It still might be April, but summer is quickly approaching. Even though May might not be a summer month, it is considered to be the beginning of the summer movie blockbuster season.
The rest of April and May have some very anticipated films, and we’re highlighting the hype. Here are three films to check out with your friends in the next two months.
The Jungle Book
Many students on campus can never get enough of Disney nostalgia, but the original 1967 classic hasn’t exactly been brought up a lot in recent years and tends to be one of the more forgettable Disney tales.
While the studio’s attempts in recent years to reimagine older films in live action such as Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent have been met with mixed results, the early reviews of the latest reimagining of Rudyard Kipling’s work has been met with positive reviews.
Directed by Iron Man veteran Jon Favreau, the film has been praised for the celebrity voice work, the ground-breaking special CGI used for the animals, and for incorporating the darker story elements and overall being more faithful to the source material than the original.
The response has been so positive that Disney’s already confirmed a sequel from the success. Hopefully it won’t end up like that animated abomination called a sequel Disney made over a decade ago.
The film stars Neel Sethi as Mowgli and features the voices of Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson, and Christopher Walken.
Captain America: Civil War
Marvel’s upcoming ensemble film has generated a massive amount of excitement ever since it was announced.
After Batman v Superman disappointed a number of critics and fans, many have worried about the status of the superhero genre, but those who have seen Civil War in earlier screenings have had nothing but satisfaction about the latest development in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The plot focuses on the divided Avengers team when the government forms a registration act following the events of the previous Avengers and Captain America films to create a system of accountability and governing body around multiple superheroes.
The team is fractured into two sides, one led by Captain America (who opposes the act) and the other by Iron Man (who supports it), forcing longtime friends to become enemies.
As if the intensity of former allies nearly killing each other wasn’t enough, this movie will also feature the first appearances of Black Panther and Spider-Man into the MCU, respectively played by Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland.
Early statements from the fans and critics have praised the new characters, overall conflict, and action of the movie, with the battle in the airport scene in the trailers as a major highlight.
The film starts Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, and Jeremy Renner among many others.
X-Men: Apocalypse
Civil War won’t be the only Marvel comic adaptation in May, as the month closes out with 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: Apocalypse.
Fox tends to be hit or miss these days with their comic book adaptations. Recently, Fox has had one of their biggest hits with Ryan Reynolds’ portrayal of the dirty antihero Deadpool, but months before they had one of their biggest failures in the form of the Fantastic Four reboot.
With the X-Men franchise as a whole, fans and moviegoers are divided. On one hand, the last two X-Men films focusing on the younger Professor X and Magneto have been well received, but on the other hand, a number of fans want to see the property rights revert to Marvel Studios so the X-Men can co-exist with the Avengers on screen and so Marvel can stop pretending the X-Men don’t exist with their marketing and merchandising.
Each installment Fox has to prove to the fans that they can handle their favorite heroes properly, even if their competition is the place where their characters came from.
In this installment, the young mutants face off against the first mutant Apocalypse, who’s so powerful he’s worshipped as a god, not helped by the fact that his four horsemen contain some of the X-Men’s greatest enemies and allies.
The film stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, and Rose Byrne among others.