15 Most Anticipated Movies of 2015 (The Big Ones)

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2/13/15)

Matthew Vaughn is a fucking rockstar. He's responsible for taking Mark Millar's 3945687349th reprehensible work, Kick-Ass, and turning it into a great movie. He made the best X-Men movie to date. Now he's brought us another reprehensible Mark Millar story and turned it into something that looks energetic and fun as hell, without resorting to morally deplorable bullshit.

Jupiter Ascending (2/6/15)

I love the Wachowskis. The Matrix trilogy is not-so-good after the first. They really won me over with Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas. Not because they're perfect by any mean. It's one of those "willing to push the material" things that I love so much. Speed Racer has some unbelievable visuals and Cloud Atlas is positively inspiring. Love 'em or just don't care at all, nobody makes movies like the Wachowskis. I'm still not exactly sure what it's about, but Jupiter Ascending looks just as imaginative as anything the Wachoskis have done.

Chappie (3/6/15)

Elysium was a decent movie. I think we're far enough into the future to say it was a massive disappointment that left us all saying "That's it?" I'm hoping Chappie can change my newfound pessimistic opinion of Blomkamp but who knows. This is still a movie I'm highly anticipating because even if Elysium was disappointing, it's a pretty good action movie. I weep for the Blomkamp Halo movie that will never be. Chappie looks to be more of the same thematically, but how often do we get to see Hugh Jackman as a villain? On that note... *hold this segue until you get down to Pan*

Furious 7 (4/3/15)

The Fast and Furious movies are the modern 80s action films. Goofy, and pretty dumb in concept, but ultimately sweet in their execution. And the action is completely indulgent throughout. Fast 5 is still the highlight of the franchise but Fast 6 is a worthy successor. With the franchise timeline officially cleared up, our favorite vehicular *Vin Diesel mutter* "family" is going against Jason Statham with some new additions to the franchise. The Rock rips off his fucking body cast before saying, "Daddy's gotta go to work" and that's pretty much my favorite thing about this new direction for the franchise.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (5/1/15)

Age of Ultron is a terrible comic by a pretty good comic writer. Avengers: Age of Ultron will probably be awesome. The first Avengers achieved simple perfection with similarities to Seven Samurai but with superheroes. Age of Ultron is a different beast because our heroes are together for a different purpose. Ultron is one the same scale of villainy as characters like The Joker, Loki, Lex Luthor, Darkseid, and Thanos. This is the Bane to the Avengers' Batman. He'll break them every way they can be broke. With the addition of Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and The Vision, this is going to be a superhero movie for the ages. If I had to pick one movie to watch in 2015, it'd be this.

Mad Max: Fury Road (5/15/15)

What a day. What a lovely day. I'm a big fan of the original Mad Max films. Even the odd tone of Thunderdome is welcome in my life. The initial SDCC trailer left me excited and was the biggest surprise trailer of the year. Then THIS trailer came out and now I'm convinced the film won't meet my expectations. I'm pretty good at moderating expectations when it comes to these movies but everything I've heard about this one leaves me frothing at the mouth. Within the same continuity as the other Mad Max films, Fury Road is essentially a 2 hour chase sequence. I mean, just look at the official trailer. I don't like to speak in generalities but if you're not excited for this movie then fuck you.

Tomorrowland (5/22/15)

I don't know much about this one apart from what the teaser trailer told me. Let's get something straight; Damon Lindelof is responsible for co-creating my favorite television show. Brad Bird is responsible for all his movies being masterpieces or flat-out great. George Clooney shows a girl the science version of Hogwarts in their new movie. SCIENCE. DISNEY. EMPHASIS. It's all exciting stuff. I expect to leave the theater with a shiny outlook on life after this one for some reason.

Jurassic World (6/12/15)

Jurassic Park is honestly the reason I love movies and dinosaurs as much as I do. I even like the kinda crappy, glorified creature-feature, sequels. They're not good, but if you're going to watch a B movie, it might as well be a Jurassic Park movie. Jurassic World functions as a soft-reboot with distant relation to its original trilogy cousin. Somehow the park managed to open and now, because we're a society of "want, want, want" scientists create a super-dinosaur called the Diabolous Rex. There's no way that can go wrong.

Ant-Man (7/17/15)

The movie that nobody asked for until we realized it was an Edgar Wright project. Then Edgar Wright left on mutual terms with Marvel. Then Peyton Reed was hired as his replacement with a script revision by Adam McKay. If that duo was the first announced crew to work on the tiniest hero, people would have called it a stroke of genius. But because it's not Edgar Wright anymore, people will be shitting on this movie forever (yes, even if it's miraculously the best Marvel movie). That being said, the initial Ant-Man teaser is... fine. It looks good. A bit generic.

Pan (7/24/15)

... I guess we'll see Hugh Jackman as a villain in two movies for 2015. I was initially anti-Pan for its white-washing of an Indian princess (I still am). The beginning of the trailer with the "because destiny" angle (it sounded JUST like a trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man). Then some clowns kidnap Peter and we're introduced to Blackbeard, Neverland, and a world that looks like a straight prequel to Hook. The colors are vibrant and the trailer actually made me want to play with toys like I was back on the playground. Something about this trailer had me falling in love with this prequel nobody asked for. There's a sense of wonder at play here, and that's all I can ask for in a movie about the boy who never grew old.

Spectre (11/6/15)

James Bond is about as iconic as you can get. After celebrating the 50th anniversary with the thematically sound and visually perfect Skyfall, where do you go from here? With the Sony hacks pouring out emails with a seemingly infinite number of details on any movie currently being made, I took a glimpse at some details of Spectre and... it's not pretty (I took a look because I'm a piece of shit). There are some good ideas at work but it's a mess. Granted, it could all just be from different notes on different versions of a rewritten script. Returning director Sam Mendes has assembled a beautiful menagerie of a cast. Let's hope they can pull it together.

The Hateful Eight (11/13/15)

Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained was all just to wet his palette of the western genre. I'm not kidding. He said that. In the beginning of 2014, the script was leaked online and nobody was sure we'd ever get to see it. Flashforward 8 months later, Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For is released and it was pretty shitty – but it had a Hateful Eight teaser in front of it and that almost made it worth it. I can't even begin to imagine what Hateful Eight will be like. Will it be almost a wholly single-room affair like Reservoir Dogs or perhaps more sprawling like Inglorious Basters and Django Unchained?

The Good Dinosaur (11/25/15)

MORE DINOSAURS. I'll try to keep myself composed but this is kind of the greatest thing to happen to me during my short time on this planet. Pixar + Dinosaurs = Happy Diego. Cars 2 deserved to be taken to impound, Brave was good but it gets shit on for not being Pixar good, and Monsters University was a sweet surprise of pretty good. If Pixar can keep rolling with that upstream, and uses an appropriate amount of dinosaurs (Approximately 412 million per capita), then we've got another winner on this hand.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (12/28/15)

I still don't really like the title for Star Wars 7 but that doesn't deter me from being excited as fuck for this movie. It's Star Wars, man. What else is there to really say? It's the beginning of a new trilogy. We've got a ball droid. We don't really need to say anything else, do we?

*No trailer???*

Mission Impossible 5 (Christmas Day)

Edge of Tomorrow gives me strength when I wake up in the morning. The final shot of Cruise was my favorite movie moment of 2014. The action scenes were some of the best of the year, in a year full of endless great action scenes. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was the best of the franchise. Honestly, what's not to look forward to in this movie? Tom Cruise is the last great movie star and he'll surely rock another action roll. The dude is 50 years old and he hung on the side of a plane as it flew through the fucking sky. You don't have to like Tom Cruise. You just have to respect him for being a total champ.