Movie Trendspotting 2013

The invasion of alien invasion movies has just about puttered out. Fairy tale movies have become passé overnight, since "Jack the Giant Slayer" underperformed at the box office. Zombies are still good performers, but the inundation of them is starting to get a little embarrassing. So what else has Hollywood got for us? Looking at the lists of upcoming releases, I've come up with some possible common themes that could turn into trends depending on the success of the movies they feature in.

Mecha - That's human-piloted, often humanoid, combat machines and giant robots, for those of you who don't spend much time in the anime world. Mecha have been a staple of science fiction stories for a long time, and the best remembered one in film is probably Ripley's badass exosuit from "Aliens." They were also recently used by the baddies for the climactic finale of "Avatar." However, in the animated world the mecha are far more massive and elaborate, and can effectively turn a single operator into an army, and an army into a much bigger army. We'll be seeing lots of this brand of mecha in action in Guillermo del Toro's "Pacific Rim" this summer, where the human race will use them to fight giant monsters. And on that note, giant monsters may also be staging a comeback. A new "Godzilla" is on the schedule for next year.

Westerns - We had a good run of modernized westerns like "Maverick," "The Legend of Zorro," and the ill-fated "Wild Wild West" in the 90s, then abruptly nothing. Recent flops like "Cowboys and Aliens" and "Jonah Hex" haven't been very encouraging for those who want to see a comeback of the genre, but then we had "True Grit" and "Django Unchained," which are a good reminder of how much fun westerns can be if they're handled with the right attitude. Traditionally this had been a very versatile and hardy genre, going all the way back to the earliest days of film. And even though they've been declared dead more times than I can count, the western has always popped back up again. Disney's going to make another attempt at launching the next big action franchise with "The Lone Ranger" this summer, and if they can pull this off, maybe cowboys and Indians will be the next pirates.

Silicon Valley - This spring we're getting "Jobs," a Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher. And then a few months later comes "The Internship," a comedy featuring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn getting internships at Google, which is notable for having been allowed to use actual Google facilities for the production. There have been plenty of films about tech start-ups and the internet revolution, notably "The Social Network," but it looks like Hollywood is starting to mine the real-world tech companies and their culture for material in a big way. No surprise, since Google and Apple and Microsoft and all the rest have become more and more influential in recent years and have had a huge impact on the popular culture. This can also be seen as the logical next phase for another trend we've been seeing in recent years - the rise of the geek hero.

Buddy Chick Flicks - We have established that a single actress no longer has enough marquee value to sell a major comedic film, so our rom-com queens have been increasingly lumped into big ensemble pictures, or double billed with a male co-stars of equal stature. One alternative I'm hoping gets more play is the buddy chick flick, which uses multiple headlining actresses, puts female friendship front and center instead of a romance, and emphasizes comedy. These can be way more guy-friendly than your standard rom-com, and tend to have better material too. So far it worked for "Bridesmaids," it worked for "Pitch Perfect," and if all goes well it'll work for "The Heat," which stars Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy as a mismatched set of female cops who have to learn to work together to solve a big case.

90s Reboots - This is pretty much inevitable now that we're hitting the bottom of the barrel for 80s properties to remake. We're down to the likes of "Robocop" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," which both look like major disasters in the making. Meanwhile, the 90s kids are starting to reach that age where they're old enough to be nostalgic for the media of their youths. Television has already been there and done that. The CW's reboot of 90s staple "Beverly Hills, 90210" is already ending after a successful five season run. In the film world, I think the most likely property to start with is "Jurassic Park." The 3D conversion of the original 1993 film will be opening in a few weeks, and has been hotly anticipated by fans. A third "Jurassic Park" sequel has apparently garnered enough momentum to snag a 2014 release date, but I suspect it's really going to be a stealth reboot.
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