Fancast Summer Preview: The Big and the Loud

by Andy Hunsaker
Apr 15th, 2009 | 4:10 AM | Comments 0

Summer is the time for slammiest and bangiest of slam-bang action flicks, and 2009 is no exception. Here are the big, loud blockbusters of the season, kicking off on the first weekend in May.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Hugh Jackman returns as Logan, having shed the X-Men for a solo adventure with a new motley crew of mercenaries and black-ops agents, revealing the long life and dark secrets of the man who would be codenamed Wolverine, and how he came to be the metal-boned, claw-popping, mutton-chopped mutant he is. A large part of that will be his archenemy Sabertooth (Liev Schreiber), who is a constant reminder of just how nasty things can get.

Star Trek
J.J. Abrams long-awaited and much-anticipated revamp of the history of Gene Roddenberry’s much-beloved science fiction series is almost upon us, which tells us a tale of how the authority-bucking James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) grew from a daredevil kid into the captain of a Starfleet spaceship alongside a young half-Vulcan named Spock (Zachary Quinto) and a grouchy doctor called McCoy (Karl Urban).

Angels and Demons
Tom Hanks is back as Noted Symbologist Robert Langdon in Ron Howard’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code. This time, Noted Symbologist Robert Langdon has a more respectable haircut and is out to save the Catholic Church from the secret underground society known as the Illuminati, who are out to destroy the Vatican once and for all. Can Noted Symbologist Robert Langdon put a stop to the unstoppable time bomb?

Terminator: Salvation
John Connor finally gets to outgrow Arnold Schwarzenegger and wage that huge future war against the machines that he’s spent three films being bred to fight. He’s matured into Christian Bale, with the brutal artificial intelligence known as Skynet’s robots and mechanical monstrosities all around him trying to exterminate human life, when a mysterious man named Marcus (Sam Worthington) appears to throw everything he thinks he knows into doubt.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Michael Bay blows up a hell of a lot more stuff with this next installment in the saga of giant shapeshifting robots, who will now be even bigger and stompier. Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox have to race for their lives from the Decepticons again, but Optimus Prime and Bumblebee will be right at their sides.

Public Enemies
Johnny Depp stars as the legendary gangsterJohn Dillinger in Michael Mann’s organized crime saga. Christian Bale is Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent determined to track him down and bring him to justice despite the fact that Dillinger has achieved folk hero status by robbing corrupt banks.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The nefarious influence of Voldemort casts a pall over life at Hogwarts as Harry balances his amorous pursuit of Ginny with his investigation into the villain’s past, while Dumbledore tries to prepare him for the ultimate battle against evil.

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra
The 1980s action cartoon companion to The Transformers finally gets its big screen due. G.I. Joe is the code name for America’s daring, highly-trained special mission force. It’s purpose - to defend human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. That was the old intro to the show - now, it’s an international organization and they all wear black as if they were the X-Men. We also get Sienna Miller as the foxy femme fatale known as The Baroness.

Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino takes on a World War II flick to strip away all the realism and sentimentality and get back to scalpin’ “Natzis” Dirty Dozen style. Brad Pitt is Lt. Aldo Raine, leading a ruthless squad of Jewish Allied soldiers in an all-out campaign of fear and terror against the Axis forces.