15.World Invasion: Battle LA
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Peña, Bridget Moynahan
Director: Justin Lin
Release Date: 11th March 2011
A Marine platoon faces off against an alien invasion in Los Angeles. The director of Darkness Falls and T’ C’ Massacre: The Beginning is shooting in the Saving Private Ryan handheld style. Hopefully this will be the
Black Hawk Down + Independence Day – Jokes it promises. Think large alien ships similar to a Borg cube / Klingon war bird shooting helicopters out of the sky and 8 foot bi-ped creatures street-fighting with the army. The Comic-Con footage went down well. The movie’s probably fairly good as it put Liebesman in the running for the Superman job.
14.Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Josh Holloway
Director: Brad Bird
Release Date: 16th December 2011
Remember the sofa jump and Cruise’s public dumping by Paramount? Well, they made up. JJ Abrams, who directed the third movie, stays on board as producer, giving helming duties to Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille). It’s a risky choice of director, the last live-action leap made by a Pixar pro gave us Jonah Hex. The villains are played by Michael Nyqvist (09′s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) Léa Seydoux (Inglourious Basterds) and Anil Kapoor (Slumdog Millionaire). Hopefully Mission Impossible 4 will remember it’s about the team not the individual (M:I2) and not get sidetracked by boring girlfriend issues (M:I3).
13.The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (U.S. Remake)
Starring: Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Stellan Skarsgård, Robin Wright, Julian Sands
Director: David Fincher
Release Date: 21st December 2011
Director David Fincher’s on fire after The Social Network and he’s cast the woman who played Zuckerberg’s girlfriend as the lead in this remake of the Swedish phenomenon. It’s based on the first in a series of three novels penned by an author who died before they were published. Dragon Tattoo is a detective story about a disgraced journalist (Daniel Craig) searching for a long-missing woman, assisted by an emo hacker with serious man issues. I didn’t find the Swedish original much better than your average Ashley Judd/Morgan Freeman thriller. I doubt the material would have attracted someone of Fincher’s talent without the huge following it has. P.S. The vital-to-the-mystery family tree in the Swedish original was confusing, hope they sort that out.
12.Rise Of The Apes
Starring: James Franco, Freida Pinto, Andy Serkis, Tom Felton, Brian Cox, John Lithgow
Director: Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist)
Release Date: 24th June 2011
It’s the prequel/reboot that nobody asked for. Rise is an origin story set in present day San Francisco, where experiments with genetic engineering create intelligent apes and trigger a war for supremacy. It’s primarily about the relationship between Dr. Rodman (Franco), who’s trying to find the cure for his father’s Alzheimer, and the most developed ape, Caesar. Sounds like a mega budget Monkey Shines. It will be interesting to see Tom Felton in a large non-Draco role, although he is still playing a evil son, this time his evil daddy is Brian Cox. We didn’t think much of Burton’s Planet Of The Apes, but this is a different kind of movie. Andy Serkis is playing a monkey, of course.
11.Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon (Transformers 3)
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, Patrick Dempsey
Director: Michael Bay
Release Date: 1st July 2011
Megan Fox’s public insulting of Michael Bay has led to her getting fired from the series and replaced by newcomer-model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who plays Carly. The plot revolves around the space race and how The Transformers were involved in it right from the beginning. So real 60s history is being rewritten. Will it turn out Megatron assassinated JFK? We were left exhausted and bored by Transformers 2, this series is so inherently cool we’re waiting for someone else to take charge and concentrate on the interplay between the Transformers rather than Shia LaBeouf trying to score and hiding under a table.
10. Cowboys And Aliens
Starring: Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell
Director: Jon Favreau
Release Date: 29th July 2011
Most people were sold on this movie on its title alone – it’s about as high concept as it gets. Cowboys. Aliens. Throw in James Bond, Indiana Jones and
Miss Tron and you have the kind of movie that makes geek crowds go nuts. Director Jon Favreau is coming off the lukewarm reception to the somewhat disappointing Iron Man 2. We’re hoping for a return to form. ‘Lost’ scribe Damon Lindelof has helped out in the writing department, so his nerdcore sensibilities should shine through too. Cowboys. Aliens.
9. Thor
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston, Rene Russo
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Release Date: 29th July 2011
With the mighty Thor hitting theatres, we are one step closer to The Avengers, which we’ve been impatiently waiting for since a badass in an eyepatch broke into Tony Stark’s house. But more than just a stepping stone to a bigger picture, Thor is a different breed of Superhero movie. Sure, there’s a cape or two, and people punch things in the name of truth and justice, but the mythic side of Thor is pretty much unprecedented in the world of superhero movies, and now that we’ve seen stills and that leaked SDCC trailer, we could not be more excited to see what the god of thunder has in store for us.
8. Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark
Starring: Bailee Madison, Guy Pearce, Katie Holmes
Director: Troy Nixey (first timer, Guillermo del Toro ‘protege’)
Release Date: TBC 2011
It’s a conventional horror premise – young girl sent to live with her father (Pearce), and new girlfriend, discovers creatures in the home who want to claim her as one of their own. But the presence of Guillermo del Toro as hands-on co-writer/co-producer should elevate this to something genuinely unnerving. The filmmakers were going for a PG-13 but got rated R for ‘pervasive scariness.’ It’s a remake of a 1973 made-for-TV film that few will remember. Good to see Guy Pearce getting some mainstream work again.
7. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Anna Kendrick
Director: Bill Condon (Dreamgirls)
Release Date: 18th November 2011
Boy, did we get moaned at for not having Twilight on our list last year. Well I hope you’re happy. Me? I’m confused. One of the votes in this Movie-Moron writers poll was for ‘Twishite: Breaking Dawn’ which was presumably a typo, and the other had the following to say: “2011 looks so crappy that I’d rather laugh and yawn through Twilight than watch most of that list.”
6. X-Men: First Class
Starring: James McAvoy, Kevin Bacon, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Release Date: 3rd June 2011
The X-Men franchise wasn’t on the boil for long. Bryan Singer’s semi-good X-Men was the movie that kicked off the superhero boom at the turn of the century, its sequel remains one of the best superhero movies ever made, but the third movie was weak and spinoff Wolverine fared no better. But wait, here comes Matthew Vaughn, the director of the excellent Kick-Ass, to tackle an X-Men prequel. And Kevin Bacon is the villain. Ok they started shooting without a finished script. And the 60s set images look a bit Austin Powers. It’s hard to know how this will turn out, but there are more positives than negatives and we have a lot of faith in Vaughn.
5. Scream 4
Starring: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts
Director: Wes Craven
Release Date: 15th April 2011
Scream transformed the horror landscape when it came out in ’96, kicking off the second slasher cycle (the first was after Halloween) and bringing a truly unique tone to the genre. Brilliantly directed as it was, it was Kevin Williamson’s script that really was a cut above. Scream 2 was largely a success too. Then the studio stupidly booted Williamson for the third instalment and the result was something like a Scooby Doo episode. We’re excited about Scream 4 because Williamson is back, and there are 10 years of horror movies (from Asian ghost movies to torture porn) to riff off, in that clever but still frightening way. It’s going to be interesting to see how the clearly-too-old-to-be-doing-this cast (Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox) is melded with the new generation (Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere etc). Will they kill off Sidney Prescott?
4. Fast Five (Fast & Furious 5)
Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson
Director: Justin Lin
Release Date: 29th April 2011
Fast & Furious (4) felt like a last role of the dice for Vin Diesel’s career as a leading man, but it paid off huge at the box office. So now he’s sticking around to be joined by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and the co-star of 2 Fast 2 Furious, Tyrese Gibson. The plot sees former cop Brian (Walker) and Mia (Brewster) break Dom out of custody and flee to Brazil where they must pull one last job to gain their freedom. But a hard-nosed federal agent (Johnson) is on their trail. The director handled the previous two instalments so you can expect much of the same, with a bit of samba
3.The Hangover 2
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong
Director: Todd Phillips (The Hangover)
Release Date: 26th May 2011
The gang are heading to Thailand. It’s rumoured that the plot revolves around dentist Stu sleeping with a Thai ladyboy. The first movie deserved its success, working as both a laugh out loud comedy and fun unpredictable mystery. In order to keep the original characters in this one (including the Korean gangster), and have the scenario repeat itself, expect unlikely coincidence to be pushed well beyond where it was in the first movie.
2.Captain America: The First Avenger
Starring: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci
Director: Joe Johnston
Release Date: 22nd July 2011
During World War II, Steve Rogers (Evans) volunteers for a top secret research project that turns him into Captain America, a superhero dedicated to defending America’s ideals. His enhanced body enables him to survive being accidentally frozen for several decades. He is thawed in the present day, where he continues his fight with skull-faced Nazi ‘Red Skull’ (Weaving). This is Marvel’s first period movie then, at least in part. Chris Evans was a surprising choice, since he was already known for playing the much-more-physically-suited-to-him Johnny Storm in The Fantastic Four. Most now accept Evans as Cap. But not all. We’d be more relaxed if director Joe Johnston’s last movie The Wolfman wasn’t an expensive mess. Why isn’t this being released on July 4th?1. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Bill Nighy, John Hurt
Director: David Yates
Release Date: 15th July 2011
Some will be upset that this hasn’t been put higher on this list, but amongst the writers here there’s a feeling the series has dragged on for
slightly too long (8 movies now). Nonetheless expect this to be a rousing finale to one of the most spectacular film series ever made. Harry, Ron, and Hermione go back to Hogwarts to find and destroy Voldemort’s final horcruxes, but when ‘Ol Snake Nose finds out about their mission you can expect to see school totally trashed by Harry and foe firing enough bolts at each other to keep local glaziers in work for years. In fact their fight sequence will reportedly expand on what’s witnessed in the book. Even though Part 1 missed out on 3D, Part 2 will probably be converted in time.
