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Well, this Earthquake style-disaster film has all the trappings of a corny, formulaic, over the top disaster movie, and I simply cannot wait. These movies have devolved from featuring respectable actors such as Robert Duvall and Vanessa Redgrave (Deep Impact) to teenagers and heartthrobs such as Jake Gyllenhaal (The Day After Tomorrow) or actors in incredibly silly roles (Woody Harrelson, 2012). Now, however, a new low has arguably been reached, as Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, is meant to spearhead this project from complete joke into respectable fare.

It won’t happen.

San Andreas is set for release on May 29th, the weekend after Memorial Day, and is currently expected to make a modest $120 million. That sounds about right, as The Rock will undoubtedly have a strong pull among the demographics that follow him.

But regardless of what it does in the box office, how badly it gets panned by critics (and, believe you me, it will get skewered) and how silly the movie looks, I will not be able to stay away from the over-the-top destruction scenes, the noble and trite sacrifices, the family reconciliations, the animals warning of danger, and all the other stereotypes that we know define this hysterical, entertaining, and exhilarating genre.

Bring it on (and bring on the sequel!).

1. Avengers: Age of Ultron

But, I must admit, the movie that I’m most excited about this summer is the one that will start it all off and that is likely the most anticipated in most movie-goers’ lists.

If you had told me a few years ago that I would be most looking forward to the Avengers sequel, I would have told you that you were out of your mind. But, after seeing the first one, I have to admit I’m sold on the overall concept of the franchise. To be sure, seeing Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth and Jeremy Renner together on screen is part of the appeal, as is the story about how much the Avengers will break box office records by.

But the story itself was solidly entertaining the first time, the effects were dazzling, and the movie overall avoided the tedium and predictability of many in the comic book genre. Most important, I didn’t feel like I needed to understand the comic books to understand the film.

The Avengers opens, as I’m sure you know, this Friday. It has already opened in many overseas markets and made over $200 million, a sure sign that it is headed for a similar showstopper here in the U.S. Indeed, if Avengers 2 shatters the $207 million opening weekend mark it set in 2012, it will be an astonishing landmark in the history of box office tracking, and could put it well on pace to shatter other movie records. Titanic’s $600 million mark is not out of the question.

It remains to be seen, of course, if the movie is worth all of the hype. And perhaps it has constructed shoes too big to fill. But the hype and the shoes are there and, until shown otherwise, this is my (and most of yours, it seems) most highly anticipated movie of the summer 2015 season.

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