Luke Owen with his top five movies of the summer…
5. Godzilla
Celebrating 60 years of destruction, the King of the Monsters made his return to the big screen in this American reboot to the classic series. Godzilla saw Avengers: Age of Ultron stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen as a husband and wife duo who are trying to reunite after The Big G shows up and starts tearing through cities chasing after alien-like creature M.U.T.O.
Director Gareth Edwards clearly loved the classic Godzilla movies from the character’s 50s and 60s heydays as the movie was a call back to those films. It had a slow, methodical pace and it focused on the human characters and their dramas while Godzilla fought in the background as the ever looming presence and metaphor for nuclear war. Sadly, the movie only takes our fifth spot here as the human element (including Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston) is pretty under developed and it’s hard to get behind them. Perhaps this is something they will look at in the sequel announced for 2018.
4. Edge of Tomorrow
Sadly overlooked at the box office, Edge of Tomorrow is the only movie in our top 5 that is considered to be a “flop”. However, it is easily one of the best films released, not just this summer, but this year as a whole. Tom Cruise plays Cage, a marketing and PR man who is forced into war but finds himself repeating the day over and over again. He teams up with Rita (Emily Blunt) and the two work out how to stop the alien menace.
It’s Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers and is just as cool as that sounds. Cruise is superb as the man who must learn how to be a hero and Blunt is equally as great as the woman who trains him. The action is great and will have you on the edge of your seat from start to end. With the awful Transformers: Age of Extinction making over a billion dollars at the global box office, it’s such a shame that the awesome Edge of Tomorrow was so overlooked.
3. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Rise of the Planet of the Apes surprised people when it was released a few years back. The announcement of another reboot to the classic sci-fi franchise was met with a lot of apathy and cries of “why bother”, but the movie was awesome. And its sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, is just as awesome.
Planet of the Apes 2 is why chains like Cineworld are a great place to see movies as you can go multiple times to see gems like this. Andy Serkis is phenomenal in his motion capture work as Caesar and the war between humans and apes is jaw-droppingly brilliant. It’s not very often that a movie like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes comes around, but when it does you have to make the time to see it.
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
Bringing one of the most beloved two-comic story arcs in X-Men history, Bryan Singer returned to the X-Men movie franchise that he created to merge his series with the world of X-Men: First Class in this brilliant movie. It was a tough job that many thought was not possible, but he pulled it off with style.
X-Men: Days of Future Past sees Wolverine travel back from a time where all mutants are being destroyed by a robot army called Sentinels in an effort to get Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) to team-up and stop the Sentinels being built in the first place. Everyone pulls out a brilliant performance and Singer handles the time travel aspect and intricate storyline with incredible precision. Just a brilliant movie. Bring on the next X-Men movie in 2016!
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
But taking the number one spot had to be James Gunn’s space opera Guardians of the Galaxy. The final stage in Marvel’s Phase Two, Guardians of the Galaxy is the first detour in the Marvel Universe as its storyline and characters don’t directly affect the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron. It was a welcoming change of pace with great humour, great action and wonderful characters.
The superb Chris Pratt plays Peter Quill aka Star-Lord as he is forced to team up with a talking racoon named Rocket (Bradley Cooper), his walking tree bodyguard Groot (Vin Diesel), a maniac hell-bent on revenge named Drax (Dave Bautista) and an assassin and step-daughter of Thanos Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to take down Ronin the Accuser (Lee Pace) who has an Infinity Stone which could destroy a whole race of people. It’s pretty epic!
Guardians of the Galaxy has become and Internet darling and has been hailed by Flickering Myth as “Star Wars for a new generation”. A wonderful and fun movie, Guardians of the Galaxy is easily the best movie of the summer.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published August 27, 2014. Updated January 18, 2020.
