For a brief, strangely thrilling moment, summer movie season 2015 felt a little beside the point.
On April 16, the second teaser trailer for the J.J. Abrams-directed went intergalactic (88 million views in 24 hours, 200 million as of May 5).
A gauntlet had been thrown. Forget the march of the reawakened behemoths headed our way with (Friday); (June 16); and (July 1).
Dec. 15 could not get here fast enough. Who needs summer?
A geeky reaction, to be sure, but the closer that franchise taps into the primal cinematic wallop that occurred when John Williams’ brassy fanfare and the text crawl began, the more I get goosebumps and teary.
And then this past weekend, “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” with its muscular gaggle of bickering superheroes, goosed the season in wry style, recalibrating things and scoring one for living in the now.
Monday morning, ESPN’s Jemele Hill told the “Mike & Mike” fellas, “Avengers” would be what she most remembered about one of the best sports weekends ever. Yes, over American Pharoah’s triumph at the Kentucky Derby (and she was there). Yup, over Game 7 of the Spurs v. Clippers. Definitely over the fight of the century that wasn’t.
A conversation in the elevator on the way to The Post’s newsroom went similarly. “I saw ‘The Avengers,’ ” one gent said with a wide grin. “I watched the fight,” the other replied. Sigh.
Summer’s event movies can still do that. For those of us fond of the annual rite of expectations raised and dashed (sometimes met, very rarely exceeded), “Avengers” set a bar for the season’s pleasures. Now we’ll see if it can be met.
The annoying thing is it’s so hard to tell. Last year began well with the Marvel-based flick “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and had a nice steady flow with family fare and indies before the wheels came off. It took August’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” to remind us why popcorn flicks can be so delectable.
Sequels and reboots, those exploiters of nostalgia, deserve the suspicion they’re often met with. Which doesn’t prevent them eliciting either a Pavlovian or Proustian response that taps into our youth or childhood as studios raid their vaults for flicks to refurbish.
Still, a reboot of “Poltergeist” (May 22) seems uncalled for when you have supernatural offerings “Insidious” and “Sinister” returning. But then, summer is often haunted by a guy named Spielberg.
While the director-producer, who wrote the screenplay for the 1982 flick, has nothing to do with this “Poltergeist,” he is an executive producer on “Jurassic World.”
We know summer’s movie-heat index is typically measured at the box office. But last year suggests that movie performances considered tepid at best domestically can amass serious bank abroad. Take “Edge of Tomorrow,” last year’s Tom Cruise vehicle — and a fine one, I might add. It made over $100 million stateside but had a production budget of $178 million, according to boxofficemojo.com. It took in $269 million globally.
Our relative flops become the world’s hits. This will surely have an even greater impact on what we are offered each summer.
And this rudimentary math doesn’t hold just for comic-book adaptations and action-loaded franchises — in other words, the dude demo. There’s a reason beyond storytelling that your youngsters are getting — the “Despicable Me” prequel (July 10). While the sequel was a huge success on the homefront ($368 million), it slayed it worldwide, adding another $602 million.
Box office matters, of course, but it is not the only (or truest) measure of movie pleasure. The movie lovers embedded in studios know this. The people making them feel this even more.
George Miller’s return to his gritty, 1979 post-apocalyptic cult classic, “Mad Max,” is a slightly different beast.
As costly as it has been (a reported $150 million budget), “Mad Max: Fury Road” signals the return of a director to a story that hasn’t let go of him. And, given its dust-covered, dystopian visions, probably not us either. It opens Friday with Tom Hardy in the role Mel Gibson originated.
The counter-programmed movie that day: “Pitch Perfect 2.” I’d see them both, even if I didn’t have to.
Summer 2015 holds promise on a number of fronts: movie stars, indie tales infused with teen buzz and angst. See for yourself. A reminder: Opening dates are subject to some finagling.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
