5 Highly Anticipated Films Of 2015 (Or How We Millennials Ruined Hollywood)
Alright America, the Oscars are over and it’s shitty movie season again. Have you seen Focus or Hot Tub TIme Machine 2? If you have, I’m sorry for your empty life. Help is available. Luckily, we only have to wait a week until Cinderella proves to be a huge letdown, or two months until The Avengers: Age of Scantron launches us into the kickass blockbuster season. This year is set to be huge for movies; Many of them are expected to crush the previous box office records, because you bet your ass I’m gonna pay to see big green Mark Ruffalo beat the shit out of RDJ! But if you think about it, all of these films are gonna feel kinda patronizing, almost downright insulting. Why? Well, all of them will desperately pander to our unhealthy nostalgia for our childhoods. Hollywood knows we’ll do anything, including eviscerate our wallets, for a piece of that nostalgia. It’s almost like we’re paying to resurrect the 90s.
Actually, that’s exactly what we’re doing. It’s pretty simple: Production companies decide what’s made largely based on what’s popular, and everything that’s popular today equals “what’s trending on the internet?” That’s why Grumpy Cat got her own movie and Liam Neeson sacrificed his career in so many goddamn Taken films. We love our internet memes so much that we’ll throw cash at them if they’re on a different screen. It’s why I won’t be surprised if they make What Color Is The Dress? starring Julia Fucking Roberts.
You know what you see a lot of nowadays on the interwebs? Nostalgia pieces. “5 Reasons the 90s Were Just SOO Amazing,” “Porn That Only 90s Kids Will Understand,” “10 Things We Miss About Our Awful Childhoods,” etc. They’re everywhere and our generation eats that garbage up. But it’s true: being an adult totally sucks. It would be amazing to be a kid again.
Hollywood has noticed, and hoooly shit did they recognize a cash cow when they saw it. Guess how many of 2014’s Best Picture nominees were among the top 16 grossing films of that year. Zero. People only went to see Birdman after it won and only saw American Sniper because Bill O’Reilly told them to. Among that top 16: Maleficent, Godzilla, Teenage Mutant Ninja Suckage, The Lego Movie, The Less-Than Amazing Spider-Man 2, Transformers, and X-Men: Ghost of Christmas Past. X-Men was the only decent one those (choke on dicks, Brett Ratner), and two of them were Michael Bay films (shame on us). All of them were based on things we loved as kids. 2015 will be just as bad, if not worse, and these are only a few culprits to watch:
Cinderella (March)
This is out next week and falls into shitty film season, but it’s still worth mentioning since a bunch of people are going to see it like they did Maleficent. The original Disney Cinderella came out in 1950, or before some of our parents were born. You still watched it in the 90s, don’t lie. You also watched Whoopi Goldberg in the 1997 musical, Drew Barrymore in 1998’s Ever After, and Hillary Duff sing something in 2004’s A Cinderella Story. Millennial ladies fucking loved Cinderella as kids, and they’ll pay to see this remake for sure. Nevermind the anti-feminist overtones that no modern revision is ever going to purge, or that the story has been done millions of times. Not only will it be completely unnecessary, it will also have Cate Blanchett once again being snarky and Helena-Bonham Carter once again being quirky. Oh, Robb Stark is in it and my greatest hope is that we get another Red Wedding scene. Picture him being mercilessly stabbed, only this time with a broken glass slipper. I’d go to that movie.
Tomorrowland (May)
Disney again! This one is unique in that it’s not based on a TV show or film from our childhoods, but instead a place: Disneyland. It’s derived from a theme-park that we all loved or at least really wanted to visit when we were kids. It also serves as a commercial for children today, the only difference being that it’s going to be an expensive, voluntary, two hour commercial. To be fair, it’s not the first Disney film-based-on-a-park-attraction gimmick. Pirates of the Caribbean already played that card. But its a sign that Disney is going to continue this shit forever, and ever, and happily ever after. I’ll complain, but I’ll also be the first in line (and high as balls) to see It’s A Small World: The Movie. You can tell from Tomorrowland’s trailer that every 20-something Tumblr addict is gonna drool all over this. Toss in George Clooney, and their moms will definitely pay to see it, too. Ka-ching!
Jurassic World (June)
Jurassic Park was that 90s movie every little boy just had to see. Dinosaurs running around causing chaos? Hell yeah, that’s what we lived for! I thought I was a T-Rex for years because of the awesomeness of that film. Then they followed it up with Jurassic Park: The Lost World and Jurassic Park: Eat Shit, Fanboys, and it just wasn’t the same. Since then, dudes have been living in disappointment and existential despair so bad that it’s probably why “meninism” exists. Then 2015 came along and decided to bring us the newest installment in June. Unfortunately, it is definitely going to be terrible. Tame raptors, goofy dialog, the ol’ genetic mutation cliche, and Ron Howard’s daughter. But none of that matters, because every man who is a man knew he was going to see the movie as soon as that piano started playing the original theme. It just called to our childhoods. And don’t worry guys. Chris Pratt, all buff and sexy from his Guardians of the Galaxy days, is the only excuse your girlfriend will need to see it with you.
Pan (July)
From the director that brought you boring period pieces like Pride and Prejudice and Hanna, a film about a little girl killing grown men with her fists, comes – actually, this guy sounds perfect to direct a Peter Pan reboot. Like Cinderella, the Peter Pan we all knew and loved as kids was an older film, but that didn’t stop us from watching it over and over. Combined with our undying adoration for 1991’s Hook, the character of Peter Pan will keep bringing us back to theaters and blowing our paychecks. It’s no coincidence the story is about a boy who never wants to grow up. Pan, like Jurassic World, looks like it will be awful. But younger millennials will see it because it has the adult star power of Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried, and, uh, a sexy pre-Captain… Captain Hook doing his best…Matthew McConaughey impression? Who the fuck is that guy? Rooney Mara is playing Tiger Lily, presumably just because she had a mohawk in Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and that’s close enough to “Vaguely Native-American” for Hollywood producer standards.
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (December)
You knew it would be here. Mothafuckin Star Wars, arguably the most successful and game-changing franchise ever made. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to be amazing or heartbreakingly awful; not a single person I know is planning on missing this movie. I wouldn’t know them if they were. It’s an unspoken but universal rule that you aren’t allowed to talk about pop culture or film history if you didn’t see the originals as a child. They are the end-all, be-all to kids’ science fiction, and we’ll miss our rent payments if it means we get to see Episode VII to relive those kiddy thrills.
Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher will all be back just to tickle that sense of nostalgia we love so much. And X-Wings, and TIE Fighters, and Storm Troopers, and HOLY SHIT THE MILLENNIUM FALCON! Damn I’m excited. The best part is that George Lucas, who created the original trilogy and subsequently kicked them (and us) in the balls/vaginas with the prequels, has nothing to do with the newest installments. Thank Yoda for that. So who’s behind the production this time? J.J. “Lens Flare” Abrams, and, you guessed it, DISNEY. Because Disney owned your pathetic childhood and they now own you forever. Walt is up there laughing his ass off at us, probably making God pay to watch reboots of Steamboat Willie.
It doesn’t end with 2015 though. Independence Day, Beauty and the Beast, Blade Runner, and Power Rangers are all getting reboots in the next few years. And that’s only a handful of examples. Alright, people, keep sharing those “200 Things Only People Born Between 1985 and 2005 Would Understand” articles and they might just remake Doug as some live-action, awful romcom for you. 
