Eric D. Snider
Scientists predict that many films will be released in 2018, continuing a trend that has endured since the beginning of cinema, well over 10 years ago. What will some of these movies be? They will be these!
Your 2018 Movie Preview
1/12 Paddington 2 — Everyone’s second or third favorite talking bear returns. (Interesting note: in England, a “bear” is a member of the Ursidae family of animals, not a large hairy gay man.)
2/9 Fifty Shades Freed — Anastasia gets pregnant; Christian makes the fetus sign consent forms in utero.
2/16 Black Panther — After making movies where the superheroes were aliens, demons, gods, billionaires, and scientists, Marvel decides it’s finally safe to make one where they’re black.
3/2 Death Wish — Bruce Willis becomes a criminal-killing vigilante after an attack on his family. I’m old enough to remember when someone in his situation would just take out three billboards.
3/9 A Wrinkle in Time — Youths cavort through time and space — probably looking for Pokemons, amirite? Anyway, Oprah is involved.
3/9 Gnome Alone; 3/23 Sherlock Gnomes — There are two animated films about garden gnomes coming out in March, thanks to the Trump administration’s rolling back of job-killing anti-pun cartoon regulations. #MAGA
3/16 Tomb Raider — Not-Angelina Jolie stars in this reboot of not-Indiana Jones, based on the not-Frogger video games.
3/23 Pacific Rim Uprising — Giant monsters fight each other.
3/30 Ready Player One — At last, someone has made a movie containing references to the obscure decade of “the 1980s.”
4/20 Rampage — Giant monsters fight each other.
5/4 Avengers: Infinity War — Superheroes fight each other.
5/25 Solo: A Star Wars Story — Presumably we’ll find out how young Han Solo met Chewbacca, how he got that scar, why he hates snakes, etc.
6/1 Deadpool 2 — Superheroes fight each other while swearing.
6/8 Ocean’s 8 — An octet of women plan a heist EVEN THOUGH none of the women are men.
6/15 Incredibles 2 — Here’s hoping the plot is about superheroes living in a world where everyone’s tired of superhero movies.
6/22 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom — The pitch: “OK, I know the dinosaurs get loose every time, but hear me out. What if THIS time the dinosaurs ALSO get loose, again?”
7/6 Ant-Man and the Wasp — That’s “wasp” as in a lady who can shrink to the size of a bug and fly around, not White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. That would be ridiculous.
7/13 Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation — Someone tell Netflix that Adam Sandler has escaped the quarantine.
7/20 Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again — The sequel promises to include more of your favorite ABBA songs– what’s that? Every ABBA song you like was already in the first one? Ha ha, sucks to be you.
9/21 Robin Hood — A do-gooder tries to help poor people, in what Paul Ryan is already calling the scariest movie of the year.
10/19 Halloween — Laurie Strode and Michael Myers celebrate 40 years of killing each other. Laurie and Michael: the Itchy and Scratchy of slasher movies.
10/19 Mowgli — They changed the title so you wouldn’t think it’s just another Jungle Book, but it’s just another Jungle Book.
11/2 X-Men: Dark Phoenix — With almost 30 minutes having passed since the last X-Men movie, it was urgent that another be rushed into production. This one’s about the time there was a blackout in Arizona.
11/16 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald — Well, let’s see, he beat up his girlfriend, he assaulted a security guard, he made a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie…
12/21 Aquaman — The fourth most interesting character in the franchise gets his own spinoff.
12/21 Bumblebee: The Movie — Ditto.
12/28 Mary Poppins Returns — And she’s pissed!
NOTE: While no Fast and the Furious sequel appears on the 2018 schedule at the moment, we assume this is an oversight and that it will be announced shortly.
Eric D. Snider lives in Portland, likes movies (some of them).
