Can James Bond beat kick-arse women in 2020 battle of the box office?
Last year it was Avengers: Endgame. This year three kick-arse women are going up against one ageing super spy
Movies
Don't miss out on the headlines from Movies. Followed categories will be added to My News.
We are only a couple of weeks into the new year but I don’t think it’s too early to declare that the race for the biggest movie of 2020 will be between three women and one bloke who would probably try to seduce them all.
Last year saw a bunch of movies pass the billion-dollar mark — and Avengers Endgame become the highest-grossing movie of all time.
First up this year will be Wonder Woman 1984, the long-awaited sequel to the 2017 smash. It might be ridiculous that it’s taken three years to get the sequel up but perhaps it was cunning — Marvel is between movie “phases” so Wonder Woman has a clear run.
That is a strange phrase of Marvel’s. “Phases”. It makes them sound like a teenager experimenting with make-up for the first time.
Anyway, Wonder Woman will easily snaffle a billion. But will it be the top movie? Sequels can be tricky things. Iron Man 2 was flabby and the less said about Thor Dark World, the better. Even Chris Hemsworth with his shirt off couldn’t distract viewers from the wacky plot.
Plus, lurking in the wings is the Black Widow movie, Marvel’s best hope at taking the crown.
Scarlett Johansson’s character died in Endgame, so this is effectively her farewell. With possible cameos from Robert Downey Jr and others, this will also be a big movie.
But it won’t be fully super-powered and Taskmaster, the baddie, has already been slammed online for looking less like a supervillain and more like Bob from Accounting on his way to a corporate paintball weekend.
Then we have Mulan, which is the live-action remake of Disney’s 1998 cartoon. This could easily be the biggest movie of the year thanks to the Chinese market, which is expected to be more excited about Mulan than a bunch of Millennials about half-price smashed avocadoes.
Again, though, there are doubts. Will it be PG or even G? This is a war movie, after all, so would benefit from a little realism and at least an M rating.
But will Disney risk that? It has a lot of merchandise riding on this one and I’ll go out on a limb here and say most eight-year-old girls don’t want to see someone disembowelled in high definition.
Of course the dark horse in the race is the bloke — James Bond. No Time To Die is Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007, so will everyone rush to see that? Or will the constant rumblings about electric cars, female writers and the next Bond being black put off the chunk of the fan base that only goes along to hear the double entendres?
My gut feeling is Mulan will win, propelled by the Chinese market. I would love to see an R-rated battle version although I know Disney couldn’t risk a bunch of schoolkids seeing
that by mistake.
Still, at least the kiddies wouldn’t be as horrified by sprays of blood as some James Bond fans would be at the sight of a black 007.