A super year, minus one

The cynic in me feels like I should be getting sick of superhero movies, that they should be decreasing in quality as studios recognize them more and more for what they are – cash cows – and make them with a corresponding amount of their own cynicism.

In reality, though, superhero movies are getting better, or at the very least, I am liking them more.

Right now there are four superhero movies that are in contention for my top 20 of the year, and that’s not even including the year’s most praised superhero movie, which is likely to earn the first-ever best picture nomination for a film of its kind. But, I do hope to watch Black Panther again before finalizing my year-end rankings, to give it too a chance to contend.

There’s one I won’t be seeing, however, and both critics and audiences seem to think it is also worth my time.

That’s Aquaman, the movie that figured to be your typical DC crap but I guess is quite a lot better than that. (It’s not like DC is incapable of it; Wonder Woman was my #2 movie of 2017.)

In this case, the release date is not a problem. Unlike some end-of-year releases, Aquaman is bowing in plenty of time for me to see it before the Oscar nominations are revealed on January 22^nd, which is my personal deadline for finalizing my list. In fact, it came out yesterday, just a few days after its U.S. release date. Which is common for superhero movies. Sometimes we in Australia even get them a week earlier, as happened with at least one if not both of the Captain America sequels.

No, the reason I won’t be seeing it is that I’ve already got tickets to see it … after my ranking deadline.

Aquaman will have already been out for a month when I see it on January 27^th at an outdoor cinema in Melbourne’s botanical gardens. My wife and I have known about and talked about this venue for some time, but never actually pulled the trigger to go see a movie there. She finally pulled that trigger as a Christmas present for me this year. They’re VIP seats, too, as we’ll be sitting in the fancy shmancy bean bag seating area. (Note: This is the first time in history the words “fancy shmancy” and “bean bag” have appeared in the same sentence.)

I knew something was up, because about a week ago my wife asked me if I’d already seen Bohemian Rhapsody. The answer was yes. Then she moved on to Aquaman, and at that point it wouldn’t have been possible to see Aquaman because it wasn’t out yet. “Don’t see Aquaman,” she told me in no uncertain terms. On Tuesday, the secret was revealed.

I have mixed emotions about these tickets. On the one hand, I love any opportunity to watch a movie in an unusual venue, particularly a venue I’ve never before partaken in. Aquaman seems like a fun movie to see in this environment. On the other hand, though, it means I will forgo seeing a 2018 movie I would have undoubtedly caught before my ranking deadline.

But you know, I’m fine with it. Why wouldn’t I be? It’s a wonderful gesture by my wife, one that proves how well she knows me, and the food trucks and available drinks (plus a night of babysitting from my sister-in-law) promise to make the evening a real treat. Besides, if I were to really love Aquaman and it too became a contender for my top 20, it might seem more like the top 20 of that guy in the stormtrooper costume at Comicon than my own. At a certain point, for the sake of your own credibility, you don’t want to see any more good superhero movies in a given year.

This might also create an opening for me to see a movie that I felt safe in skipping, until it too received widespread praise: Bumblebee. For a while I didn’t care how much better this was than your average Transformers movie, it was something I thought I could safely give a miss. Until the “Bumblebee is actually really good!” chatter become too deafening for me to drown out.

A Transformers movie contending for my top 20? Now that would really be something.