Fanboys Anonymous

Welcome to a special edition of 6 Flicks Picks to jump-start the year 2018!

Naturally, this breakdown won't be listing the releases of every single movie that will be coming out in the year—partially because that's too daunting of a task and partially because even the studios don't know all of those yet—but it will still follow the same format as far as the picks go. This will be much harder, as there are hundreds of films that will be coming out, but it still boils down to the same concept: if I had to pick only six movies that I could watch, which ones would they be?

Without further ado, let's take a look at what makes my cut for 2018!



What is so difficult about this type of thing is that I have to go by the general breakdown of the big releases, as there can definitely be movies that pop up that I'm completely unaware of that are smaller in scale. A major summer blockbuster is already in promotion now, but what about the little indie flick?

Those end up being ignored in this generic year scope, but on the monthly basis, they'll get much more attention, so keep that in mind.

This year, I had a list of about 20 movies that I was already writing down that I wanted to see to varying degrees, with about 12 of them being definites to see in theaters. Of course, that's twice as many as what I'm allowed to pick, which makes it hard, and when I got down to the final 8 or so, it became nearly impossible to pick which film got that final spot.

What Didn't Make the List: One of the easy ones for me to eliminate from the top was Ready Player One, which looks interesting, but I know virtually nothing about. The same goes for God Particle being an idea I'm into, yet have seen nothing. I've enjoyed the previous two films enough to want to see Maze Runner: The Death Cure, but it's not a priority. Right now, with such little information to go by, I have to cast off the animated Spider-Man film, too. Shout out to The Purge: The Island because the first film was meh, but I quite enjoyed the second and third, so I'm in for this fourth one.

Sadly, after being disappointed with Justice League, I can't give a final spot to Aquaman. After all, he's Aquaman, and while I currently like the character more than ever, that doesn't mean I love it.

It's also strange for me to not put two out of the three X-Men films on my list, but at this point, the franchise has proven itself to be very hit/miss and I don't like this horror angle The New Mutants is taking, nor do I think X-Men: Dark Phoenix will pan out to be very well.

Creed 2? Cool. Not a top 6. Incredibles 2? Well, this might seem like blasphemy, but I didn't enjoy the first one anywhere near as much as most people, so I might even skip that.

Here's where it got difficult. I had 8 films left on my list and 2 of them needed to go.

In the end, those two became Venom and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom...by a narrow, and I mean NARROW margin...until Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom made a big stink about its trailer coming out and the trailer, well, stunk. The more separated from Jurassic World I am, the more I think of it as just a retread and a copy of Jurassic Park, so I'm a bit worried this might end up being a retread of The Lost World.

My philosophy with Venom was that Sony has screwed up plenty of Spider-Man properties before and I have no faith in them delivering with Venom, even if the character is one of my favorites.

I'm still very much looking forward to those listed above, but only six movies could make the cut, so let's see which ones got the honors...

6. Mission: Impossible 6 — What saved this from being cut with the final two above is how every film in the franchise has pretty much gotten better than its predecessor, so by that rationale, this might end up being the very best. I've always been a James Bond guy and nothing will ever change that, but Ethan Hunt's series has kicked so much ass as far as overall generic quality and I have no reason to believe that this won't follow suit. Plus, it's different from everything else on the list.

5. Ant-Man and the Wasp — I bitched and moaned for a long time about how Ant-Man was going to be Marvel's first flop after I was wrong when saying the same thing about Guardians of the Galaxy, and I ended up thinking it was very charming. Now, I'm in. Give me the romantic comedy vibe that we're hearing about. You don't need to sell me. I'll buy my ticket for opening night without a single trailer.

4. Deadpool 2 — I do think the first film gets a little more praise than it should as far as overall film quality, but I can't deny that Deadpool was a huge achievement in a lot of different realms of the movie making process and entertaining as all hell. The character is hilarious and a follow-up can either capitalize on that and make things even funnier, or it can potentially fall short of expectations, but I know I'll be there opening night to see for myself.

3. Solo: A Star Wars Story — You'd think this would be #1 or at least #2, right? Well, so did I. Then, The Last Jedi came out and really, and I mean REALLY soured me on the Star Wars franchise. I don't find it as fun anymore. It sapped a ton of my energy for it and I'm not excited about anything they put forward anymore, like the last half of Star Wars Rebels and this movie and Episode 9. Plus, the problems plaguing this movie have me nervous it'll be a clusterfuck, as Rogue One didn't even have this many problems and it still struggled. However, it's a movie about Han Solo and it has Donald Glover as Lando, so I haven't fully given up.

2. Black Panther — As a Caucasian guy, I can't even pretend to understand the significance of this movie as far as diversity goes, but I'm also not going to pretend that I necessarily even care about that. It's a great thing and I'm all for it, but that's not why I'm interested in this movie. I'm interested in it because it just flat out looks awesome. Black Panther was one of my favorite parts of Captain America: Civil War and the fact that this is the last movie before Infinity War means I'll be so pumped for anything they bring my way. The cast is phenomenal and it's a Marvel film, so you've already got my money.

1. Avengers: Infinity War — It took 20 films and 10 years to get to this point. I would pay $100 to see this in theaters if I had to. It's goddamn Thanos with the fucking Infinity Gauntlet!!!! What the hell, man?!! Remember when we were excited that Ra's al Ghul could be in a Batman film because we thought that was too strange for modern audiences?!! Now we've got this going on!!!!!!