2021 in Film: Are we Ready?

Eiman Rizwan
Feb 12, 2021
3 min read

2020 gave us a lot of things, mostly bad, but it lacked something that we always look forward to in the new year. Movies. Almost every movie that came out in 2020 was a small release on a streaming service and usually went quite unnoticed. This year, 2021, looks a lot brighter for the world of cinema. Many new movies have been announced, with their official casts and release dates. We have even seen some new behind the scenes photos of the movie sets. What better way to look forward to these movies than to analyze and predict their potential success, or failure. To do so, we are going to analyze the history of the director, the credentials of the actors, as well as what we know so far about the storyline. Then we are going to determine how successful we think it will be out of 10.

Don’t Look Up

Perhaps the movie that everyone is most excited for in 2021 is the all star cast film “Don’t Look Up” directed by Adam McKay. Known for directing family favourite comedies such as “Step Brothers”, “The Other Guys”, and “Anchorman”, McKay has decided to take a film-making risk and create a political-satire with an enormous budget. The cast includes big names like Jennifer Lawrence, Timothee Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Leonardo Dicaprio, Chris Evans, Jonah Hill, Kid Cudi, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, and Matthew Perry. Having an all star cast is always fun to see in movies, but most of the time it becomes too overwhelming and can lead to the film’s downfall. According to Google, the movie will be about a team of astronomers who discover an incoming asteroid heading towards Earth, and they only have 6 months to try and stop it. Upon first reading that, I wasn’t very impressed. Judging from that alone, I have a gut feeling that this movie is going to be an over the top sci-fi comedy that tries too hard to be funny, and ends up failing. Let’s not forget that McKay can ONLY do comedies anyways. But here is the catch. Even though I feel like the storyline will become too messy, I still think this movie will be successful just from the cast alone. Let’s be honest here, who doesn’t want to see Jennifer Lawrence, Timothee Chalamet, Ariana Grande and Leonardo Dicaprio in a movie together?

Jennifer Lawrence and Timothee Chalamet on set

Prediction:

Storyline: 4/10

Acting: 7.5/10

Overall success: 8.5/10

Don’t Worry Darling

Now this one will be interesting. Another highly anticipated movie to come out this year, is the thriller-drama directed by Olivia Wilde titled “Don’t Worry Darling”. The well-known actress has previously directed 2 short films, and the hilarious teen movie “Booksmart”. The incredible cast includes Olivia Wilde herself, Harry Styles, Florence Pugh, Chris Pine and Dakota Johnson. According to Google, the movie will be about Pugh’s character being an unhappy housewife to Styles’ character, and uncovering a dark hidden secret. I’m definitely excited about this movie because one of my favourite movie genres is thriller, and judging by the pictures we have seen from the paparazzi, it looks like the film is not set in the current time period. As far as acting, Florence Pugh has proven time and time again that she is an incredible, and very capable actress and I’m really looking forward to her performance. I know everyone is excited about Harry Styles, and personally I haven’t watched Dunkirk, which he had a cameo in, so I can’t say whether I think his acting will be good or not. At least he looks handsome in the behind the scenes pictures.

Storyline: 8/10

Acting: 8.6/10

Overall success: 8.2/10

The Suicide Squad

The suicide squad is back and better than ever. This time it features my personal favourite comedian, Pete Davidson! Jared Leto is returning to play his role as the joker, and same with Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. The upcoming movie is adding new faces such as John Cena, Dwayne Johnson, Pete Davidson, and Storm Reid. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like Will Smith will be returning as Deadshot, and neither will Cara Delevigne as Enchantress. All we know so far about the movie is that the suicide squad is continuing their adventures together. For me personally, I’m excited to see Pete star in an action movie with an all-star cast and branch out from his usual comedy or light-hearted coming of age movies.