I have a dreadful confession to make.  Not just to make, but to share, since you, dear reader, to the extent you might consider yourself a fanboy, are complicit.

I am—or as I prefer to put it, we are—really incredibly spoiled.  In the last six years Hollywood has catered to me as if I was some sort of conquering Hun, eager to offer whatever they think might please me to avoid the plundering of their fortunes and the pillaging of their women.  Since 1999, there’ve been three Matrix movies, two Spider-Man movies, two X-Men movies, all three Lord of the Rings movies, two Star Wars movies, two James Bond movies, three movies based on Alan Moore creations, Daredevil, Elektra, The Punisher, Man-Thing—and I can’t even begin to count the movies based on video games, fondly remembered TV shows, and minor ephemera I might have appreciated when I was a kid.  (Admittedly, Pop Rocks: The Movie with Rob Schneider, Christian Slater, and Frankie Muniz as “the exploded kid” went direct to video, but it—like, God help us, Man-Thing—still counts.)  Sadly, I can no longer sit here and hate the baby boomers for the noxious way they hogged the popular culture.  It is my generation now—the guys reading comic books and playing Pong—that Hollywood must cater to if it wants all my hard-earned money.  Fortunately, since it is nearly impossible for me to own a home, plan for my future, or produce offspring that won’t turn out to be illiterate child rapists—thanks to those very same damn undying baby boomers—I have lots and lots of money to give those who choose to pander to me.

And yet, I must be spoiled because I can barely get excited about this summer at all, despite there being The Fantastic Four, Batman Begins, and Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.  In fact, in order to goose up my preview of this summer, I had to pretend summer started on April 1 so I could include Sin City and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Little wonder that Watchmen and V For Vendetta are under way—with several of the geek holy grails (in the form of X-2 and Lord of the Rings Commemorative Slurpee Cups) delivered to us, the stakes for our Hollywood dollars are only getting more desperate.  I feel completely comfortable in predicting Brad Pitt will be playing Thor by 2007, Jude Law will be doing the big-screen remake of The Gemini Man by 2008, Angelina Jolie will be playing Promethea by 2010, and Ashton Kutcher will be playing The Man From Atlantis by the middle of next year.  But will we even care?  Will Bruce Willis playing Batman in the The Dark Knight Returns (directed by Martin Scorsese) rouse anything but a heavy-lidded half-sneer from our imperious lips?  When my beloved Skull The Slayer (starring James Caviezel) ends up as a Sci-Fi Original Movie, will I even be bothered to tune in?  Guards! Summon my Vizier! Let him decide for me!

Anyway, with those delusions of grandeur out of the way, let’s look at Fanboy Hollywood Summer 2005.

April, 2005

Film:  Sin City
Comic/Remake/ Sequel/Other:  Comic
Potential Faithfulness Factor:  99.9%
Cool Casting Factor:  10.0
Commemorative Slurpee Cup?  No.
Toys?  Yes

Notes: If there’s a problem with this adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic, it’s that it seems almost too ambitious.  It’d be one thing if it adapted just the first graphic novel, but it looks like it will adapt at least three of them, and a number of the short stories.  The other problem with this film?  What if it’s the best movie of the summer and I’ve seen it by April 2nd?

Film: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Comic/Remake/Sequel/Other:  Other
Potential Faithfulness Factor:  75%?
Cool Casting Factor:  7.5
Commemorative Slurpee Cup?  Not as far as I can tell.
Toys? I’m guessing yes.

Notes:  I wasn’t excited about this, despite the Hitchhiker trilogy being the funniest thing to come out of England since Monty Python.  And then I recently saw The Office and then learned the guy who played Tim in that is Arthur Dent in this.  While none of the publicity stills look anything like I’d imagined (and it seems to me one character is missing an extra noggin), Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell and Mos Def are all under-utilized talents and it could be a truly wonderful grouping.  Not exactly Nerd nirvana, but it’s got potential, I guess.

Film:  XXX: State of the Union
Comic/Remake/Sequel/Other:  Sequel
Potential Faithfulness Factor:  20%
Cool Casting Factor: 1.5
Commemorative Slurpee Cup?  Bah, even Mountain Dew wouldn’t touch this one.
Toys?  Thank God, no.

Notes:  You would’ve thought the XXX franchise would have been built around Vin Diesel, the extreme athelete turned superspy from the first film.  Nope.  Apparently, the real hero of XXX is Samuel L. Jackson, the guy with the silly-ass scar who recruited Diesel.  In this film, he recruits Ice Cube to help bust up Willem Dafoe’s terrorist ring.  Sadly, “bust up Willem Dafoe’s terrorist ring” isn’t a clever euphemism for gay sex: that would be more interesting than watching Cube, who’s moved on to stuff like Barbershop and Are We There Yet?, act like a reluctant action hero.

May, 2005

Film:  Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Comic/Remake/Sequel/Other:  Sequel
Potential Faithfulness Factor:  Well George Lucas wrote and directed it, so let’s say 50/50
Cool Casting Factor: 3.2
Commemorative Slurpee Cup? How could there not be?
Toys?  Hahahahahahahaha!

Notes:  Okay, on the one hand, Lucas is closing up his Star Wars series with the end of the first trilogy and completing his cosmic six-pack and that’s a good thing.  The Attack of the Clones was, I thought, less assy than The Phantom Menace.  And there are supposed to be wookies (and maybe even Chewbacca if rumors are to be believed).  And Lucas is saying the right things, like “much darker than any of the other films,” and “this movie ends in Hell.”  On the other hand, we shouldn’t believe that just because Lucas says something, he still has the skill to successfully film it.  He probably said Menace would have “an epic sweep,” and Clones a “passionate love story,” when all they really had, respectively, was Darth Maul and a pretty cool fight scene between Yoda and Saruman.  Since this third movie is building to the big Anakin/Obi Wan fight scene, maybe that’s all we need, but it would be nice if I could care, too.  Oh, and a Commemorative Slurpee Cup, please!

June, 2005

Film:  Batman Begins
Comic/Remake/Sequel/Other:  Pretty much the first three.
Potential Faithfulness Factor:  80%
Cool Casting Factor: 8.0
Commemorative Slurpee Cup?  If only it ended at the Commemorative Slurpee Cups!
Toys?  Where does he get those wonderful toys?

Notes:  These guys have already given me my favorite film version of Batman in their first trailer.  I listen to Christian Bale whisper “I went around the world…” and I think I’m hearing the driven shell of a man searching for the one thing that will give his life meaning.  I have my worries—when Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman are all in the same movie, it’s safe to say the filmmakers are trying too hard to make you take them seriously, and the Batsuit is still too Schumacheresque—but if the filmmakers keep the villains from swamping the movie (Superhero Movie Problem 101 which goes all the way back, ironically, to Batman) it could be great.  I really believe that.

Film(s):  Bewitched/ The Dukes of Hazzard/ Herbie: Fully Loaded
Comic/Remake/Sequel/Other: Remake, remake, maybe sequel
Potential Faithfulness Factor: 20%, 80%, 30%
Cool Casting Factor: If you watch ET, they make it seem like 10.0
Commemorative Slurpee Cup?  No, but I bet the last two will have lots of NASCAR tie-ins.
Toys?  I doubt it for Bewitched, but everything else is a go.

Notes:  This is what Hollywood would be like without the comic book fanboy revolution—throwing lots of money at celebs to appear in stuff that most of us find pretty minor.  I can’t tell if the reports that there was “fierce competition” for the role of Daisy Duke (played by Jessica Simpson) are just lies, or a very sad commentary on how little Hollywood has to offer anyone any more.  My life-long crush on Elizabeth Montgomery will have me first in line at the theater for Bewitched…but whether it’s to see the movie or burn the place down, I still haven’t decided.  Fully Loaded is Herbie’s seventh movie—hopefully he and James Bond can team up next summer—and how sad is it that Michael Keaton has a role in it? It’s Batman meets Herbie, but he’s not even Batman! So sad.

July, 2005

Film: War of the Worlds
Comic/Remake/Sequel/Other: Remake
Potential Faithfulness Factor: 20%
Cool Casting Factor:  Tom Cruise, but they cast him as an Earthling.
Commemorative Slurpee Cup?  Martianburgers at Mickey D’s, everyone?
Toys?  Yes, Tom Cruise.  Oh, wait.  I thought that read “tools.”  My mistake.

Notes:  Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise try to adapt the second volume of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen without paying Alan Moore.  (Watch your sleeves, guys!  He’s a magician!)  Tom Cruise tries for an Oscar by putting his acting skills to the test and playing an ordinary family man.  As far as I can tell, the big motivation for Cruise and Spielberg to make this was seeing a weak Fourth of July and the chance to cynically reap hundreds of millions of dollars.  In short, sounds great!  I can’t wait to see it!

Film:  Fantastic Four
Comic/Remake/Sequel/Other: Comic
Potential Faithfulness Factor: 40% (Ha! Get it?)
Cool Casting Factor: Michael Chilkis as The Thing, otherwise 0.0
Commemorative Slurpee Cup?  Avi Arad will pour the Slurpee himself if you’ll see the movie!
Toys?  After Talking Hulk Hands made The Hulk profitable?  Try and stop the toys!

Notes:  Even before The Incredibles delivered the creative equivalent of a slow motion kung-fu death blow to this film, it was in trouble.  Remember that movie Taxi with Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah? We had free passes for that movie here at CE, and nobody wanted them.  That’s the movie the Fantastic Four director did before this one. I take some comfort in the idea that Hollywood still, forty years later, can’t keep up with the proliferate imagination of Jack Kirby, but it’s going to be a cold comfort in the fallout of this film’s floppitude.

Film: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Comic/Remake/Sequel/Other: Remake
Potential Faithfulness Factor: 80%
Cool Casting Factor: The only thing saving me from drinking bleach is the cool casting factor.
Commemorative Slurpee Cup?  Hopefully, it will be a disquieting Commemorative Slurpee Cup.
Toys?  Did you know the first movie was considered such a failure because the Oompa-Loompa toys lost so much money?

Notes:  If it wasn’t for Tim Burton directing and Johnny Depp starring, they’d be cutting me down from the rafters by now.  The first film is, I think, a perfect children’s movie because it is a simple morality tale that gives the lie to simple morality tales (come on, you know by the film’s own logic, Charlie and Grandpa should’ve been cut to ribbons by those fans!) and because Willie Wonka is the Devil.  Oh sure, he’s also God too, but he is the Devil, and if there’s two guys who would really be aware of that, it’d be Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.  On the other hand—and I don’t think I’m overstating this here—Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes ass-raped my childhood.  So I’m a little uncomfortable with what he might do to our beloved Charlie…

August, 2005

Film: Doom
Potential Faithfulness Factor: 20%
Cool Casting Factor: The Rock is in it and isn’t even sure what role he’s playing. I’m hoping there’s just a close-up of his head at the bottom of the screen, and he grimaces every time the hero takes damage.  That’d be the most faithful video game adaptation ever!
Commemorative Slurpee Cup?  Doubtful.  Maybe you can get a promotional mouse pad from EBX if you’re lucky.
Toys?  In a just world, no.

Notes:  Every summer there’s always that one desperate, cheap movie tucked into August that blatantly panders to the fanboys.  (Freddy Vs. Jason, for example, was released on August 13, 2003).  It’s also the movie to let us know that summer that has officially ended and the studios will leave us geeks alone (until Christmas, which is the new summer, thanks to Lord of the Rings).  So this year, summer ends August 5, 2005 with the release of Doom, one of the greatest video games of all time destined to be a very stinky movie.  How do I know this?  The director has made three movies with DMX, two of which co-starred Jet Li and one of which co-starred Steven Seagal.  While I laud the creative chances he’s taking with Doom by not hiring a short, asthmatic rapper, there’s no chance this won’t stink.  Making a movie out of Doom is like making a movie out of a kid running around on a playground yelling “Pow, pow, pow, pow!” and making bomb sounds while rolling around in the dirt.  The kid had a great time doing it but that doesn’t mean he’s going to pay ten bucks to watch someone else do it.  There are video games with stories, you know, but I don’t think Hollywood has realized that.  Or maybe that’s just what they’ll turn to when us geeks finally stop going to their summer movies.  I can’t tell if that idea makes me happy or depressed.  Guards! Summon my vizier!  Let him decide for me!