The Winners Of Summer 2013

This – for me – excluding a few exceptions, has been an extremely lackluster summer. Nothing popped, you know? I’m mostly talking about the blockbusters. I mean, we live in a world where Fast 6 was my favourite summer blockbuster and if you had asked me this 5 years ago I would have laughed and laughed and laughed some more. But there were a few exceptions, both in quality and box office. Let’s begin, shall we?

The Winners:

The Conjuring: I’m not done talking about it because to quote Professional Tongue Sticker Outer, Miley Cyrus, I can’t stop and I won’t stop. When I first wrote about The Conjuring, I was less than excited for the movie. And then I saw it and here we are, with it still ranking #1 as my favourite movie of the year (so far). Aside from the remarkable quality of the film, it’s box office is mainly the reason why it’s such a winner: the horror film with a budget of $20 million has gone on to gross an astounding $131 million at the box office so far. To put that in perspective, this is a list of the major movies it’s outgrossed: Oblivion, This Is The End, G.I. Joe 2, The Hangover 3, Pacific Rim & The Lone Ranger. Would you have guessed this at the beginning of the summer? The answer is no.

The Heat: Why? No, it wasn’t amazing but it was a solid, funny movie, but it wasn’t as bad as it so easily could’ve been. It reinstated that not only is The Movie Star not dead (Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock still being huge draws) but that, like, you know, women want to see movies too. In a year so dominated by men, this is why The Heat is a winner.

Now You See Me: I thought this movie was a God damn mess, but it went on to gross an unprecedented $116 million reinstating that original ideas are still very much welcomed and desired, just, you know, they could be better than this.

World War Z: Before the movie was released, everyone had this pegged as one of the major flops of the summer thanks to it’s very public behind the scenes turmoil. In spite of all that, it opened to a very solid $60 million and went on to gross almost $200 million domestically, not only making it a very solid hit, but a relief to Brad Pitt and everyone else. This was a summer that saw Oblivion, After Earth & The Lone Ranger all dissapoint and this could have very easily done the same. And it didn’t hurt that it was pretty good too.

Despicable Me 2: I haven’t seen the movie and the minions are more of an annoyance than anything now, but this sequel, and #1 animated movie of the year, blew past a lot of peoples expectations. The first film is beloved and was a surprise hit as well, but for this to gross almost $400 million was not entirely expected.

The Great Gatsby: Because, really, it could have been much, much worse.