A strange thing happened during the Covid pandemic. Ok, a few strange things happened during the pandemic (here's looking at you, mask rules covering the brief time period of walking to your table in a restaurant) but one strange thing that happened is that all of the movie studios kept postponing their movies until we got to a time and place where movies made money again. The problem with this plan is that if you keep not releasing movies, it turns out that people don't feel the need to go to the movie theater. There were a handful of movies that did well (Marvel, Avatar, my surprise of 2022- Top Gun: Maverick) but overall people need a reason to not just stream a movie at home.
I think there are movies that people will decide are worth a trip to the movie theater in 2023. In many ways this may be a "make or break" year for deciding if movie theaters exist on a small scale to show Marvel movies and a couple other big-budget films or if the movie theater is still an experience that you can never fully recreate at home. I hope movie theaters stick around.
I think the list of movies I'm looking forward to can't be narrowed down to only 10 this year. Some of these have been delayed for awhile and some came out of nowhere. Rather than risk repeating last year's mistake of leaving a Top Gun-level movie off the list, I'm going to make the list a little longer. Here's my list of the top 10 15 movies coming in the next year:
1. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (June 30th)
I know what you're thinking, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was terrible. It was. This movie tops this list for two specific reasons: the movies from this series that are good (Raiders, Last Crusade) are some of the best movies ever and even if Harrison Ford is too old to be playing this character, I'd rather have another Indiana Jones movie on the chance that it's great than wish we'd gotten a better ending than Crystal Skull. James Mangold (Ford v Ferrari, Logan) steps in for Steven Spielberg so at the very least, we'll be getting a fresh effort.
2. Oppenheimer (July 21st)
The only movie on this list that probably deserves to be above Indiana Jones but couldn't overcome how much I love Indiana Jones movies. Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Dunkirk, Tenet, The Prestige) makes movies that have to be seen on the big screen and the story of the creation of the atomic bomb is no exception. I enjoy Nolan's sci-fi a little more than his history films but every film he makes is worth seeing.
3. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 (July 14th)
This is this movie's third turn on these lists because it keeps getting delayed due to the pandemic. You can say a lot of things about Tom Cruise but he is committed to making movies that need to be seen in a movie theater. Every one of these movies has Cruise doing something crazier than he did before and I'll be there to see what he does this time as well. I underestimated Top Gun: Maverick but I won't do the same with this one.
4. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (May 5th)
James Gunn has made two incredibly fun Guardians of the Galaxy movies and during the brief period that he was fired from this film, I was mostly sad that no one could possibly finish this trilogy with the credibility that Gunn would have. Luckily, he was rehired and although he's soon to leave for the pastures of DC Comics, he appears to have poured himself into making GOTG3 as good as possible. Marvel has been a little hit and miss lately but I have a lot of confidence in this one.
5. Dune Part 2 (November 3rd)
Dune is not a Marvel movie and it isn't a Star Wars movie and it isn't afraid of that. The first half of this story came out last year and made a desert planet look beautiful on the IMAX and had a plot that kept me on my toes (especially since I'm currently stuck in the first 1/8th of the novel.) I tried rewatching the first one while stuck on a tarmac and gave up. It's a great movie but it's really only great on the big screen. If I wasn't intrigued enough to see how the story ends, they've added Christopher Walken. (Unfortunately, they still have Timothee Chalamet.)
6. The Little Mermaid (May 26th)
If this was just another live-action Disney remake it probably wouldn't make the list. Don't get me wrong, there have been some of this genre that I've really enjoyed (Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Lion King) there have been none that I have watched a second time. What sets this one apart is that Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, Moana, Encanto) is producing the film and has written new songs with original songwriter Alan Menken. I think this might finally be the live-action remake that I watch again!
7. Wonka (December 15th)
What's Timothee Chalamet doing on this list again? Director Paul King (Paddington, Paddington 2) has reunited with Simon Farnaby (Paddington, Paddington 2) to write a prequel to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The main thing keeping this movie so high on this list is that if you cannot tell, I believe Paddington and Paddington 2 to be outstanding. Outside of these two making a Paddington 3, I'm looking forward to what they come up with here. (Even with Timothee Chalamet.)
8. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (February 17th)
There are 3 Marvel films coming out next year but what puts this one on the list is that Ant-Man and its sequel are really good and that that the last few Marvel movies and Disney+ series haven't felt like they were building toward anything. With Jonathan Majors (Loki) in this movie as Kang the Conqueror, this movie will hopefully change that.
9. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (April 7)
As someone who has only owned Nintendo consoles in my lifetime, Mario has a special place in my heart. Video game movies are a tough needle to thread because there are so many bad adaptations (see Super Mario Bros 1993) but the best ones (see the Sonic movies) are the ones that use the characters faithfully but flexibly and from the trailers it seems like that might be the case here as well.
10. The Flash (June 16)
I would have to check but this might be the first DC Comic movie to make the list since The Dark Knight Rises. It has some things going against it (Ezra Miller makes Tom Cruise look normal) but it also has some things that have me looking forward to it, none more so than Michael Keaton returning as Batman. I loved The Batman movie from 1989 as a kid and it might be the nostalgia talking (it is) but I'm really looking forward to him showing up again here. Is it possible that this entire concept was already done better by Spider-man: No Way Home? Yeah.
11. The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (November 17th)
If a Hunger Games movie doesn't star Jennifer Lawrence because it's a prequel does it make a noise when it falls in the forest? As much as Lawrence is the glue that makes the original Hunger Games movies what they are, the background of the Hunger Games themselves in this novel was pretty interesting.
12. Creed III (March 3rd)
Michael B. Jordan has taken these Creed movies and taken them from being soft-sequels to the Rocky films and made them better than they probably should be. Jordan takes the spot in the director's chair and takes this series away from having him fight the children of people that Rocky fought and instead takes the time to unpack who Creed is as a person.
13. Elemental (June 16th)
Pixar has been more hit and miss than they have been in the past but no one bats 1.000. I'm more interested in their movies when they really do things that only they can do and the world-building of what it would be like for the elements of earth, wind, fire and water to live among each other is really interesting as a concept. I'm hopeful that I'll wish I had put this film higher up on the list after seeing it.
14. A Haunting in Venice (September 15th)
Kenneth Branagh has made two fun adaptations of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot detective. He's really good at getting a cast together that you wouldn't see anywhere else and is fun to watch as he plays Poirot himself. Are the movies as good as the Knives Out series? Maybe not. Are they a fun trip to the movies? Definitely.
15. Next Goal Wins (September 22nd)
If you say "I've never heard of this movie" I wouldn't blame you. It's the latest movie from Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit) and is based on a documentary of the same name covering a coach leading American Samoa's soccer team. Waititi has a unique sense of humor that he brings to all of his projects and I hope this is the sort of movie that shows that you don't need a $200 million dollar budget to be worth watching in a movie theater.
