The date is November 29th, 2021. The winds are howling outside my Central Illinois home as I sit in my spare bedroom that I retrofitted into an office. I’m recording a shoddy podcast with one of my brothers and one of my best friends. The podcast has been scrubbed from the internet, but I still have receipts in my Notion database. We each predicted our best movies of the year using the release schedule on thenumbers.com. It’s now December 30th, 2022 and it’s time to review my predictions. How did I do?
#5 – John Wick 4
So this one is a bit disappointing. When we recorded this episode, John Wick 4 was supposed to release in May of 2022. Sadly that is no longer the case, as it will release on March 24, 2023. John Wick has helped revitalize the action gun-fu genre of movies and they’ve all been a blast to watch. With the new Ballerina and Continental tv shows announced, the world of assassins for hire will get a lot more lore.
#4 – Across The Spider-Verse
Similar to John Wick 4, Across The Spider-Verse was delayed out of 2022 entirely and is currently set for June 2, 2023. The trailer for the first part of the new movie shows dozens of new Spider-people, with fan favorites hiding in every frame. r/MovieDetails mods are about to have a heart attack with all the Spider-Verse posts that will flood that sub for the next three years.
#3- Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning
The third time’s the charm, right? Ha ha, WRONG! I whiffed pretty badly on this one too. Mission Impossible was initially supposed to release in May 2022 and then September 2022 before being completely delayed into July of 2023. But Tom Cruise does not leave his audience hanging. The crazy son-of-a-bitch released several teaser videos including him standing on the wings of an airplane, sky diving and interviewing while in free fall, and riding a motorcycle off a cliff into a base jump. The man is a national treasure and should be protected at all costs (we’ll just ignore the Scientology thing for a bit).
#2 – The Batman
The Batman was my second-best movie of all 2022, as predicted. It scored a well-deserved 95/100 and remains one of the best movies released in the history of the DCEU. A lot has happened to the DCEU since March 2022 though, so this might be a one-and-done for Robert Pattinson and Matt Reeves’s version of the Caped Crusader. Since release, Ezra Miller has been up to a lot of criminal shenanigans, Black Adam was a dumpster fire, and the leadership at DCEU was ousted. James Gunn has been named the new co-CEO and has gone in with a scorched earth policy on existing properties.
#1 – Thor: Love and Thunder
Despite audience reactions, I enjoyed Thor: Love and Thunder. I thought it was a funny, different, and sort of refreshing take for a Marvel movie. At the time of my initial list being made, Eternals had just come out so I was thinking there was no way the next Thor movie could be that bad. If I was going to rewatch it right now and redo it, I don’t think I would have given it a 90. It’s probably more like an 85 at best. It definitely doesn’t deserve to be near the top 10, let alone the top 5 with all the great movies that have come out this year.
2022 Wrapped
So I’m 2 for 5 on picks, and 1 for 5 on the positioning of said picks. Given how many things were delayed, I’d say I did OK. If those movies had been released as scheduled, I think that they definitely would be in the top 5 list as predicted. That said, I think I know what my top 5 list for 2023 is going to be consisting of. What were your favorite movies of 2022? Send me a message on Instagram or comment on this post! Or if Discord is more your thing, come hang out and make some new friends to talk movies with.