The Mary Sue’s 2013 Summer Movie Wrap-Up

Power Grid

By The Mary Sue StaffSep 3rd, 2013, 12:33 pm

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Allow Us to Explain

This summer was a weird one. It felt, in a way, like were were still coming down from the high of The Avengers, the movie that ruled our hearts, minds, and wallets just a single summer ago. On hand to catch us as we fell were some good movies, some bad movies, some movies that we weren't angry at, just disappointed, and one shining example of Oh please God, no, why did this movie happen?!

We're taking a fond (or, in some cases, not-so-fond) look back at the summer of 2013's giant monsters, giant robots, giant stuffed rabbits, and the giant pile of wrongness that was a whole lot o' whitewashing. Whew! With the summer over, let's get ready for the end-of-year releases. More Hunger Games, Thor, and The Hobbit are right around the corner.

Iron Man 3

The first big movie of the summer, and also one of the best. With the exception of Pacific Rim and The World’s End, it was all downhill from here. At times Iron Man 3 felt like less of a superhero movie than an action-comedy that just happened to star a guy who can strap himself into a giant metal suit and change the world. For me, that’s a good thing: I love it when movies do the unexpected with genre. And what moment from this summer topped Pepper Potts swooping in and killing the baddie? And lest we forget: Giant. Plush. Rabbit. —Rebecca

Robert Downey Jr. was awesome, as always, but Iron Man 3 was a letdown for me and I blame The Avengers. After the spectacle that was Joss Whedon’s blockbuster, coming back down to Earth (literally) was rough. I mean, even Tony was having trouble coping. While I didn’t think IM3 was bad, it suffered a lot from meandering plot threads (the kid) and a serious lack of Pepper taking over as Rescue. - Jill

IM3, at its best a solidly enjoyable action film that puts a nice cap on the Robert Downey, Jr. Iron Man trilogy so everybody can forget about Iron Man 2. May it stand as a lesson to much of the rest of this summer's fare: don't try to be something you're not. Let it also stand as an example of a very effective way for a comic book adaptation to deal candidly with the fact that its main villain, while canonical, is a pretty much unredeemable racial stereotype. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I'm looking forward to an explanation of where Steve was when the President was kidnapped. Also why is nobody talking about how IM3 is the 5th highest grossing movie in history? - Susana

Star Trek Into Darkness

I liked Star Trek Into Darkness when I first saw it, but it's a movie that, for me, hasn't held up in the months since. There are aspects of it that are entertaining, even poignant—I'm thinking particularly of the character development of Spock—but J.J. Abrams owes that to the way he piggybacked off The Wrath of Khan. At first I thought the way the two movies dovetailed was generally cool, if woefully mishandled when it came to the Cumbervillan. Now it just seems lazy. I agree with Karl Urban: The next movie should really try for its own story, already. —Rebecca

It’s not often I feel like standing up in a crowded theater and screaming at the screen, but Star Trek Into Darkness was one of those times. There wasn’t anything wrong with the acting or cinematography in the film. Just the opposite, in fact. It looked great. But the story they chose to pursue hurt my Trekker heart to the core. I can honestly say I hated Star Trek Into Darkness. I wasn’t thrilled with a Star Trek reboot to begin with but I saw it as an opportunity to “seek out new life and new civilizations,” as it were. Instead, the sequel chose to go down an already-ventured path and attempted to pass it off as something clever. It wasn’t. What a waste of a good Cumberbatch. - Jill I'll just admit it: as soon as Benedict Cumberbatch revealed his big reveal (which was not actually a twist, surprise, or really even plot relevant), I pretty much lost all respect for J.J. Abrams as an adapter of Star Trek. Seriously. It's 2013 and you've been tapped to direct the first Star Wars movie without George Lucas. You have the clout and and are operating within the modern cultural view of race politics that Roddenberry did not. Cast an actor of the correct race for an infamous character for the first time in Star Trek history. And it'd be nice if you respected the series' commitment to showing a more gender equitable future as well. Star Trek was fun. But if Abrams continues to be involved I'm probably done with this reboot. - Susana

Man of Steel

I wrote a more in-depth review when it came out, but here's the short version: Meh. It wasn't awful, wasn't great. Director Zack Snyder had extremely talented actors but hardly did anything interesting with them. If you're going to give us two-plus hours of origin story establishing things we already know, at least give us a take on the character that's not boring. Man of Steel started to do that at the tail end of Superman's final fight with Zod, but by then it was too little, too late. Snoozefest. —Rebecca

Man of Steel was pretty divisive in nerd circles. It seemed like it was a love/hate situation for most fans. I happened to really enjoy it, though I completely understand why others didn’t. While I longed for reporter-Clark, I liked the journey we were brought on, and was happy to see he got there eventually (even though getting hired at a major Metropolitan newspaper with zero experience would never happen). Faora kicked butt and took names, Krypton looked really cool, and Amy Adams kept the spirit of Lois alive. - Jill

Another DC movie that's a lot of fun until you really start thinking about it, and with female characters who shine like you wish they would in the comics. But if you really want my opinion, I think Warner Bros. needs to take a leaf out of Marvel's book, and start hiring directors who are not known for producing comic book blockbusters but rather for producing movies with a consistent tone, one that goes hand in hand with the relevant character. - Susana

Monsters University

Mike and Sully: The College Years isn't in the top tier of Pixar movies by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still generally solid and has a lot of good laughs, not to mention the requisite Pixar Scene That Made Me Misty-Eyed (the end of the final Scare Games challenge, if you're curious). And, in true Pixar fashion, it's not dumbed down for its intended audience. Mike's moment of Scare Games triumph being a result of his best friend betraying him is a heavy plot twist for a kid's movie. And the message that a successful college career isn't all that important in the grander scheme of things really hit home for this late-20s moviegoer. —Rebecca

I actually walked into Monsters University having not seen Monsters Inc. Seeing as how this was a prequel (and a kid’s animated feature) that wasn’t really an issue. Monsters University wasn’t anything special as far as animated fare goes but it hit all the right notes. Plus, it had Helen Mirren. You can never go wrong with Helen Mirren. - Jill

World War Z

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, World War Z. Sure, you altered the very fabric of the book upon which you were based, which just happens to be one of my favorite books I've read in the last five years. But hey, that doesn't mean you're necessarily going to be bad. But you were. And you didn't even have the decency to be bad in an entertaining way. You were just generic and dull, and now I want to forget you ever existed. —Rebecca

The Lone Ranger

Yeah, no. Between the uninspired trailer, the blatant "Look at me! I'm just like The Pirates of the Caribbean vibe!," and the clueless offensiveness of casting Johnny Depp as Tonto, even the thought of seeing this put a bad taste in my mouth. —Rebecca

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - Jill

The closest I came to seeing this movie was seeing a review of it titled in broken Tonto-style English and immediately removing that site from my reader. - Susana

Pacific Rim

How can I begin to explain Pacific Rim? Pacific Rim is flawless. I hear its Jaegers are insured for $10,000,000. I hear it beats up Kaiju… in Japan. Well, Hong Kong. OK, that Mean Girls reference got away from me. All the same, while it'd be hyperbolic to say Pacific Rim really is flawless, it's still an amazing movie. All the people saying "But what's so special about it? It's just a stupid summer action movie!" are missing the point. It is a stupid summer action movie, one with explosions and a premise that makes no sense and the occasional stupid sight gag. But it's a well-made action movie with heart, and one that breaks the mold of the macho-man savior of humanity and the subservient love interest he hooks up with besides. Do I wish some of the other female characters had had more screen time? Yes. But as it stands, Pacific Rim is still worth more than several dozen Transformers movies. —Rebecca

I wound up seeing Pacific Rim a few weeks after its release so it had been hyped up in my mind to a ridiculous degree. Thankfully, it mostly lived up to the hype. While I would have appreciated the characters being fleshed out more (think Independance Day), Pacific Rim was exactly what it was sold as. A fun summer movie about giant robots and monsters. Still annoyed they didn’t use the sword earlier, though. - Jill

Another summer movie that succeeded by not pretending to be more than it was, and probably the only one from this batch that I actually want to own. And what it was was a saving the world movie where the ability that put humanity over the top was not our ability to survive at any cost, our intelligence, our breeding power, or our common cold virus, but rather our ability to form strong interpersonal relationships of all kinds: friend to friend, parent to child, lover to lover, and sibling to sibling (to sibling, even). Also it had a giant robot cutting a giant monster in half with a sword, in space. If you think Pacific Rim was a bad movie, you are not allowed in my house. - Susana

The Wolverine

I came out of the theater liking The Wolverine, but now, a few weeks later, nothing about it really stands out in my memory. It’s an unexceptional movie that’s nevertheless solid and well-done, which is an underrated thing to be in a summer full of highly anticipated movies that fell short of expectations. There was some good action and character development, plus several female characters who didn’t fall into the “love interest” category. If it was never adequately explained why Jean Grey was pulling a Head Six to Logan’s Baltar, or what the Viper’s character motivations are, at least the movie still could have been a heck of a lot worse. —Rebecca

My hopes weren’t high for Hugh Jackman’s second solo film as Wolverine but maybe that’s why I liked it so much. The Wolverine was leaps and bounds better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine and featured three interesting female characters. How many films can say that? While the Silver Samurai’s story was a bit odd, Logan’s journey to Japan was an interesting one overall. Now if we can just get a Wolverine/Yukio team-up film, we’ll be on the right track. - Jill

Elysium

The biggest disappointment of the summer. I was so looking forward to Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to District 9, and then he turned in a half-baked mess of unsubtle social justice metaphors and not a whole lot else. Even the points Blomkamp set out to make about illegal immigration and social and economic inequality, without a good plot to base them on, fell flat. The good guys down on Earth want to take over a super-rich space station… but it's never explained what Matt Damon and co. actually hope to accomplish by taking it over. Sure, at the end of the movie the new President, previous 99%er Spider, is able to send down a few dozen fancy-schmancy disease-curing rigs, but what's that going to do in the long term? Speaking of Spider: He's introduced as a literal crime lord who charges impoverished people exorbitant sums of money for a chance to get to Elysium. He has nothing even resembling a change of heart throughout the movie, so I'm supposed to be pleased that he's now the big man in charge? Blomkamp, please. —Rebecca

I still can’t believe how bored I was while watching Elysium. It had everything you’d think would make a good movie but felt completely flat. I couldn’t have cared less about Matt Damon’s character or his journey, Jodie Foster was a mostly useless antagonist, and the scenes you see of Elysium in the trailers are just about all you ever see or learn about throughout the film. I wouldn’t say Elysium was “bad,” it just was. -Jill

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

I didn’t see this. Judging by the box office returns, I’m not alone. Sorry, The Mortal Instruments fandom. I feel for you. —Rebecca

Even though I hadn’t read the books it’s based on, I was very excited to see The Mortal Instruments. However, my plans fell through, and after asking a friend how it was, I decided I’d save the $15. Perhaps I’ll give it a shot once it’s available for home viewing. - Jill

The World's End

In my view this third and final movie in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy is the worst of the bunch… but when a movie’s stacked up against Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, “worst” is more like “least amazing.” It gets off to a bit of a slow start, but once you really get into the main plot of the movie the magic starts to happen. And pacing problems aside, the scifi-less first third of the film was necessary setup for a Cornetto Trilogy staple: That scene that comes along and punches you right in your tear ducts. I might need to see this movie a few more times, A) because it’s brilliant, and B) to catch all the little references and foreshadowing I missed the first time around. Special mention goes to Paddy Considine, who needs to be in everything. —Rebecca

Well, The World’s End is no Shaun of the Dead but I had fun watching it. Simon Pegg played a great aging goth and while the film seemed to be treating addiction a bit too flippantly at first, it turned around and halted everything like a scratched record when you were least expecting it. Some good laughs, great fight scenes, a bit predictable, and I’m still not sure I liked the ending but The World’s End was a good way to end the summer. - Jill