OK, Oscars are done, our stupid movie release schedule overlap with the USA should be catching up, and the dry months of videogame releases are coming to a close. Let’s get hyped.
Well, here we are at the real beginning of a new commercial year of entertainment media, and it is astonishingly clear in terms of confirmed release dates or windows, particularly in light of the murky waters of the last two uncertain years. If I see one theme running through the suite of upcoming movies and videogames, it’s “Anything 2014 can do, 2015 can do bigger”. Yes, there are some real giants waiting to be awoken in 2015, most of which have not reached saturation point with audiences just yet. And they look positively mouth-watering. The question remains, however – will bigger equate to better in 2015? Here are my top ten most anticipated movies and games for this year.
NOTE: Because I’ve already devoted an entire post to Nintendo’s 2015 lineup, I’m going to disqualify them from my games list. Because, well, that wouldn’t be fair.
MOVIES
10. Chappie
Might as well start with a movie that’s actually really close to coming out in cinemas – next week, in fact. I certainly wasn’t alone in enjoying Neill Blomkamp’s Best Picture-nominated science fiction racism metaphor District 9, and I was more positive on his wealth gap themed follow-up Elysium than most people. But I do have to admit that the movies had a very similar feel, and from the looks of things Chappie is very much cut from the same cloth. It will need to do something pretty cool to stand out, and I look forward to finding out if it does.
9. Ant-Man
As the only superhero movie of 2015 that isn’t a sequel or reboot, Marvel’s Ant-Man could go one of two ways – it could expand Marvel’s ever-expanding Cinematic Universe with yet another breakout character, or it could flop and finally give the anti-superhero subsection of film critics some real ammunition. Losing a director as unique as Edgar Wright must not have been easy for the production, and it has everything to prove. Yet Marvel Studios has yet to really let fans down, and so Ant-Man well and truly has my attention.
8. The Good Dinosaur
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCVzj4f38_Q
After three consecutive years of huge (and really good) Boxing Day releases, Disney Animation Studios is taking a well deserved year off in 2015 to let Pixar take the 3D animation spotlight, with a pair of films to boot. The Good Dinosaur is half of said pair, and it seems to be taking an unorthodox approach to the well-worn prehistoric setting of animated family movies, asking the question of how things might have gone had dinosaurs lived alongside early humans with sufficiently less intelligence than themselves. It’s the less interesting of the two 2015 Pixar outings for me, but I’m ready to be optimistic about Pixar again, so bring it on.
7. Tomorrowland
Speaking of Disney, George Clooney’s Tomorrowland is also coming this year. Intentionally shrouded in an advertising campaign that seems to be giving nothing away, Tomorrowland is refreshingly mysterious for a Disney movie at the time of writing – scratch that – it’s refreshingly mysterious for any big movie in today’s day and age at the time of writing, and it seems poised to deliver a wondrous fantasy experience. I just hope that was the last of the trailers.
6. Jurassic World
Though I wouldn’t call myself the world’s biggest Jurassic Park fanatic, I definitely enjoyed the movies as a kid, and fourth film in the series Jurassic World is generating so much hype at the moment that it is taking on “event movie” status, and therefore attracting me like a moth to a flame. It hits right around the middle of the year and seems to be filled with set piece moments ripe for discussion. Oh, and Chris Pratt. count me in.
Vagrant Rant 