The Official Tusk 2015 Summer Movie Outrage Forecast
Since the advent of SOCIAL MEDIA, the summer movie season has increasingly presented theatergoers with an interesting choice—to accept that political ideology is an inadequate framework for the complexities of the human character or to live in a constant state of outrage. Which way you end up swinging is up to you, but this handy guide should give you a heads up of what the Internet is going to look like between now and September either way.
May
Hot Pursuit
Premise: Reese Witherspoon is a bumbling cop, Sophia Vergara is a sexy criminal, and they’re stuck with each other.
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: Vergara plays the widow of a drug dealer, which should raise the ire of anyone who thinks a Columbian involved in the drug trade is a hurtful stereotype. Witherspoon’s cop character is bumbling and has something to prove, because of course a female cop would be a mess. Also the word “Hot” is in the title, and puns are terrible.
Maggie
Premise: Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the father of a girl who is slowly turning into a zombie.
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: The film uses zombification as a metaphor for illness, suggesting that sick people are monsters to be feared and destroyed. The movie takes place in the Midwest and Schwarzenegger plays a guy named Wade and probably there won’t be an explanation for why a Midwestern guy named Wade has a thick Austrian accent when all you’d need is like one line of dialogue to explain it.
Mad Max: Fury Road
Premise: Another Mad Max movie, with Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron.
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: Anti-semites will be pissed Mel Gibson wasn’t asked to return to play the iconic character. Encourages bad driving, depicts post-apocalyptic murder tribes in a negative light. Charlize Theron has a shaved head, because apparently a woman can’t be feminine and tough, she has to be one or the other.
Pitch Perfect 2
Premise: I guess they’re in another singing competition?
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: Rebel Wilson’s character is too chubby for health nuts to get behind and too dumb for the real women have curves crowd. Anna Kendrick refuses to tweet me back.
Tomorrowland
Premise: George Clooney and Britt Robertson travel to the titular mysterious city.
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: Why does Britt Robertson need a old white man to lead her to the titular mysterious city?
San Andreas
Premise: The Rock fights an earthquake
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: Physically meek geologists will find the assertion that it takes big muscles to fight an earthquake super-insulting.
June
Entourage
Premise: Based on the terrible HBO series about a bunch of Hollywood hunks perpetually on the verge of raping someone.
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: Where to start… Adrian Grenier plays a talented actor but isn’t one, Jerry Ferrara will probably have a love interest, Kevin Connolly looks like he’s eleven years old and has a weird gravelly voice but plays a character people take seriously, Jeremy Piven was totally bald in PCU in 1994 but is now somehow merely balding, all of which will strain the credulity of any but the most insipid audience members. Also the aforementioned general rape vibe.
Spy
Premise: Melissa McCarthy plays a spy.
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: Imagine being the guy who plays Mike on Mike and Molly, having to come to work every day and have McCarthy strut around like she’s doing you a fucking favor bothering with the show when she anchors a new movie every summer.
Jurassic World
Premise: An amusement park full of dinosaurs once again fails to be a good idea.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: The film ignores evidence suggesting that dinosaurs were largely feathered and that Velociraptors were the size of chickens, which will anger nerds; hearing nerds hiss these facts to each other during the movie will annoy theatergoers who don’t give a shit and want to think of something outside their miserable lives for two hours.
Inside Out
Premise: This Pixar production personifies the emotions of a young girl.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: You want to take a shot at depicting the emotional life of a teenage girl accurately? Your funeral, Pixar.
Ted 2
Premise: The first Ted made a ton of money.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: This blatant cash grab lacks the soulful exploration of what it means to be human that made the original such an enduring classic. For example, in this one when the bear fucks the lady it feels perfunctory.
July
Magic Mike XXL
Premise: Settling all the loose ends left at the end of the first Magic Mike.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: These dudes are total teases. Sure they gyrate and flex, but where are the dick tips, gentlemen?
Terminator: Too Many Terminators
Premise: There’s just too many damn Terminators.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: A glut of think-pieces devoted to how nostalgia is a kind of poison and Hollywood has no fresh ideas may lead to mass suicide across the United States.
Minions
Premise: Those cute gibber-jab Minions from Despicable Me get their own movie.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Not sure but mark my words, someone is going to find something to complain about. Maybe the Minions are socialists or something. You’ll see.
Ant-Man
Premise: This Marvel Studios release introduces the world to a character Stan Lee came up with on an off day, the most confounding founding Avenger, a guy who can shrink and talk to ants.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Ant-Man keeps calling the ants surprisingly articulate.
Trainwreck
Premise: Judd Apatow directs this raucous comedy that proves girls can fart, fuck, and fart while fucking with the same wild abandon as any man.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Amy Schumer has really skillfully positioned herself so that if you’re a man, you can’t say she’s not that funny without it being either automatically political or because you don’t find her attractive. I’m not sure if gay men are allowed to dislike her. They might be, I’ll have to check.
Pixels
Premise: Adam Sandler and Josh Gad fight fucking Pac-Man and shit.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: The budget for this thing could have fed a lot of hungry people, and the trailer made me feel as though my ability to experience pleasure had been permanently diminished.
Irrational Man
Premise: Woody Allen presents Joaquin Phoenix as a depressed college professor who is reinvigorated by an encounter with a much younger woman, played by Emma Stone.
Outrage Potential: Low
Cause: Allen is the rare artist who audiences universally adore without question.
August
Fantastic Four
Premise: Rebooting the classic superhero family.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Shut-ins with cable who have seen the first two FF movies on FX 23,000 times in the past eight years are sure to reject this seemingly more somber take on the characters; racists aren’t going to be into Michael B Jordan playing Johnny Storm.
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Premise: Reviving the classic TV spy drama.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Armie Hammer plays a KBG agent who eschews pomade and uses a compound of ground up human infant skulls and semen to keep his hair in place.
Straight Outta Compton
Premise: Celebrating the origins of NWA, who became famous for recording songs that perfectly channeled the rage and alienation they—and many others—felt growing up in the inner city.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: The multitudinous ways in which American life has improved since the 1990’s may result in 21st century viewers finding little to identify with here. Also, some will inevitably find Josh Gad’s portrayal of Ice Cube problematic.
The Tusk 
3 Responses to “The Official Tusk 2015 Summer Movie Outrage Forecast”
Reblogged this on showavery and commented:
I want to see the avengers so much.
Although this article’s tongue is somewhat in cheek, there’s no fork at it’s tip. Hilarious!
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