It is hard to believe that it has been six years since Disney released Alice in Wonderland and started its incredible track record of taking its classic animated movies turning them into successful live-action remakes. (I don’t count The Sorcerer’s Apprentice which came out the same year because, well, it wasn’t very good and had nothing to do with the animated short that it was based upon.).
After Alice there was Maleficent, Cinderella and most recently The Jungle Book. Now, the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass is being released and it reunites Mia Wasikowska, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter and producer Tim Burton (Burton directed the original which became his highest grossing movie). Based upon Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, it opens with Alice following in her father’s footsteps and sailing the high seas. Upon her return to London, she comes across a magical looking glass which returns her to Wonderland and her friends the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen), Absolem (Alan Rickman), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) and the Mad Hatter, who has lost his Muchness. In order to save him, Alice must steal a magical scepter for the Lord of Time (Sacha Baron Cohen).
Disney’s next live-action remake is Pete’s Dragon later this summer and then Beauty and the Beast next year and then a whole list of movies including Dumbo, Pinocchio, Cruella (101 Dalmatians), Tinkerbell, Maleficent 2 and a movie about Prince Charming,
It hasn’t even been a month since Captain America: Civil War was released and we are already getting another superhero movie. This time, it’s X-Men: Apocalypse, the ninth film (if you count the Wolverine movies and Deadpool) based upon Marvel’s mutant characters. If you have not been keeping track, the first X-Men and its two sequels were set in the current time period and then X-Men: First Class was set in the 1960’s, X-Men: Days of Future Past bounced between the 1970’s and present day and X-Men: Apocalypse is set in the 1980’s, completing the second trilogy.
The villain in this film is Apocalypse, the first and most powerful mutant who was worshiped as a god. After being asleep for thousands of years, he awakens and is disillusioned with the world as he finds it and recruits a team of powerful mutants to cleanse mankind and create a new world order. As the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) and Professor X (James McAvoy) must lead the X-Men to save mankind from destruction. The ensemble cast includes Michael Fassbender, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn and many more. Because it is set decades earlier than Deadpool, don’t expect any references to that character, but because Hugh Jackman’s final appearance as Wolverine is coming next year, expect some set up for that movie.
After this, the next big comic book hero movie is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and then we get a few months off until Suicide Squad is released on Aug. 5.