The superhero movie trend has exploded in recent years, due almost entirely to the MCU. It's a bit early to be looking at 2018 movies, but I recently watched a YouTube video reviewing all the movies coming next year and was surprised at how many were coming up that I hadn't known about.
- Black Panther 2/16 - Nobody seems to know much yet about this film other than that it will be a direct lead-in to Infinity War. Apparently, the ending of this film will be the beginning of Infinity War. This, of course, doesn't mean that the entire film will be about that. Perhaps that's just the post-credits scene.
Black Panther got his introduction and origin story in Captain America: Civil War. We know who he is and that his father was killed and he had to take over as king. That means this story gets to focus more on what's happening and less on character introductions.
- New Mutants 4/13 - What's this? Magik? Wolfsbane? Moonstar? Sunspot? Cannonball? These are the New Mutants - a group of teenagers from all over the world. They've already cast Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as Wolfsbane, who is apparently a werewolf.
There's been speculation that this movie will take place in the Deadpool continuity, and given that Russian teen Magik is Colossus's sister, I wouldn't be shocked to see Deadpool's Colossus make a cameo in the film.
- Avengers: Infinity War 5/4 - The big enchilada. I've already speculated so much that I don't think I need to say any more here.
- Deadpool 2 6/1 - I enjoyed Deadpool way more than I'd expected to. While I'm not likely to see it in the theater like I will with Infinity War, I'll be adding it to the Netflix queue.
- The Incredibles 2 6/15 - It's about time. Yeah - nobody seems to know anything about this film other than that Samuel L Jackson will be back as Frozone. But it's Pixar, and they tend to do a good job.
- Ant-Man and the Wasp 7/6 - It does sound like Michael Douglas will be back, which is cool. And from what I'm reading, it seems like Evangeline Lily's role may be bigger than Paul Rudd's. Now, Paul Rudd is the best largely due to Knocked Up/This is 40, but despite that, I'm okay with Lily headlining should things turn out that way.
- Venom 10/5 - This is a weird one. I've heard that it's going to be a rated-R gorefest. That in itself isn't necessarily bad, but you can't tell Venom's story without Spider-Man. Ideally, they'd have Spider-Man get the black suit as a gift after something like the Infinity War movie, have him wear it for a single film and have it be great - he loves the suit. Then its effects on him slowly grow worse and he gets rid of it. A movie later, we see Venom.
I doubt they're going this way. It sounds like they're going to exclude Spider-Man entirely. Not sure how that works. They'd better not retcon too much.
- X-Men: Dark Phoenix 11/2 - This has potential. Sure - they dabbled with the Phoenix Saga in the ill-fated third X-Men movie, but they really messed it up.
I didn't love X-Men: First Class. It was okay. But I did love Days of Future Past. Then there was the third one - Apocalypse? That was garbage. Aside from the Quicksilver set piece. I've got hopes that they can make another movie as good as Days of Future Past without Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart.
- Miles Morales Spider-Man Animated Film 12/21 - It's an interesting choice to make this an animated film, and super-interesting that they chose the Miles Morales Spider-man. I wish they'd held off and given us Miles to replace Peter when the actor's contract is up.
- Aquaman 12/21 - I have no hope that this film will be any good.
And that's the list of films for 2018 that I've got. It's pretty cool that there's a Dark Phoenix film, and I'm excited to learn more about the New Mutants. As ever, it's all about the script and the cast.