READER POLL FOR ALFRED EAKER VS. THE 2018 SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS: THE CANDIDATES

The poll is closed. The winners were Slender Man, The Meg, and Life of the Party. Look for reviews this summer!

Summer’s almost here, and that means it’s time for the 366 Weird Movies reader base to send me, Alfred Eaker, on my fifth masochistic field trip of blockbuster movie torture. The candidates are below. Be sure to view the entire post; you will vote at the end.

  1. Life of the Party (Opens May 11). 1 hour and 45 minutes of ‘s one-note jokes. Guess what it’s about? Melissa as the life of the party.  If I get drafted into this, I’m taking my toenail clippers and a crossword puzzles (and I guarantee that I will still be able to give a detailed review).
  2. Deadpool 2 (May 18). The first one was, I think, the most successful R-rated movie to date being about a foul mouthed superhero (OK, yeah, that’s what I want out of superheroes). I haven’t seen it. Although it has the same writer, a different director was tapped. The jokes in the trailer are of the narcissistic  macho cutesy variety, which are the absolute worst kind.
  3. Solo: A Star Wars Story (May 25). God, the trailer looks so obvious and bad. The credentials don’t help; directed by one of the most pedestrian directors of the last 50 years (Ron Howard) and written by Lawrence Kasdan who, lets be honest, managed to followup the best of the Star Wars movies (Empire Strikes Back) with one of the worst (Return of the Jedi). After the too-original-for-its-own-good The Last Jedi proved to be the Milk of Magnesia for formula-craving alt-right fanboys, this looks to settle them back into a regular bowel movement routine.
  4. Action Point (June 1) brags that it stars the cast of Jackass and Bad  Grandpa, which means a lot of predictable juvenile pratfalls to amuse rednecks. It looks to be as exciting as a mud and tractor pull.
  5. Incredibles 2 (June 15). Again, I missed out on the original, but the trailer looks like a commercial for a line of toys.
  6. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (June 22). Geez, the last one actually made dinosaurs boring. I miss seeing a guy in a wrinkled lizard suit stomping on toy tanks.
  7. Ant-Man and the Wasp (July 6). Helmed by the director of the original, this promises to be… more of the same, and that wasn’t very good to begin with. I received a lot of hate for my lukewarm review  of its predecessor. Heads were exploding all over fanboy forums. I think I’ve been far more offensive since then, so perhaps this will restore me to some kind of previous glory.
  8. Skyscraper (July 13). Towering Inferno meets Die Hard. How original. At least Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were actual actors and could form syllables. Of course, they’re dead. The trailer gets philosophical, announcing: “Courage has no limits.” Hmph! Smell likes Old Spice. Director Thurber’s resume is that of an assembly line hack.
  9. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (July 20). The first one was unbearably phony, with people in scuba flippers dancing to ABBA and waxing schmaltzy. Despite the presence of Meryl Streep (who embarrassed herself enough in the original) and Cher, even the title tells you it’s a fatigued rehash. To get us excited, they add an exclamation point. This  actually looked like the worst of the lot, until I saw the trailer for Life of the Party.
  10. Mission Impossible: Fallout (July 27). How much longer are we going to have to watch take off his shirt and run?  Even less exciting is the co-star casting of the worst Superman actor in history.
  11. The Meg (Aug 10). Jaws meets Godzilla? Might have some kind of potential if it was directed by someone so inept that they could produce an unintentional masterpiece. Instead, it has director Jon Turtletaub, who has been consistent in producing one film after another that is a hodgepodge of stale, leftover scraps.
  12. The Happy Time Murders (August 17). On paper, a muppet movie about a serial killer offing the entire cast of a children’s TV show sounds amazing. However, director Brian Henson (who’s no chip off the old block) and writer Todd Berger (The Smurfs and Kung Fu Panda) don’t leave a lot of room for optimism.
  13. Slender Man (Aug 24). When the haunted house attraction I work for sent an actor dressed as “Slender Man” to pass out street fliers, people freaked out and it made national news. I’m so out of the loop, I didn’t even know Slender Man was a preexisting character until today when I received the list of summer movies. When original ideas for a horror flicker run short, throw in images of maggots. That’ll gross ’em out! The trailer was a mere 2 minutes and within that time frame my mind started wandering toward my chemistry assignment (and I HATE chemistry).

(Poll is open for 1 week only. You may vote once per day).

Direct voting link in case your browser blocks the poll.

8 thoughts on “READER POLL FOR ALFRED EAKER VS. THE 2018 SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS: THE CANDIDATES”

  1. You’ve never heard of Marble Hornets? Yeah, I suppose this is a weird MOVIE site and not a weird SERIES site, but one of the first works to feature the character of the Slender Man is a Lynch-inspired found-footage-done-right cult classic.

    That character/concept used to be 100-percent associated with weird and bizarre storytelling until its popularity exploded – around 2013, I want to say? – and its name was degraded by tons of fad-chasing cash-ins. I suspect this upcoming movie will be one of them, just like all the other attempts to make a movie out of the concept have been.

    But if anyone wants to watch some weird footage in serial form, check out not just Marble Hornets but also EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve. Some excellent stuff in all three of them (I’d call EverymanHYBRID the weirdest due to its metafictional elements and bizarre incongruent details, though.)

  2. I voted for “Life of the Party,” because I’m developing a strong dislike for you, Eaker, and I want you to suffer as much as possible.

  3. Skyscraper, Solo and Meg – my fit of laughter from your reviews of them has started already!

  4. “Meg” actually looks like it could be entertaining after a few bong hits. But I’m sure you’ll hate it, so that’s what I’m voting for.

  5. A lot of sadists have come out to play for this one; but then, I suppose that’s what this is all about.

    Perhaps unluckily for Mr Eaker, my browser doesn’t recognize poll-clicking options on this site. I’ve been feeling in a charitable mood.

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