In the wake of their defeat of Gozer, the Spengler family – Callie (Coon) and her children Trevor (Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Grace), together with Gary Grooberson (Rudd), Callie’s partner and awkward father figure to the two children – have returned to New York, moved into the original Ghostbusters firehouse and are continuing the business with funding from Winston Zeddemore (Hudson) and occult tech support from Ray Stanz (Aykroyd). Unfortunately, now-Mayor Walter Peck (Atherton) is still nursing a grudge, and uses the Ghostbusters’ ongoing record of property damage to threaten them with closure, also forcing the family to bench Phoebe as she is too young to be employed.
Directed by James Wan (Insidious) Starring Jason Momoa (Conan the Barbarian), Patrick Wilson (Moonfall), Amber Heard (Aquaman), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (The Matrix Ressurections), Randall Park (Ant-Man and the Wasp), Dolph Lundgren (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe), Temuera Morrison (Star Wars: Attack of the Clones), Martin Short (Innerspace) and Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge)
In the heyday of King Atlan, the king’s brother, Kordax (Pilou Asbæk, Uncharted) forged a Black Trident, using it to control the City of Necrus until he was defeated and bound with blood magic, his entire kingdom lost to history (and also geography.)
“War crimes!”
In the modern day, Black Manta (Abdul Mateen) discovers the trident in his quest for vengeance against Aquaman (Momoa) and becomes possessed by Kordax’s spirit. He seeks out Atlantean caches of orichalcum, an unstable energy source that releases hella greenhouse gases, and burns them to accelerate global warming and defrost Necrus from the Antarctic pack ice. He and his crew – including in-over-his-head scientist Stephen Shin (Park) and unaccountably zealous pilot Stingray (Jani Zhao, English language feature debut) – create a submarine with Necrus technology, including a sonic cannon that incapacitates Atlanteans.
Directed by Chris Buck (Frozen) and Fawn Veerasunthorn (directorial debut) Starring Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Chris Pine (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), Alan Tudyk (Moana), Angelique Cabral (The Perfect Family), Victor Garber (Legally Blonde), Natasha Rothwell (Sonic the Hedgehog), Jennifer Kumiyama (The Sessions), Harvey Guillén (Blue Beetle), Niko Vargas (feature debut), Della Saba (Ralph Breaks the Internet), Evan Peters (X-Men: First Class), Ramy Youssef (Poor Things) and Jon Rudnitsky (Home Again)
The Kingdom of Rosas is a haven of contentment, where the sorcery of King Magnifico (Pine) prevents the people being troubled by their unrealised dreams. Magnifico takes the deepest wishes of all his people and holds them, using his magic to grant one a month in a grand ceremony. Asha (DeBose) is a tour guide and general palace assistant, with ambitions to become the King’s apprentice, but her interview goes sour when Magnifico reveals that her grandfather Sabino’s (Garber) wish will never be granted, because ‘to do something that inspires people’ is too open ended and could provoke sedition.
Directed by Walt Dohrn (Trolls World Tour) Starring Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect), Justin Timberlake (Friends with Benefits), Eric André (Sing 2), Kid Cudi (Bill & Ted Face the Music), Daveed Diggs (Soul), Andrew Rannells (A Simple Favour), Amy Schumer (Trainwreck), Troye Sivan (Three Months), Kenan Thompson (Snakes on a Plane), Camila Cabello (Cinderella) and Zosia Mamet (The Last Keepers)
At the wedding of the Bergen King Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, How to Train Your Dragon) and Bridget (Zooey Deschanel, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), grumpy troll Branch (Timberlake) is unexpectedly reunited with his long-lost brother John Dory (Andre) who reveals that they, with brothers Spruce (Diggs), Clay (Cudi) and Floyd (Sivan), were once the boy band phenomenon Bro Zone. Now, Floyd has been kidnapped by fame-obsessed twins Velvet (Schumer) and Veneer (Rannells), who have him trapped in a diamond prison so that they can drain his voice to fuel their own performances.
Directed by Ben Wheatley (Sightseers) Starring Jason Statham (Spy), Wu Jing (English language debut, but many Chinese credits including The Wandering Earth), Sophia Cai (The Meg), Page Kennedy (Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood), Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Resident Evil: Afterlife), Melissanthi Mahut (Eurovision Song Contest), Skyler Samuels (The DUFF), Cliff Curtis (Avatar: The Way of Water) and Sienna Guillory (Resident Evil: Apocalypse)
After a brief intro of Megs wrecking dinosaurs in the wayback (largely included, I suspect, for the trailers,) we are reintroduced to widower Jonas Taylor (Statham), who in the gap between films married the now deceased Suyin Zhang (Li Bingbing, Resident Evil: Retribution) and is stepfather to her daughter Meiying (Cai). He works with Suyin’s brother Jiuming (Jing) studying the captive megalodon Haiqi in a facility in Hainan co-financed by definitely-not-a-villain Hillary Driscoll (Guillory) while overseeing continuing studies of the Trench where the Megs live from research platform Mana One. Jonas is concerned at Haiqi’s increasingly erratic behaviour, but Jiuming insists that he is building a rapport with the shark.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began life as a comic book written by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird as a parody of the superhero comics of the 1980s, and especially Daredevil, from which it took its recurring Ninja villains, dubbed the Foot to reflect Daredevil’s Hand. Its leads were mutated by chemicals, like Daredevil, but instead of being lawyers with superhearing, they were four anthropomorphised turtles, raised by a rat who had once belonged to a ninja master and given the names of Renaissance artists (Michaelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo and Donatello.) While a parody, the comics were originally as dark and bloody as any of their source material, although the brand was softened significantly by conversion into a Saturday morning cartoon from 1987.
Since then, the Turtles have gone through five comic titles, six Japanese manga titles and a daily comic strip syndicated in more than 250 newspapers. In addition to their own titles, they crossed over into others, including Usagi Yojimbo. They have had five animated series, a two-episode anime OVA and a live action series (Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation) which introduced a fifth, problematic female turtle named Venus de Milo and had a crossover with Power Rangers. They had a three-part, live-action film adaptation in the early 90s which brought us the highs of Partners in Kryme’s ‘Turtle Power’ and the lows of Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ninja Rap’, an animated movie in 2007, and a two part Michael Bay joint in 2014 and 2016.
The Latest Offering
2023 saw the Turtles back, this time in a claymation-themed CGI project spearheaded by actor Seth Rogen. This version focused more on a teenage coming of age narrative than on martial arts action, with the Turtles acting their age and recurring foil April O’Neil recast as a student journalist (also black and slightly overweight, instead of a curvy redhead, leading many definitely confirmed feminists to cry ginger erasure in the same way they didn’t when Bay cast brunette Megan Fox.)
Rogue scientist Baxter Stockman (Esposito) flees his employers, Techno Cosmic Research Institute in the hope of using his mutagenic ooze to create a family. A strike force sent by TCRI executive Cynthia Utrom (Rudolph) kills Stockman and spills ooze into the sewers before being killed by his first creation, and the spilled ooze mutates a rat and four baby turtles, the former, Splinter (Chan) deciding to raise the latter as his sons, naming them Donatello (Abbey), Michaelangelo (Brown), Leonardo (Cantu) and Raphael (Noon). He trains them in self-taught ninjitsu and commands them to hide from humans, who will hate and experiment on them.
“Opposites React” (also “Make a Splash”, “Get Blown Away”, “Get Fired Up” or “You’ll Dig It”, so I guess we know where all the taglines went now.)
Directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur) Starring Leah Lewis (The Half of It), Mamoudou Athie (Jurassic World: Dominion), Ronnie del Carmen (Soul), Shila Ommi (The Illegal), Wendi McLendon-Covey (Prom Pact) and Catherine O’Hara (Frankenweenie)
Element City is a cosmopolitan melting pot, where different elements live together, but separate. In theory, everyone is equal, but fire, the most recent arrivals, are looked on with suspicion as dangerous and undesireable neighbours. Bernie (del Carmen) and Cinder (Ommi) are two immigrants, fresh off the boat from Fireland, who set up a shop in the fire quarter and install their blue flame, a symbol of family and home, on the premises.
Marion’s original relationship with Indy is established in secondary canon to have taken place when she was around 15-16, and he was 25. This is creepy, whatever way you slice it. Purely in the context of the movie, however, she’s great, and the text by itself gives the impression that when she says ‘I was a child’ she is being more metaphorical than literal.
Okay, so 2023 brings us yet another franchise revival with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, so let’s get into it.
Indiana Jones was introduced to the world in Raiders of the Lost Ark, a 1981 film directed by Steven Spielberg (E.T.) and written by Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill) from a story by George Lucas (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace) and Philip Kaufman (Invasion of the Body Snatchers). Jones was a Professor of Archaeology and adventurer, dividing his time between awkwardly lecturing to lovestruck college students and, how does one put it, acquiring rare antiquities from archaeological sites via methods which may accord with contemporary praxis look a lot like tomb robbery to the modern eye. So it goes.
In Raiders, Jones (Ford) is tapped by the US Government in 1936 to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant, the chest holding the original fragments of the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments, ahead of a recovery effort by the Nazis. Jones is helped by old flame Marion (Karen Allen, National Lampoon’s Animal House) and his Egyptian friend Sallah (Rhys-Davies) as he infiltrates a dig at Tanis in Egypt, led by Belgian collaborator Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman, Centurion). He finds the Ark first, but Belloq and the Nazis, led by Colonel Dietrich (Wolf Kahler, Cockneys vs. Zombies) and Major Todt (Ronald Lacey, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Lacey also played Heinrich Himmler in The Last Crusade and Winston Churchill in Stalingrad) take it from him. He takes it back, they take it back, Belloq opens it and the power of god incinerates the Nazis.
The Franchise
This one gets very… white saviour.
Three years later, Lucas and Spielberg reunited to work on a prequel to Raiders, a Chinese set adventure with a lost valley of dinosaurs that, for reasons of filming permission, relocated to a haunted castle and then finally to rural India, where Indy – accompanied by nightclub singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw, Dreamscape) and his ward/sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All At Once) – was prevailed upon by the locals to confront a sort of Thugee revival led by the positively Satanic High Priest of Kali, Mola Ram (Amrish Puri, this being the sole English language entry of a truly impressive career in Hindi and other Indian language films) and retrieve a village’s kidnapped children, as well as a sacred Sankhara stone, said to bring prosperity to the village.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was a bit of a hot mess. It was a dark film – both literally and thematically, a fact attributed by both Lucas, as the story’s originator, and Spielberg to the psychological impact of their messy breakups – but also a rather silly film, and balanced the darker and lighter elements less deftly than Raiders. The shocked responses of parents taking their kids to Temple of Doom was a big influence on the creation of America’s PG-13 rating, and the film is a slightly uncomfortable watch because of the need to code shift so often. While many of the film’s Indian actors have defended it over the years as harmless fantasy, the darker tone quite probably contributed to a reputation for cultural appropriation and insensitivity.
On the other hand, the film’s use of models and matte paintings in its effects work was groundbreaking, and the mine cart chase remains the gold standard for ludicrous mine cart chases.
It’s those Nazis again.
The third installment very much went back to basics, with Nazis and Sallah and Indy’s academic friend Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott, A Room with a View) returning. This time, Indy was charged by philanthropist and definitely-not-the-baddy Walter Donovan (Julian Glover, Juggernaut) with tracking down not just the Holy Grail, but also the man who was previously looking for it, Indy’s father, Henry Jones (Sean Connery, Another Time, Another Place, during the filming of which he was threatened by and knocked down gangster Johnny Stompanado, because that’s the kind of shit that happened to old school actors.) Briefly assisted by Dr Elsa ‘Also Not a Baddy’ Schneider (Alison Doody, A View to a Kill), before she betrays him, Indy and his father follow clues the latter has assembled to find the Grail, only for it to fall into the earth when Elsa tries to take it from its resting place.
Three movies in just under a decade is hardly unusual, so why is this entry not just Rebourne, but Rebourne Again? Well…
In 2008, almost twenty years after The Last Crusade and on the far side of a TV series exploring the adventures of the young Henry ‘Indiana’ Jones Jr., the fourth cinematic installment arrived. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull brought Indy into the late 1950s, racing Soviet agents led by Colonel Dr Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, The House With a Clock in Its Walls) in the search for the source of a mysterious, elongated crystal skull with magnetic properties. This time accompanied by ‘Mutt’ Williams (Shia LaBoeuf, Transformers), old colleague Harold Oxley (William Hurt, Alien) and multiple agent Mac (Ray Winstone, Sexy Beast), and ultimately reunited with Marion, the film ended with the bad guys getting sucked into an alien dimensional portal, Indy and Marion getting married, and Mutt revealled as Indy’s son and possible successor, Henry Jones III (continuing a behind-the-scenes running gag about characters in the series being named after dogs, which went in-universe in Last Crusade.)
Of course, then LaBoeuf went off the rails, a series of critically lauded roles and increasingly eccentric public behaviours culminating in a number of outbursts linked to alcoholism and a very public allegation of abusing an ex-girlfriend. While never exactly cancelled, LaBoeuf was certainly no longer in the blockbuster space, and with reception to the character and the fourth film lukewarm at best – and the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney – there was another gap of fifteen years before the fifth film in the franchise appeared.
The Late(st) Sequel
Young at heart.
We begin with a flashback to 1944, where a deep-faked younger Indy and his friend Basil Shaw (Jones) try to steal the Lance of Longinus from a Nazi force abandoning a French castle. The Lance turns out to be a fake, but Jones and Nazi physicist Jurgen Voller both latch onto the presence of one half of the Antikythera mechanism – also refered to as Archimedes’ Dial – a machine created by Archimedes. Jones and Shaw manage to capture the dial during a fight on a moving train during an allied air strike.
Directed by James C. Strouse (The Incredible Jessica James) Starring Priyanka Chopra (The Matrix Resurrections), Sam Heughan (Bloodshot), Celine Dion (Muppets Most Wanted), Russel Tovey (The Hippopotamus), Steve Oram (Paddington), Omid Djalili (The Mummy) Sofia Barclay (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) and Lydia West (feature debut)
Children’s author Mira Ray (Chopra) is devastated by the death of her fiance in a hit and run. Encouraged by her sister, Suzy (Barclay), and avuncular diner owner Mohsen (Djalili), she begins to work through her grief by sending texts to her fiance’s number. By chance, that number has just been reassigned to the work phone of Rob Burns (Heughan), a Scot working at an American music magazine.
Robert Montague Renfield (Hoult) is the long-suffering familiar of Dracula (Cage), responsible for running errands, fighting off daytime vampire hunter attacks with his bug-fuelled superpowers and bringing the master food when he has drawn too much attention and forced them to flee to a new city after said daytime vampire hunter attacks have reduced Dracula to a crispy wreck. In the early 21st century, this has brought them to New Orleans, where Renfield attends a 12-step programme, led by Mark (Jones), for people in bad relationships and tries to feed Dracula the group members’ terrible exes.
The Bad Movie Marathon 