2012 Movies of the Year

2012, the year 2012 is based on, which came out in 2009.  If you remember, John Cusack basically starred as the lovable smuck  who does a Planes, Trains and Automobiles disaster flick with _____ as his lovable sidekick.  The movie was an attempt to cash in early on the Mayan End-of-Days concept which you probably never heard anything about in December.

The Most Disappointing Movie of The Year;  The Dark Knight Rises

At least one of these characters dies in a completely non-memorable way.  

Instead of a year of disaster flicks, there was really only one large disaster flick that appeared onscreen The Dark Knight Rises, the amazingly bad ending of the Batman trilogy directed or rather mailed in by Hollywood's newest A-Director; Christopher Nolan.  TDKR, or as I like to call it WTF was one of the two most anticipated Big Budget Superhero movies of the summer (I'll get to the other one in a minute).  WTF had everything going for it; an amazing, proven cast and director, a story-line taken from the comic book and Anne Hathaway's eyebrows, and all the gimmicks from the last two movies.  We all knew what we wanted from WTF and instead we got...WTF.
From the opening James Bond scene where (spoiler alert) the most illogical kidnapping takes place in cinematic history (hold on...if they already had the scientist, why did they even bother to put him on the plane?) to everybody but Commissioner Gordon apparently knowing Batman's true identity within minutes of actually meeting him, to the motivations of basically everybody involved in any scene of the script to the friggin' Batwing that had been sitting undiscovered on the top of a skyscraper because it HAD A CAMOUFLAGE TARP OVER IT?  SERIOUSLY, WTF NOLAN!!!  

ok- so that scene apparently didn't piss off the internet as much as it did me, so instead here's a strange video that actually is pretty funny.  Eyewitness video of the fabled 3000-cops-missing-for-three-months-underground charge past machine guns and tanks to get in a fistfight with 3000 bad guys.  See if you can spot the Batman along with a large group of pedestrians just watching...

WTF felt like an actual swarm of bats had dropped bat guano all over the script and someone let Nolan's dog write the thing, blindfolded.  One or two mistakes in a movie are (unless monumental) are easy to forgive, dozens, not so much.  I can't even remember how Bane was defeated, which should have been the high point of the movie when instead it was this;

Here, kitty, kitty, kitty

Instead of creating a novella of all the things that were lacking in WTF, someone else already did it so here is just a partial list of mistakes that I agree with.  If there is to be a movie-saving Director's Cut edition much like Ridley Scott's Bladerunner it would still take some serious thought if i would want to subject my brain to that quality of punishment again.      

The real natural disaster of the movie was that it was trying to follow up on the amazingly well-crafted artistic and conceptually imagining of a world rife with moral ambiguity in the previous installments of the trilogy, The Dark Knight aka The Joker and Batman Begins starring the other guy that unfortunately has to also get dragged back into WTF;.

Seriously? This isn't another Star Wars prequel?

The Least Disappointing Movie of The Year;  The Avengers

Despite the Across-The-Board generic marketing poster

Thankfully, the King of the Geeks, Joss Whedon, took the Superhero movie into the stratosphere with Marvel's the Avengers.  It was all that WTF wasn't; a strong story, an assortment of comic tried and true fallible mortal heros (and an immortal Thor) fighting an infallible and baby brother annoying Norse God. And aliens too, but those were just as a bonus because that's what i want in good movies; bonuses!
  
The Avengers was also years in the making; the final conglomeration of at least 4 different individual super hero prequels and 3 different Hulks into one whole, fighting other world forces in order to save humanity.

It's just a rule of the game that the better something is, the less there is to write about.  So instead of me just wasting everyone's time kissing ass, let's just watch this symbolic scene between the summer's superhero movies, where DC comics is played by Loki and Marvel Comics is played by The Hulk.

  
That pretty much sums up what Marvel did to DC's movie franchise universe in 2012.

Most Surprising Movie of the Year;  The Cabin In the Woods

Bonus Trivia; Joss Whedon also co-wrote The Cabin In The Woods, the Scream-esque horror movie of the year as well, starring a quite mortal Thor.  If you haven't seen it and don't mind the genre, check it out.  It's worth it.