2016 was, well, a rough year. And 2017… well, that’s looking like it’s going to be a rough year, too. And whether or not you subscribe to the theory that rough years lead to great art, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be any easier to get through. Still, there’s something to be said for taking solace in artistic greatness — or crashing cars or whateve works for you — in tough times. Sometimes it’s all we’ve got, and the need for that makes any disappointments that much more disappointing. As we look ahead at 2017, our writers shared their greatest TV- and movie-related hopes and fears for the year to come.
Brian Grubb
Hope
The first season of Better Call Saul was good, and sometimes great. Even with that bar set, the second season was a leap forward. The side-by-side stories of Jimmy and Saul both started kicking into high gear, giving viewers little glimpses of the people we know they’ll be when the show catches up to Breaking Bad, and Rhea Seehorn’s performance as Kim is becoming one of TV’s best. The show is starting to become a worthy companion to the original, and I would argue, a more enjoyable watch. My hope for 2017 is that it stays on the upward trajectory in season three. With so many of our favorite shows zeroing in on and end date, it would be nice to have this one settle into a spot at the top for a few years.
Fear
The last three Fast & Furious films (Fast Five, Fast & Furious 6, Furious 7) have been the best kind of big fun summer action movies. My worry is that this next one, The Fate of the Furious, will be the one that breaks the streak. Between the absence of Paul Walker and the fact that you can only go so big before you become a caricature, there’s a lot up in the air here. Save us, Statham. You’re my only hope.
Alyssa Fikse
Hope
I hope that people actually admit that The CW is great. The DC shows are consistently fun, The 100 continues to be one of the most surprising and morally ambiguous sci-fi, iZombie is the best zombie show on TV (don’t @ me), and Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend continue to be clever, compelling and progressive. Yes, everyone has perfect hair and rock-hard abs, but that doesn’t mean that the content is subpar.
Fear
I’m worried that the live-action Beauty and the Beast is going to be terrible. The trailer did not inspire a ton of initial confidence despite a great cast, so it would be a shame to tarnish the legacy of one of Disney’s finest films (and my personal favorite.). Disney had a rock solid run on all fronts in 2016, so I worry that that kind of momentum can’t be maintained.
Jason Tabrys
Hope
That people keep listening to John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Seth Meyers, and the like. CNN declared that 2016 was “the year late night picked a side” and that side clearly didn’t come away with the presidency. There may be concerns about clearly evident bias going forward and the effectiveness of the Trump-is-a-monster narrative may be in doubt, but I do hope that late night’s ability to skewer isn’t dulled and that sharp observations don’t fall on deaf ears. If we require people to lie to us about adhering to some code of impartiality before we pay attention to them when they call out hypocrisy and other forms of political bullsh*t then we’re doomed.
Fear
Speaking of doomed, my effort to catch up with all the offerings on Netflix, Amazon, and other peak TV providers is not going well. Please slow down. I am trying to live a life.
Dan Seitz
Hope
That the second season of Preacher will be even better than the first. The first season was amazing, mind you, but now they have the plotline of the comics to deal with, at least to some degree. Their willingness to abide by the spirit instead of the letter hints it’ll be the springboard to something great.
Fear
That Hollywood’s higher-than-usual creative bankruptcy destroys most of the industry. 2017 is kicking off with xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, a sequel to a 15-year-old movie nobody cared much about back in the nü-metal days and likely care even less about now. We’re getting a third Smurfs movie despite the fact audiences avoided the second one. Universal is trying to turn its classic monster movies into The Avengers, despite the fact that was supposed to happen with Dracula Untold, a movie that now apparently doesn’t count.
Disney made $7 billion this year, but the majority of that came from just four movies making roughly a billion apiece, and it also put out one of the biggest high-budget bombs of the year. And most studios don’t have the advantage of owning Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars to cover their increasingly expensive mistakes. The movie business is incredibly fragile at the best of times, and 2017 is not promising to be one of those.
Dustin Rowles
Hope
Both the Marvel Cinematic and Television Universes have fallen into predictable, albeit successful, formulas. The success of both Iron Man and Daredevil provided blueprints for their movie and TV successors. But I am hoping that FX’s Legion — like Deadpool among Marvel movies — becomes the television outlier. I want this not only because Marvel’s Netflix series have grown stale, but because I hope for Noah Hawley the kind of wider audience and success that a Marvel series can bring. Hawley has proven with both The Unusuals and two seasons of Fargo that he’s every bit as good as better known showrunners like Nic Pizzolatto or Matthew Weiner, but he still lacks the name recognition. My hope is that by the end of the year, Hawley — who is also an accomplished novelist — is mentioned in the same category as Vince Gilligan or David Chase.
Fear
The first season of HBO’s The Leftovers was “good” television, an interesting meditation on grief that that was, at times, too bleak. Once freed from Tom Perotta’s source material, however, Damon Lindelof turned in one of the best seasons of television of this decade. Season two of The Leftovers was near perfect, successfully teasing a mystery for 9 episodes and paying it off in the finale before anyone on the Internet could figure it out. The season finale — which could have easily served as a series finale — was so good that I had half-hoped HBO wouldn’t pick it up for a third season. I don’t know how Lindelof can possibly top the second season, and I fear that the third and final season my undo some of the incredible work he’s done. Ultimately, I trust Lindelof can deliver another “good” season, but I worry he won’t be able to maintain perfection.
Andrew Husband
Hope
Despite the occasional upset (like Doctor Strange‘s mishandling of race and culture before, during and after its casting process), Marvel Studios has consistently produced likable, well-made movies for its fans. Guardians of the Galaxy accomplished this in 2014, and if director James Gunn’s social media teases and the two trailers released thus far are any indication, Vol. 2 will do the same. Who knows? Maybe Marvel’s own space opera will avoid its predecessor’s heavy reliance on a McGuffin and strike an original chord.
Fear
While showrunner Steven Moffat is set to leave the series after the upcoming 10th season, Doctor Who‘s next outing may bear the worst of the head writer’s penchant for valuing increasingly frightening baddies and weird horror elements over story. Consequently, Peter Capaldi’s The Doctor has often taken a back seat to whatever far-out concoctions Moffat cooks up week to week. Moffat likes to end his story lines and characters with a bang, so he’ll likely overdo it in 2017 and suck the science fiction out of Doctor Who for the sake of additional scares.
Vince Mancini
Hope
That Baby Driver will make me forgive, nay, thank Marvel for dicking over Edgar Wright on Ant Man.
Fear
Do “nuclear holocaust” or “World War III” count as TV or movie fears? If not, I fear six more months of polarized Marvel vs. DC vs. critics arguments over movies that are only slightly different shades of mediocre.
Keith Phipps
Hope
My hope for 2017 is that I won’t have to read another “Movies are dead” piece for any reason. I know the feeling: As I watched the end of Suicide Squad and felt myself overwhelmed by eye-searing digital effects as the payoff for a barely patched-together story I started to wonder if I was watching the end of something. But then a funny thing happened shortly after that movie came out: The rest of August was filled with terrific films that doubled as reminders of how exciting going to the movies could be, films as different as Pete’s Dragon and Don’t Breathe. And in the middle of it was Hell or High Water, a smart, challenging, genre movie with something to say about what’s going in the world right now. My only problem with it: such films shouldn’t be unusual. We should get them once a month not a couple of times of year. That Hell or High Water got embraced at the box office suggests I’m not alone in wanting more. So, that’s my wish: more intelligent, well-acted, mid-budget studio films made by filmmakers with something to say.
Fear
We’ll just get more Suicide Squads instead.
Stacey Ritzen
Hope
That season three of Rick and Morty will finally eventually come out in 2017, as promised (but we’ve heard that song and dance before). The people demand their right to get schwifty!
Fear
That this season of The Bachelor won’t come even remotely close to eclipsing the greatest moment from last season, in which wild pigs chased a bunch of bikini-clad women around on a remote beach. Hell, my fear is that no show this year comes close enough to that moment of televised brilliance. Your game, Better Call Saul.
Jess Toomer
Hope
That Marvel treats its women better. When it comes to superhero movies, Marvel has DC beat in every category but one. The studio has been churning out blockbusters for almost a decade and yet no female superhero has proven worthy enough to have her own standalone film. Sure, Brie Larson is suiting up for Captain Marvel, but that movie isn’t coming for another two years. And apart from an interestingly dark stab at Jessica Jones on Netflix, the studio hasn’t committed anything to the slew of female characters it has at its disposal. Iron Man, Captain America, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, even The Punisher: They’re all getting their own stand alone series and films while Scarlett Johansson sits on the sidelines, busting her ass in ensembles for a bit of screen time and no action figure. The writing’s pretty much on the wall already for 2017 — another Spider-Man reboot, another Thor adventure and the aforementioned Iron Fist series — but there’s still some opportunities, mainly in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, The Defenders and an Inhumans series on ABC, to give some deserving lady heroes their time in the spotlight.
Fear
That Game of Thrones‘ seventh season will be a letdown. When things go right on Game of Thrones, there’s no series on TV that can rival it. Case in point: the show’s most recent season. After giving us sweeping battles, satisfying revenge plots and more dragons, season seven is promising a meeting of two key characters and a possible showdown with the White Walkers. Sadly, in order to deliver on all of the epic-ness they’ve promised, the show is cutting its episode list from an already slim ten to seven. That’s right, seven episodes to fit in a Jon Snow – Mother of Dragons meet-cute, explore Sansa’s possible bid for the throne, reunite the Stark siblings, follow Cersei’s evil rule and find out how in the seven kingdoms Westeros is supposed to battle an ancient race of ice people. Can they pull it off? Sure. Will they? We’ll see.
