Summer movie season needs a good superhero

By RICK GERSHMAN
Published May 26, 2006

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Maybe you thought the summer movie season kicked off last week with the super-buzzed but super-panned The Da Vinci Code.

Or earlier, with the obligatory (and super-panned) Tom Cruise's summer action flick Mission: Impossible III.

But to me, it's not summer movie season yet until we get a big-budget superhero movie.

So that brings us to today's opening of X-Men: The Last Stand, the third film in the series based on the X-Men comic books. And the little kid in me can't help but get a little excited.

The Marvel comic, which chronicles the adventures of heroic (and villainous) mutants, was one of my favorites when I was kid.

That was before I grew up and moved on to more adult matters, back when I was, oh, 11.

Okay, 21.

Okay, 31.

Okay, so I'll move on when I get to 41. Maybe.

Regardless, director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) did a killer job helming the first two films, and he solicited a career-defining performance from perfectly cast Hugh Jackman as iconic anti-hero Wolverine.

Jackman's back, but Singer's not for The Last Stand, which understandably has fans worried. His replacement is Brett Ratner, whose finest efforts to date are the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker Rush Hour comedies.

Ratner also directed 2002's Red Dragon, based on the novel that preceded The Silence of the Lambs.

I don't know how you can make an uninteresting movie that stars Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but Ratner sure found a way.

So selecting Ratner for the new X-Men is a disappointing compromise from Hollywood, and yet another reason fewer and fewer people go to the theater.

Singer jumped ship to make Superman Returns, but I'm not too excited. This Brandon Routh kid doesn't exactly inspire awe as the big blue-and-red guy.

Also on tap this summer is the first of two simultaneously filmed Pirates of the Caribbean sequels - expect diminishing returns - another Fast and the Furious sequel (no Vin Diesel or Paul Walker this time), and a Garfield sequel (ugh). Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I'll give at least a few summer movies a shot, but that lineup reminds me how lucky we are in Tampa to have alternatives when the usual mainstream fare lets us down.

So, Tampa Theatre: Thank you. And Sunrise Cinemas, as Ray Charles used to say: baby, please don't go.

Rick Gershman can be reached at rgershman@sptimes.com or 226-3431. His blog, the Ill Literate, is at sptimes.com/blogs/tampaarts.