dates were delayed. I’ve still done recaps for the years since, and previews of upcoming movies, and now that it’s been a few years since the pandemic, it seems like the slate of movies to come is more of a sure thing, so why not do a most anticipated movies list of 2025?

The last couple years, it’s been easier to preview the entire year of upcoming movies rather than select just a few I’m really excited for, and last year I found categorizing them by curious, interested, or definitely seeing worked really well. Now, as I reflect on this past year, I find I’m at a loss as to what, exactly, I have to say about it, and how I should attempt to say anything at all.

As a quick recap, the movies I claimed I would definitely see in theatres this year were Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Deadpool & Wolverine, Alien: Romulus, and Nosferatu. Of all the movies I was merely curious or interested in, I saw only three. I did not see anything unexpected that stood out in a truly special way. Last year, I was dying to see Godzilla: Minus One, and it more than lived up to the hype, easily crowned my favourite of the year. Everything Everywhere All At Once was my favourite movie of 2022, which I had not expected or anticipated at all, and then it went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, which was even more surprising. That movie, though, was so brilliant and entertaining and captivating, that it (forgive the cliché) shone like a diamond in the rough, and most years in the past ten years of writing this movie blog, I’ve had at least one experience like that with a movie. Whether it was Sing Street in 2016, or The Lighthouse in 2019, or even multiple movies such as in 2014, with Whiplash and Birdman and Guardians of the Galaxy, every year aside from 2020 has had something truly exceptional.

To be honest, 2024 just did not have a movie like that for me. Yeah, I really enjoyed Dune: Part Two, more than Part One, and seeing it in IMAX was exceptional, but the movie itself, as a whole? It was really good. What more can I say? I thought about it plenty afterward, but I didn’t feel the need to see it again immediately. Even Furiosa, which I did see again a relatively short amount of time after the first time, did not resonate with me the same way Mad Max: Fury Road did in 2015: a movie which remains an all-time favourite. In both these cases it’s because they were the next movie. Furiosa, though a prequel, followed the style established in Fury Road, and I was anticipating it because of how unexpectedly incredible Fury Road had been. But, it had a lot to live up too—way too much, in fact. Dune, on the other hand, was a sequel, and not to take away from how great it was, but it was just another continuation, though really felt more like the second half of one large movie left unconcluded at the end of Part One than a standard sequel.

As for the other standouts of the year, I wrote an insane amount about Alien: Romulus, but it wasn’t exactly all gushing, was it? I suppose I liked it more the second time because I knew what it was going to be and just appreciated the look of it more than the ways it regurgitated everything I already loved about previous Alien sequels and prequels. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire was an entertaining follow-up to Godzilla vs. Kong, but not as good, and Deadpool & Wolverine was better/funnier/more surprising than I had expected, but not exactly an all-time superhero movie highpoint or an endearing favourite. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was a bit forgettable, especially compared to the previous three entries. So, what happened? Why didn’t any of these movies grab me?

It relates to why I don’t feel any serious anticipation for new movies next year. Everything is just…the next one. We’re past the era of the reboot—bringing back old franchises with new entries—and we’re past the era of the remake. Even though reboots were also just the next movie in a series, they were refreshers for stale sequels. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the first sequel to the original trilogy and the start of a new era. In less than ten years its impact has been diminished so significantly that everyone seems to have forgotten there hasn’t been a new Star Wars movie in five years, even though we had been promised a new one every year for the rest of human existence when Disney took over. Rise of Skywalker crashed and burned hard, and Lucasfilm has pivoted to just cranking out TV shows on Disney+. What I mean when I say “the next one” is 2025 is full of movies that are now reboots to the reboots, or are just the countless new number in an unending series.

The Predator franchise was rebooted in 2010 with a distantly connected sequel, then rebooted again in 2018 with The Predator, which was even more standalone, and then rebooted again in 2022 with Prey, which was a prequel, and when Prey landed with fans/critics/audiences, the studio funnelled money into a follow-up. So now, in 2025, we’re getting Predator: Badlands. Great. I liked Prey, but it really didn’t stick with me all that much. It was definitely better than The Predator (not hard to accomplish), and aspects of it were stronger than Predators, but it didn’t exactly leave me craving a sequel. I don’t know how much Badlands will be a sequel to Prey, or even if it will connect to previous Predator movies beyond just the creature, but another thing that should get me excited (yet doesn’t) is the announcement that two new Predator movies are coming out next year. Why do we need two back-to-back? Maybe once I learn more I’ll be more excited, but right now, I just feel like I’m acknowledging this news, at best.

Jurassic World Rebirth is a shockingly fast turnaround for rebooting the rebooted Jurassic Park series, after Jurassic World Dominion took a steaming dump on the franchise two years ago and wasted the return of the big three characters from the original Jurassic Park. It seems the studio has tried to check all the remaining boxes they could to get me excited again. A director who actually knows what he’s doing? Gareth Edwards? The guy who directed the 2014 Godzilla reboot, which launched the MonsterVerse? And David Koepp, who wrote the original Jurassic Park screenplay based on Michael Crichton’s script, and also wrote The Lost World: Jurassic Park? And no Chris Pratt or Bryce Dallas Howard this time? None of that gives me much hope. Why? It’s not just because the bad taste of Dominion hasn’t left my mouth yet, but because I’m certain it will continue the path of mindless cartoon action the previous three Jurassic World movies carved, straying ever further away from what made the original so great in the first place.     

And then, there’s Marvel. It was both refreshing and yet odd that we only got one new movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2024, and it was a sequel to a movie that wasn’t part of the MCU in the first place. Deadpool & Wolverine served to suture together the inherited properties from dead 2000s superhero franchises with the established multiverse in a refreshingly entertaining way, and that was about it. Now, in 2025, we’re getting back to what has made the MCU feel tired and tedious in the post-Endgame years: telling stories about far less interesting characters who imitate characters of past films, and they all connect in ways that make it feel like homework to keep up rather than kindling eager anticipation for the next chapter of a sprawling story.

Thunderbolts? Who cares? A whole bunch of supporting characters gathered together in a sort of Suicide Squad-lite team-up film does not really interest me. Neither does a Captain America movie with the new Captain America: former Falcon Sam Wilson—oh yeah, and a Red Hulk thrown in, too. Finally, there’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The Fantastic Four have been adapted to the big screen four different times now within my lifetime. That makes me sound and feel older than I should. I mean, if they don’t get it right this time, it’s over, isn’t it?

So surely there must be something new and original that I’m looking forward to, then?  Mickey 17 was supposed to come out in 2024 but got delayed, and I am looking forward to that one. The long-rumored 28 Years Later, while it is a sequel, finally comes out next year, with the same creative forces behind it as the original 28 Days Later, so that one I am interested in. There’s also The Monkey, based on the story by Stephen King, from the director of this year’s Longlegs (which I have not seen yet). Horror is the only genre right now that seems to be staying solid. Most of the pleasant surprises in 2024 were smaller scale original horror movies, like Longlegs, The Substance, Cuckoo, and Late Night with the Devil. Maybe 2025 will continue the trend. A trailer for the rock-and-roll documentary (rockumentary?) Becoming Led Zeppelin dropped recently, and it is perhaps the only original film I am currently planning to see in theatres as soon as it comes out. See, it's not that I have no anticipation for anything next year, but definitely not enough to write a whole blog post with through lines of enthusiasm. At this point, the days of counting out my most anticipated movies of the coming year and adding up all the best ones as December ends are no more.

I combed through the release schedule multiple times and came up short every time. There are more sequels, more remakes, and no standouts. It was the same thing with reviewing 2024. The only new, original movie from this year that I still want to see but haven’t yet is The Primevals, which was a stop motion project that had been uncompleted for decades and finally saw a release this year, so it’s not even really a new movie in terms of being produced this decade. The only new entry in a continuing franchise I’m still interested in and haven’t seen yet is Transformers One, after hearing the great word of mouth, but that’s about it.

I don’t follow movie news the same way I used to, but I don’t think that’s the main reason I am lacking in anticipation for next year. I don’t think it’s a case of everything just being a TV show now, either. It’s not because of a lack of movies, and it’s not because I’m tired of sequels or just hate new movies. Maybe it’s because I, like Hollywood, have changed.

I am no longer the same film fan who first logged on and created the CCC movie blog. I still have all the same favourite movies, I still have fun going to the movies, but I just can’t get as excited as I used to. I’ve figured out what I like and don’t like, I’ve been burned many times in the past by original concepts and sequels and reboots and crossovers and new movies from past favourite directors and writers and actors, and I lack the enthusiasm of anticipating what’s next because there’s also a lack of surprise in what is to come. I was there for the birth of the MCU. I was there for the gritty reinvention of Batman and The Joker in The Dark Knight. I was there for the long-awaited return of Godzilla, and Star Wars, and Jurassic Park, and so many more. I’m just not that excited to be there for the languid continuation of the MCU, or another reinvention of Batman (or Superman, for that matter; we’re getting that next year, too), or another Jurassic World, or remakes of my favourite movies, like The Naked Gun.

So that’s it, then. I feel freer, in a way, no longer being so tied into the future movie hype. I’m still going to see movies in 2025. In fact, I hope to see a lot more movies than I did in 2024 (the lowest number since 2020) and I hope I get at least one real big surprise that really hits home. But, if I don’t, that’s okay, too. Either way, you’ll hear about it in roughly twelve months. My hope is that at the end of 2025 I can look back on the year and start a new series: CCC Year-End Spotlight, with a review of my singular favourite movie of the year that reminded me why I love going to the movies.  

 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

Just Stop Already! Issue #8: Disney Live-Action Remakes

 Just Stop Already!

 

Movies are a great art form, but Hollywood is a business, so if something translates into a financial success—whether it’s a genre or type of movie or a trend—chances are it will be exploited and repeated until people are sick of it. But, sometimes producers, writers, and/or directors want to cut corners, or are just desperate to make money, or are creatively bankrupt. All of these factors result in frustrations for the audience that take on many forms, and in this series I explore some of the tropes, trends, bad habits, and financial exploits of Hollywood films. Sometimes when it comes to movies, I feel like saying…just stop already!

 

Issue #8: Disney Live-Action Remakes

 

The big tentpole movie for the 2024 winter holiday season is Mufasa: The Lion King, which is both a prequel and a sequel to 2019’s The Lion King. Everyone knew the precursory film was a remake of the 1994 traditional hand-drawn animated original, because everyone knows (and loves) the original Lion King. The 2019 remake? Not so much love. When I saw it in theatres the summer it was released, I was blown away by the visual effects, but I also left thinking…what was the point of that? It felt like a soulless copy of the original, and the determination to make the talking animals look so realistic came off as a wasted effort.

Disney’s first photorealistic CGI film attempt was 2000’s Dinosaur, which in some ways feels like a remake of The Land Before Time—an animated film that was not produced by Disney, but was directed by Don Bluth, an animator who had worked for the company previously. Speaking of Dinosaur, I watched the crap out of my VHS tape of that movie when I was a kid, and the trailer at the beginning for 102 Dalmatians is as burned into my memory as the film itself. Looking back, 101 Dalmatians (1996) is one of the earliest examples of a Disney live-action remake, and 102 Dalmatians is the first direct sequel to one of them. Disney sequels were already a regular thing at that point, but in animated form only. Not one of them could ever compare to the original, as has become the case with the live-action sequels. Not to misjudge prematurely, but the trailers for Mufasa haven’t convinced me this one will break the pattern, but rather have reaffirmed it will follow suit. 

Live-action remakes of classic Disney films started with The Jungle Book in 1994, directed by Stephen Sommers, who would go on to direct two very successful Mummy films for Universal a few years later. The Jungle Book (1967) is one of my favourite animated Disney films, and I haven’t seen the ‘94 live-action version since I was a kid, but I don’t remember it being all that bad. I enjoyed seeing the animals portrayed by real trained animals, and they didn’t speak, which made the whole film feel more mature and serious than the original. I found it a little odd that Mowgli was a grown up, but there was another live-action Jungle Book movie I remember seeing as a kid where he wasn’t an adult, and I now realize looking back that there have been many Jungle Book films, but only some of them were from the house of mouse. The other one I saw as a kid was The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli & Baloo, a 1997 adaptation from Sony of Rudyard Kipling’s source material—material that has served as the basis for all Jungle Book films.

I really liked 2016’s The Jungle Book, which was partly a re-adaptation of Kipling’s stories and a remake of the 1967 animated film. In fact, I loved it, and that remake was the reason I saw The Lion King when it came out. Both were directed by Jon Favreau, and I was so impressed with the way The Jungle Book combined the photorealistic animals with a reworking of the same story I knew from the animated version that felt worth telling. I was sure The Lion King would do the same thing. But, it didn’t…

When I say these Disney live-action remakes should just stop already, I am not referring to the ones like The Jungle Book (either remake). I don’t hate the base concept of taking something that previously existed in animated form and trying to make it more visually realistic if it could potentially offer a new (possibly even better) moviegoing experience. The Jungle Book was perfectly acceptable to remake for a few reasons. For one, the 1967 animated version, while still entertaining to this day, is also quite simplistic and short (less than 80 minutes including credits). There was plenty of room for the story and characters to grow. Also, The Jungle Book was spawned from Kipling’s stories, which had already been adapted to film before that. The remakes that serve no purpose except to make money by capitalizing on the familiarity and previous popularity are the ones that bother me, and unfortunately, those ones are becoming far more abundant.

The live-action remake boom did not start in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. The Jungle Book and Dalmatians films were not even really prototypes for what was to come, as they primarily featured real actors and animals shot in real environments. But, I distinctly remember the somewhat off-putting CGI shots of puppies falling through the air in that 102 Dalmatians trailer, and CGI was the way of the future for remakes of this nature. It was 2010’s Alice in Wonderland that opened the floodgates. With Tim Burton as director and Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter, it drew audiences in because it promised a weird, large-scale rejuvenation of the classic children’s tale. Like The Jungle Book that followed later, it is not a strict remake of the original animated version. Instead, it draws on Lewis Carroll’s works and continues the story from the 1951 animated flick. I didn’t hate Burton’s remake, but I didn’t really enjoy it, either. The CGI was too abundant and looked too synthetic. It didn’t matter, though, because it made over a billion dollars, which guaranteed a sequel (released in 2016: have not seen it) and a flood of similar Disney productions in the years to come.

Maleficent, Cinderella, and The Beauty and the Beast were all successful, not just in terms of box office but with critics, as well. Reviews for all three were not entirely glowing, but good enough, it seemed, to ensure more movies like them would get greenlit. There were some more interesting ones in the 2010s, though, like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which was spun off from Fantasia, and Christopher Robin, which acted as a continuation of previous animated Winnie the Pooh films. Then, we reached The Lion King era, and this was when creativity started to dwindle. Dumbo, which also came out in 2019, was Tim Burton’s second Disney live-action remake, and was not as praised nor as successful as his previous one. Aladdin was controversial mainly for featuring Will Smith as The Genie. Many moviegoers felt Robin Williams was irreplaceable, and they were right! Like The Lion King and Dumbo (all released the same year), the question of whether a live-action remake could be better than the original was asked, and it was a valid query. In the end, the answer to the question didn’t matter in any case, because all of them made bank. Disney took these repeated financial hits as audiences saying: “Keep ‘em coming!”

Now we’re getting to some of the weirder, more desperate examples. There was Pete’s Dragon in 2016, which was a remake of the 1977 original of the same name—a film that mixed traditional animation with live action, so the nature of that remake sort of made sense, but I don’t think it’s remembered all that fondly anymore. Mulan, Peter Pan and Wendy, and The Little Mermaid were all controversial for varying reasons, and it was clear in the marketing for all three that they were not going to offer radically different takes on the stories of the originals, which were all still great in their own rights. At least in cases like Maleficent and, later, Cruella (yet another Dalmatians attempt) those films took a slightly different approach and told the same story more from the villain’s perspective with strong actresses in those roles. Even still, it doesn’t exactly provide a great reason to do the same thing over yet again.

In 2019 there was also the Lady and the Tramp remake, with CGI dogs pushing a CGI meatball around on a CGI plate of spaghetti, and for some reason it was released straight to Disney+ without a theatrical release. The whole Disney+ situation makes me raise my eyebrows a little in relation to this topic. If all these live-action movies were just put straight on the streaming service, I probably wouldn’t care so much. That was the case with the animated sequels of the 90’s and 2000’s; they went straight to home video, so we all knew they weren’t going to be on the same level of quality as the theatrically released originals. Now, these remakes are being propped up as major movie-going events, and it’s so they can keep sustaining the insanely high budgets on which they get made. Pinocchio, which came out in 2022, was made on a 150-million-dollar budget—and yet, it was only released straight to Disney+! Why are some getting major releases and some are not, even when they all cost an arm and a leg? It might be to draw interest to the Disney streaming service, but based on reviews, I wouldn’t say Pinocchio was successful in doing that.

So, what’s next for Disney? In 2025, we’re getting Snow White and Lilo & Stitch, then the following year it’s Moana and potentially Hercules (it may be delayed to 2026), with Aristocats, Bambi, and Robin Hood all in stages of development, too. Snow White seemed the likeliest candidate for the remake treatment, given it’s a classic, but the original animated film (literally the original: the first Walt Disney animated feature) is arguably a bit dated, and like Jungle Book, rife with possibility for expansion. But Lilo & Stitch? It just doesn’t lend itself to live-action/CGI, to me, and once again, the original is so good there’s no need to redo it—except, have you seen how much Lilo & Stitch merchandise is out there? There’s probably more Stitch merch available now than when the original movie came out! I guess they have to capitalize on the baffling surge in popularity. Moana is also a befuddling choice, considering the already entirely unnecessary animated sequel just came out, and the original is 1) not old and outdated, 2) yet again, perfectly excellent and not needing a patch or an update.

It’s not just Disney who are guilty of these pointless regurgitations anymore. How to Train Your Dragon, a fantastic animated film based on the children’s book series of the same name, is getting a live-action remake next year, with the same director and at least one of the same cast members. I do not see the point when the movie is already excellent. There’s little to no chance they will be able to outdo their first attempt, but that isn’t the primary reason for remaking it, is it? I think the palpably cynical nature of these remakes is what’s starting to get to me. Ones like Bambi I guess I can understand, because that movie is so old and to just remake it in traditional animation would likely seem even more pointless than trying to use photorealistic CGI to bring the talking woodland animals to life, but even still, why not just make something different? Instead of Bambi’s mom getting shot, how about Bambi’s mom shoots the hunter? Let’s bring back the creativity that is rapidly disappearing.

With Disney owning all of Marvel except Spider-Man, plus Alien, Predator, Planet of the Apes, and much, much more, it’s extra frustrating that in addition to endless sequels (see: Pixar release slate) they are tossing out ever more inane remakes, and they aren’t going to stop as long as people keep watching them and helping them make money. It goes beyond using recognizable titles and characters; the same stories are being told over and over, adding no value and nothing new. I think eventually audiences will get sick of this trend, much like how horror movie fans got sick of the endless remakes in the 2000s, and eventually we will get back to more original Disney productions, but perhaps not until every potential animated film has been tapped for a live-action/photorealistic CGI retelling—and even then, the cycle could just start over, and we’ll be watching yet another remake of The Jungle Book in 2036…