Mulan (March 27)
Okay, I’m not opposed to the Disney remakes, but I’m never really sold on them either. They never disappoint but they never really blow me away either. In full disclosure, I only watched Mulan once and never really bothered to go back, as blasphemous as that sounds. The trailer for this one though, oh boy! Got full body chills watching this shit. Mulan trying to save her family, the action, the villains, the period piece set decor and costumes, everything looks amazing. I guess there’s some dissent over the Phoenix vs the Dragon, but honestly, my memory of the animated one is spotty at best and I was never invested enough to care very much.
As the only Disney remake on the slate next year, Mulan is going to make a killing no matter what, but I think that Disney is banking on Mulan being a critical success as well. Given what I’m seeing from this goosebump inducing trailer, I think they’ve bet correctly.
Black Widow (May 1)
The post Avengers MCU is still a bit of a wild card and the fact that the ‘first’ (did Far From Home really count?) movie of the new era is a flashback to the 90’s makes things even weirder. Natasha Romanoff has more than earned her solo film but given the results of Endgame, it seemed like that was gonna be a dream of the past. Let us flashback to the 90’s though and suddenly we got ourselves a solo outing! Given what we’ve seen from this trailer, the Black Widow moniker is not in any danger of going extinct.
Atypical of a Marvel film, we’ve got big action, funny jokes, awesome set pieces, and an abundance of character development for our heroes. There seems to be a lot of tie in between Endgame Widow and 90’s era Widow given the footage we’ve seen and we even get treated to David Harbour as Red Guardian and an RDJ cameo as Tony Stark even though the timeline seemingly makes absolutely no sense at the moment. All of this adds up to being a summer banger! Marvel movies always make the list of things to watch but finally getting to see the Widow in her own project is just a little extra wonderful.
Top Gun: Maverick (Jun 26)
We don’t really need to talk about this, you just need to watch the trailer. 4 G burnouts, aerial acrobats, the Maverick namedrop, BEACH VOLLEYBALL, it’s all here. It’s all here in all its absolute glory and I couldn’t be more excited for this baby. God, I hope they de-age Anthony Edwards for a Goose flashback cameo.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (July 10)
Avoid the black hole argument that has been stemming from this film and let’s just talk about the trailer. A) Paul Rudd (already have my money), B) Stranger Things vibe, ironically with Finn Wolfhard on the cast, C) The kids of the old crew which means the old crew is gonna show up, and D) Doesn’t show a god damn ghost and no one cares. This may be a case of misleading trailers but I really don’t think so. I think this is going to be just terrific and I’m itching for this bad boy.