Over the many months leading up to this week’s release of Baz Luhrmann’s hotly-anticipated literary adaptation of The Great Gatsby, much has been made about the anticipated accommodations, additions, and outright alterations to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic story. Has Mr. Luhrmann’s obsession with modernization gone awry, or is he aptly adjusting an 88-year-old book (and a 39-year-old film) for the very different expectations of today’s audiences? We won’t know for sure until Friday, but here’s why at least one writer thinks he’s the perfect man for the job.

The successes of any Summer season are often easy to explain. While there is always some risk involved, specific genres (action/adventure, crazy comedies) and known names (insert current cause celeb here) bolster any box office forecast. Besides, Tinseltown has the cash generating possibilities of certain cinematic archetypes down to a science. However, the same can also be said for the flops, the films that will fail to meet expectations and, in rare cases, cost studios their credibility and mainstream meaning. Specific cinematic categories (sci-fi, intense dramas) are hard popcorn entertainment sells, and a now hot member of the Hollywood elite can cool as quickly as a snowball on ice. So here are our picks for the possible bombs of Summer 2013. While May through August may prove us wrong, we won’t be surprised if these five films fail outright, or at least in the eyes of the entertainment pundits.

Life for a superhero is, apparently, very hard indeed. Not only are you required to save the world, deal with the inner issues that makes you the go-to guy or gal (shapeshifting, inhuman strength, etc.), and live with the aftermath of defeating an entire alien race… or arch villain… or a madman bent of global domination, but there is that nasty little leftover known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Typically evidencing itself in panic attacks, insomnia, and uncontrollable worry, it seems insane that someone as arrogantly over the top and full of himself as the egotistical Tony Stark would laugh in the face of such a malady. But in Shane Black’s satisfying end to the main Marvel triptych, Iron Man 3, our hero is indeed lost in the throngs of his after-Avengers anxiety. He remembers how close he came to dying, and how quickly he could lose everything he now cherishes.

Alternative titles: Plan 10 From Outer Space; Attack of the Badly-Suited Zombies
 
POSITIVES:

Good performances from solid B-list cast, though John Carradine is underutilized.

Cool “invisible cross-country skiing” effects.

Clever use of newsreel footage suggests worldwide catastrophe.

Nifty anti-nukes subtext.

Inventive way of capturing and studying aliens.

I know, I know… it makes me sound so fair weather. After all, she’s been in the biz for what seems like an eternity. I remember all the Orlando brouhaha, the talk about her “androgynous” looks and “gender bending” aura. I even recall her minor moments in Adaptation. and Vanilla Sky (sadly, I have yet to experience The Beach all the way through). No, the first time I can recall being really impressed with Tilda Swinton was when she played the archangel Gabriel in the oddball comic book movie Constantine. She was so luminous, so ambiguously a-human and completely heaven sent that I was compelled to know more about her. Sadly, what I came across (a bunch of self-serving arthouse malarkey with names like Conceiving Ada) did little to impress me.