The Official Tusk 2016 Summer Movie Outrage Forecast
One of our favorite annual traditions here at The Tusk is revisiting the commune where we were all jointly raised, locking ourselves in the old shed we were jointly conceived in, and speculating about all the ways that political ideology will fail to provide an adequate framework for the complexities of the human condition when applied to the content of upcoming summer movie releases. Here’s what the Internet will look like between now and September.
Now You See Me 2
Premise: This sequel finds the Four Horsemen adapting to a new member (Lizzie Caplan) and facing down Morgan Freeman’s character once again.
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: Take a look at this cast. The good guys are Caplan, Eisenberg, and Harrelson. One of the bad guys is Morgan Freeman. Notice a major difference between the two sides? That’s right: the heroes are a bunch of white people, as always, and the main villain is the Christian god Jehovah, or Yahweh.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Premise: Alice passes through the looking glass yet again, this time to save her pal the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp).
Outrage potential: High.
Cause: Parents forced to sit through this fucking thing might be tempted to bludgeon their own children to death.
Kubo and the Two Strings
Premise: A stop motion adventure starring a precocious young boy who must do battle with evil spirits in ancient Japan.
Outrage potential: High
Cause: A stop motion adventure starring a precocious young boy who must do battle with evil spirits in ancient Japan, starring Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Rooney Mara, and Ralph Fiennes.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
The attitudinal turtle teens are back, and this time they’re up against classic villains like Krang, Bebop, and Rocksteady.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Fred Armisen’s depiction of the villainous Krang has already been criticized as a cruel and damaging caricature by the powerful Hideous Ball of Pink Goo Ant-Defemation league.
Central Intelligence
Premise: Dwayne Johnson is some sort of character who has to team up with comedian Kevin Hart, playing a character of another kind altogether.
Outrage potential: High
Cause: That every single joke in the film is dependent upon the physical juxtaposition of these two will alienate the vision impaired.
Warcraft
Premise: This fantasy action-adventure from director Duncan Jones is based on a vision of heaven my cousin experienced moments before he asphyxiated while masturbating on the bleachers behind our old high school.
Outrage potential: High
Cause: Imagine being tasked with post-production on a movie about fucking orcs and goblins or whatever and then your dad dies– and also your dad is David Bowie. How hard would you phone that shit in? When my grandmother died it was an accomplishment for me to finish watching a movie, and she didn’t even make “Hunky Dory,” let alone all the other albums.
The Legend of Tarzan
Premise: Years after leaving the jungle and settling down with Jane, Tarzan must return in order for there to be a movie.
Outrage potential: High
Cause: There are a couple options here. The trailer has a damsel in distress and some very un-P.C. looking tribesmen, but I’m going to say the loudest complaints will come from animal nerds all up in arms over some slight inaccuracy about the way gorillas scratch their balls.
Independence Day: Resurgence
Premise: Humanity must rally around returning star Jeff Goldblum to fend off vengeful aliens in this sequel.
Outrage potential: High
Cause: Jeff Goldblum’s theater friends respect that Goldy’s boathouse needs refurbishing, but when he asks him what they think of the movie they’ll say, “It was fun,” in this fucking voice that you just know means they think it’s a waste of his talent.
Me Before You
Premise: A romance between a quadriplegic man (Sam Claflin) and his quirky caretaker, played by Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke.
Outrage potential: High
Cause: New parents Sam and Marianne Bowler of Cornbone, Arkansas will hire a babysitter and select this film as their destination for their first “date night” since the baby was born, and that babysitter will contract HPV from her ex-boyfriend’s stepdad around the time the trailers end and the movie begins.
Pete’s Dragon
Premise: This live-action remake of the supposed animated classic finds Robert Redford and Bryce Dallas Howard slumming.
Outrage potential: High
Cause: You know that song’s about reefer, right?
War Dogs
Premise: Miles Teller and a finally fully fat once again Jonah Hill play real life brothers who became arms dealers in Afghanistan.
Outrage potential: High
Cause: That smell in the theater is the movie itself.
The Founder
Premise: A biopic of Ray Kroc, the salesman who turned a dinky little burger chain into one of the most recognizable brands in the history of civilization.
Outrage potential: High.
Cause: America isn’t ready to know that Kroc’s wife’s pubic hair was the actual inspiration for the Fry Guys.
The Conjuring 2
Premise: Ed and Lorraine Warren travel to London to investigate ghosts.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Defames Protoplasmic Americans.
Southside With You
Premise: A young Barack Obama spends the day with Michelle Robinson in 1989 Chicago.
Outrage Potential: High.
Cause: Robinson and Obama’s date is complicated by the fact that the future President of the United States is depicted as only speaking Swahili in 1989.
The Secret Lives of Pets
Premise: A bunch of talking dogs and cats have an adventure.
Outrage potential: High.
Cause: Very unrealistic.
The Nice Guys
Premise: Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe have an adventure in 1970s Los Angeles.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: That hotel desk clerk that Russell Crowe hit with a phone in 2005 is going to linger around his local movie theater and make sure everyone who work there hears his story and agrees that Crowe probably isn’t a very nice guy in real life.
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne must team up with former rival Zac Efron to foil new neighbor Chloë Grace Moretz.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Nerds won’t be able to identify with all the balls-out partying going on in this motherfucker.
The BFG
Premise: Steven Spielberg directs this adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl novel.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Expect your most annoying friends to post the inevitable Daily Beast article about how Dahl was a racist to their Facebook page on opening night.
Star Trek Beyond
Premise: The crew of the USS Enterprise versus Idris Elba.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Trek purists will complain that being basically unwatchable was part of the old Star Trek’s charm.
Ghostbusters
Premise: These ladies are going to bust all the ghosts.
Outrage potential: Catastrophic
Cause: The trailer for this thing would look awful regardless of the cast’s gender. And imagine if it’s actually as bad as it looks—you’ll have misogynists on one side rejoicing, and otherwise decent people on the other so determined to keep the misogynists from winning that they’ll go all out of their way to defend the thing. Dear God… better delete Twitter from your phone now, just in case.
Finding Dory
Premise: That stupid fish Dory is lost now.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: They find Dory 69’ing Tilikum.
Suicide Squad
Premise: Will Smith and Margot Robbie play villains tasked with taking on an impossible mission.
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: That impossible mission is not referring to Jared Leto as a stupid asshole in interviews while promoting the film.
Jason Bourne
Premise: Matt Damon returns as the titular superspy in the movie that I’m calling “My sole reason for living at this point.”
Outrage Potential: High
Cause: Someone somewhere in the theater might so much as murmur while I’m watching this and if they do I will freak the fuck out, for real.
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