Four summer blockbusters to fill your weekend movie calendar for June

With the eve of the opening of The Avengers finally upon us, the movie studios are gearing up for even more summer blockbusters, releasing updated and expanded versions of trailers that have already been playing for months, previewed earlier this year at borg.com in earlier versions. And each new blockbuster will open on in its own weekend in June, only a month away.

Brave

The best must be the new trailer for Brave. The downside is that it tends to show so many apparently good scenes that one worries if there will be anything left to be surprised by with the actual movie. The positive is that Brave looks to be among the best animated films so far, up there with Beauty and the Beast and Up. The visuals of the characters and setting are simply stunning. You might watch this trailer if you haven’t yet convinced yourself to see this film when it is released on June 22, 2012.

Prometheus

Next up is the new trailer for Prometheus, a film whose marketing (with the recent David 8 preview) seems to be just getting better and better. The ships, the future technology, the strange new worlds, all look intriguing. And if there were any doubt this film will pull a lot from the kind of plot seen in past Alien films, including space horror shockers and blood spatters, it’s all pretty much settled in this preview. The downside is that the opening scene conversations play a tad like bad SyFy Channel made-for-TV movies. Will special effects and scenery make up for iffy dialogue? We’ll find out June 8, 2012.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation

The new trailer for G.I. Joe: Retaliation has several bits from past trailers but reveals more about the plot of the organization called COBRA to take over the world. The filming and story looks a bit like the X-Men series, which may be a good thing. Then there is the ninja battle on the side of the mountain–no doubt this new G.I. Joe film will be as much fan as the last. We like Dwayne Johnson movies. We hope Bruce Willis is here for more than just a cameo. This movie will be released June 29, 2012.

The Dark Knight Rises

Finally, there is a new trailer (that makes trailer #3) for The Dark Knight Rises. Emphasis on the word “dark.” We have a bad guy, Bane, whose face we mostly cannot see, and so his dialogue seems muffled in the trailer. We have Anne Hathaway, who we want to love as Catwoman, yet she seems a bit weepy and not very seductive or cat-like. Her role must be bigger (fingers crossed) than what we’re seeing so far. And Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne looks…just like we’ve seen him in the past films, depressed and bedraggled like he looked before he went off to find himself in Batman Begins. Compared to The Avengers (and there will be plenty of comparisons and contrasts this summer with dueling Marvel and DC movies)–which looks all-out exciting–The Dark Knight Rises looks plain dreary. Goodbye Gotham. Goodbye Batman. Dreary. This summer blockbuster hits theaters June 15, 2012.