{"id":12836,"date":"2011-09-01T07:46:21","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T06:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=12836"},"modified":"2011-09-01T16:07:20","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T15:07:20","slug":"summer-season-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/09\/01\/summer-season-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Season 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Summer-2011.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12837\" title=\"Summer 2011\" src=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Summer-2011.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"280\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With the summer movie season at an end, how did the major releases fare?<\/p>\n<p>The season kicked off in late April with <strong>Fast and Furious Five<\/strong> and ended in August with <strong>The Rise of the Planet of the Apes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>But how did all these films do in a season flooded with sequels and remakes?<\/p>\n<p>N.B. This is based on UK release dates, although a lot of releases were day-and-date. Also, critical scores are out of 100 and are an average based on the Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb user ratings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>APRIL<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Fast and Furious Five<\/strong> (Universal): Watchable sequel to a franchise that has been weirdly resurrected after the fourth film. Budget: $125 million \/ Box Office: $606m \/ Critical score: 73<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/04\/20\/thor-review\/\">Thor<\/a><\/strong> (Marvel\/Paramount): Surprisingly watchable tale of the Nordic god with a big hammer who comes to earth. Budget: $150m \/ Box Office: $448m \/ Critical score: 69<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>MAY<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides<\/strong> (Walt Disney): Another chapter in the pirate franchise with Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow. Budget: $200m approx. \/ Box Office: $1 billion \/ Critical score: 47<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Hangover Part II<\/strong> (Warner Bros): Sequel to the 2009 hit comedy which takes exactly the same plot and transports it to Thailand. Budget: $80m \/ Box Office: $581m \/ Critical score: 50<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>JUNE<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/05\/30\/x-men-first-class-review\/\">X-Men: First Class<\/a><\/strong> (20<sup>th<\/sup> Century Fox): Surprisingly good prequel set in the 1960s with some good performances and clever 1960s period setting. Budget: $150m \/ Box Office: $350m \/ Critical score: 77<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kung Fu Panda 2<\/strong> (Paramount): OK sequel to the 2008 animated film about a kung fu panda. Box Office: $150m \/ Box Office: $637m \/ Critical score: 75<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/06\/18\/green-lantern-the-end-of-an-era-for-comic-book-blockbusters\/\">Green Lantern<\/a><\/strong> (Warner Bros.): The biggest fiasco of the summer saw Ryan Reynolds play a comic book character most people don\u2019t care about. Budget: $200m \/ Box Office: $205m \/ Critical score: 43<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bridesmaids<\/strong> (Universal): Not technically a blockbuster, but this comedy outperformed many bigger budget rivals as word of mouth spread week after week. Budget: $32m \/ Box Office: $272m \/ Critical score: 80<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/06\/28\/transformers-3-dark-of-the-moon-review\/\">Transformers: Dark of the Moon<\/a><\/strong> (Paramount): The third Transformers film saw more incomprehensible mayhem unleashed by alien robots. Budget: $195m \/ Box Office: $1.1 billion \/ Critical score: 48<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>JULY<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/07\/12\/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-2-review\/\">Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2<\/a><\/strong> (Warner Bros.): The final Harry Potter film was as successful as everyone predicted. Box Office: $250m (shared with Part 1) \/ Box Office: $1.3 billion \/ Critical score: 89<\/li>\n<li><strong>Cars 2<\/strong> (Walt Disney): Pixar shocked the world by releasing their first average film but audiences didn\u2019t seem to mind. Budget: $200m \/ Box Office: $521m \/ Critical score: 53<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/07\/25\/captain-america-the-first-avenger-review\/\">Captain America: The First Avenger<\/a><\/strong> (Paramount\/Marvel): World War 2 era superhero film that was surprisingly good in parts but didn\u2019t benefit from being in 3D. Budget: $140m \/ Box Office: $325m \/ Critical score: 73<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>AUGUST<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/07\/30\/cowboys-and-aliens-review\/\">Cowboys &#038; Aliens<\/a><\/strong> (Paramount\/Universal): Sci-fi western (never a good mix) adapted from a comic-book was an expensively assembled bomb. Budget: $163m \/ Box Office: $129m \/ Critical score: 54<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/06\/17\/super-8-review-j-j-abrams-spielberg\/\">Super 8<\/a><\/strong> (Paramount): J.J. Abrams homage to Steven Spielberg\u2019s early movies was a charming relief in a summer of bigger rivals. Budget: $50 \/ Box Office: $244m \/ Critical score: 76<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Smurfs<\/strong> (Sony Pictures): Hollywood sniggered at this mixture of animation and live-action was green lit, but it has out grossed bigger rivals. Budget: $110m \/ Box Office: $381m \/ Critical score: 33<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/08\/04\/rise-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-review\/\">Rise of the Planet of the Apes<\/a><\/strong> (20<sup>th<\/sup> Century Fox): The Planet of the Apes prequel surprised a lot of people to become the \u2018sleeper blockbuster hit\u2019 of the summer. Budget: $93m \/ Box Office: $305m \/ Critical score: 77<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Inbetweeners Movie<\/strong> (Entertainment): US readers will scratch their heads at this but the spin-off film of the TV show was a gigantic hit in the UK (it hasn&#8217;t opened abroad yet and its probably one for the home market) and the second &#8216;indie blockbuster&#8217; of the year here, after The King&#8217;s Speech.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, what have we learned from this summer season?<\/p>\n<p>Here are some conclusions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The superhero movies were surprisingly OK, especially the X-Men prequel which deserved to do better.<\/li>\n<li>The Pirates of the Caribbean juggernaut defies comprehension but pleases Disney shareholders.<\/li>\n<li>The Hangover Part III will probably be better than Part II.<\/li>\n<li>The general public don&#8217;t have a clue who or what Green Lantern is.<\/li>\n<li>Not all movies aimed at women have to be garbage starring Kate Hudson or Katherine Heigl.<\/li>\n<li>Transformers 3 was essentially Michael Bay&#8217;s tribute to himself.<\/li>\n<li>Harry Potter is the Star Wars of its generation (but shouldn&#8217;t have been in 3D).<\/li>\n<li>The Pixar magic finally ran out.<\/li>\n<li>Sci-fi and Westerns don&#8217;t mix.<\/li>\n<li>Whoever greenlit The Smurfs at Sony is having the last laugh.<\/li>\n<li>Rise of the Planet of the Apes seemed better than it actually was.<\/li>\n<li>Documentaries like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/06\/09\/senna-documentary\/\">Senna<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/08\/02\/the-interrupters-review-documentary\/\">The Interrupters<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/08\/09\/project-nim-review\/\">Project Nim<\/a> put most big budget films to shame.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2011_in_film\">2011 in movies<\/a> at Wikipedia<br \/>\n> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_2011_box_office_number-one_films_in_the_United_Kingdom\">Number 1 films at the UK Box Office<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the summer movie season at an end, how did the major releases fare?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}