How ironic – or poignant, perhaps – is it that the movie slate for 2012 is full of dark, twisted horror films, Armageddon-drenched fantasies, "ultimate baddie" superhero movies and gruesome re-imaginings of our favorite fairytales?
Are we to read that Hollywood has correctly tapped into the world’s current economic gloom, providing us with a mirror of how we all feel right now? Filmmakers, after all, have historically been best at doing this: spotting a global psychological feeling and exploiting it, commenting on it, challenging it.
But what makes 2012 any different from any other year?
Only that – looking at a round-up of upcoming films – there appears to be a core thread of dark fantasy, fables and fairytales being released throughout next year. Movies that seem to cry out to an audience suffering from an overdose of their negative reality: You’re in a bad place right now, yes, we know, but go see all these characters battling similar and worse evils in other worlds and, yes, you’ll feel even darker, but [when you come out the movie theater] a whole lot better about your life too!
As I’m a massive fan of dark fantasy, sci-fi and fairytale-based movies, I feel this approach to filmmaking, and the enticing of an audience, is entirely the right one. And an exciting, bizarrely uplifting one too.
I’m a firm believer that viscerally enjoying some horror and darkness – whether it be by reading a book, watching a film or play, or playing a console game (just not doing it for real) – is a healthy way to balance out your mind’s basic, creative, instinctive need for experiencing both the light and dark aspects of life.
Cinema is, of course, an escape. So I can’t hide the fact I’m ridiculously excited that film in 2012 will take us on a tour-de-force of epic and all-encompassing fairytales, fables and fantasies.
Monumental twists on fairytale stories will occur with a two-horse ‘Snow White-off’ between "Mirror Mirror" and "Snow White and the Huntsman." Director Tarsem Singh’s "Mirror Mirror" is going for a younger audience with bright colors, whereas Rupert Sanders’ debut is turning "Snow White" into a Joan Of Arc-style knight battling the dark hordes of the Evil Queen.
Dripping with epic battle scenes filmed in the U.K., "Snow White" will be – along with "Jack the Giant Killer," Bryan Singer’s giant re-telling of man-eating fairytale "Jack and the Beanstalk" – ones to watch in 2012.
Pixar continues the fairytale-esque rundown with, potentially, their darkest movie since Wall-E, with a Scottish tale of a red-headed, feisty girl in "Brave" in August 2012.
Peter Parker returns – again – in Marc Webb’s "The Amazing Spider-Man" re-boot. Promising to get back to gritty, "down-to-Earth," spidey action, this one will see Spidey going up against Rhys Ifans’ "ultimate baddie," the Lizard.
And the Tultimate baddies
just keep on coming in 2012, because Marvel’s "
