As with previous years, films in 2014 are teaming with sequels and various reboots and remakes. This isn’t a bad thing as long as they are handled well. This being said, sequels are notorious for being bad and therefore I am pessimistic about the quality of films in 2014. It will most definitely be a year which boasts advances in CGI and there will be blockbusters, but unfortunately this prevents the emergence of new original films.

February sees the release of ‘Robocop‘, a remake of the beloved sci-fi franchise. It’s peculiar release date of February is usually when not so great films are released and therefore I question if this film will be any good. Judging by the trailers and film clips, it looks clumsy and dumb with over the top CGI action scenes. This excessive use of CGI strips away the charm of the original, as the original had real gritty action with prosthetic makeup as opposed to computer generated images. Maybe, just maybe, this film may be a pleasant surprise. Another remake/reboot is the highly anticipated ‘Godzilla’. Whilst I am not keen on ‘Robocops’ use of CGI, ‘Godzilla’ needs to deliver stunning effects to make the monster look real. Judging by the trailer, the tone of this film is much darker than the other camp ‘Godzilla’ film starring Matthew Broderick. I have high hopes for this movie and that’s about the only remake I am looking forward to.

2014 has an impressive roster of sequels, too many for me to mention. The beloved ‘Hobbit’ and ‘Hunger Games’ movies will be released towards the end of this year, I strongly believe they will continue to impress. Other sequels for which I have high hopes are ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2‘ and ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier“. I hope to catch a tease of both these films at the Superbowl interval, but so far the material shown for both movies looks great. Despite this, for me the super-hero genre is becoming too generic now and tedious. It feels like a ‘safe’ movie to make as it is bound to attract an audience and rake in tons of money. For this, I give credit to ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ as it is a film that is taking risks. Despite the success of Matthew Vaughn’s directing, Bryan Singer returns and I welcome this and respect the decision. Hopefully he can restore the X-Men franchise to what it used to be. With all this said there are many sequels I am not looking forward too, namely the new 300, Transformers, Dumb and Dumber, Horrible Bosses 2 and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. These films will interesting, as I believe these sequels will not be able to outdo their predecessor. In the case of Transformers 4, I mean to say that it will never be better than the original Transformers as anything can top ‘Transformers: The Dark Side of the Moon’. This only just scrapes the surface of sequels in 2014,  this begs the question, ‘will their potentially be any original blockbusters at all?’.

Simply put, there are a few original films which have the potential to be great and rise up amongst the relentless sequels. The first one is ‘Intersteller’, a sci-fi film directed by Christopher Nolan. Very little is known about the plot, but you don’t need to know anything apart from the fact that Nolan is at the directing helm again, ‘in Nolan we trust’. ‘Noah’ has the potential to be a great film, Arronofsky directs this biblical epic which is teaming with an impressive cast. I believe this will be a very polarizing film as some will connect with the subject material more than others. I predict that these two original films will shine out amongst the sequels and remakes.

Therefore, 2014 will be a year filled with ‘crash!’, ‘bang!’ and ‘wallop!’. Unfortunately 2014 is swamped with remakes and sequels, so much so that original films such as ‘Intersteller’ may suffer at the box office. It seems that year by year Hollywood is running out of ideas and sequels, often poor ones, are the only appropriate remedy to their lack of ingenuity.