Science Fiction has seen better days. There are a few good sci-fi films that come out every year but there is not a huge run on the genre. Perhaps the continuing Dune franchise can help, but it feels as if the sci-fi film is too easily poorly constructed.
So it is a little challenging to choose the best sci-fi movie of the year. I do remove super hero movies from the mix. That leaves a lesser amount.
I’ll start with the worst.
Worst Sci-Fi Movie of the Year
Runners-Up: Crimes of the Future, Don’t Worry Darling, The School for Good & Evil, Jurassic World: Dominion, Firestarter, Moonfall
Worst: RIPD 2: Rise of the Damned
Who wanted a sequel of this movie? It is not as if RIPD was a huge hit. It was a minor film that was bad and went away. RIPD 2 is just a cheap knockoff without any of the stars of the original.
Best Sci-Fi Movie of the Year
Best Sci-Fi Movie
Previous Winners: Upgrade, Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, The Martian, Ex Machina, Star Trek Into Darkness, Edge of Tomorrow, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Dune
Runners-Up: Day Shift, Lightyear, The Adam Project
Best (TIE): Everything Everywhere All At Once
AND…
Best (TIE): Avatar: The Way of Water
Two opposite types of films this year. The small, low budget movie that could and the giant, high budget blockbuster. Yet both came up with wonderful movies. Everything Everywhere All at Once had a tighter story and plot, but the new Avatar had the most spectacular special effects, surely revolutionizing the industry.
As I was watching Christmas Bloody Christmas this morning on Shudder, I realized that I had seen a lot of Christmas movies this year and that this might be the perfect opportunity to create a new category/Award for the Year in Review. So, I created the banner that is above this post and came up with my favorite X-Mas Movies of the Year.
Of course, the letter X is big in the geek world, so it felt natural to use it instead of writing out the word Christmas. Looking back over the years, there have been several epic Christmas movies. I watch The Muppet Christmas Carol every year. The constant argument over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie rages on. I loved the animated Klaus a few years ago on Netflix. Just to name a few.
Runners-Up for 2022: The film that would have been number two on a list of Christmas movies for 2022 was Spirited, a fun musical movie featuring Ryan Reynolds and Will Farrell, once again tapping into the Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol. The music in that film was excellent and Ferrell provided some solid work. Another big film was the long time sequel, AChristmas Story Christmas on HBO Max. Bringing back several of the original actors from A Christmas Story found all of the nostalgia for the season. Marvel Studios provided us with a special presentation on Disney + of The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which included Drax and Mantis kidnapping Kevin Bacon as they tried to boosts the spirits of Peter Quill. I saw Christmas Bloody Christmas just this morning on Shudder and found the robot Santa Claus slasher that I did not know that I needed. Then, there were two Netflix films that were not particular favorites of mine, but I would include on this list at the bottom. That would be Falling for Christmas and the animated Scrooge: A Christmas Carol. Both very disappointing, especially Scrooge which somehow messed up the easiest of all stories.
The X-Mas Movie of the Year…
Violent Night
David Harbour starred in Violent Night, a film that was a surprise because of how much they actually spent on characterization and the depth of the story. It is not just Santa Claus being a bad ass. Of course, he is a bad ass. This was a hoot of a film with a ton of fun and some serious violence. And it is one of my favorite movies of the year.
The Avengers: Endgame Ensemble Cast of the Year Award
Previous Winners: Avengers: Endgame (2019), The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), In the Heights (2021), Mass (2021)
Ensemble casts are vital to the movie industry. Not every film has an obvious main protagonist. Instead they depend on deep and talented casts to provide the story.
2022 has its share of top notch ensemble casts. In fact, this year, as we did last year, has a tie in The Avengers: Endgame Ensemble Cast of the Year Award.
Before we reveal the winners this year, we have to look at the runners-up.
Runners-Up: Starting off, one of my favorite movies of the year featured a great ensemble cast in The Menu. You may argue that Ralph Fiennes is the main character which keeps that out of the winner’s circle. The Woman King had a great cast, led by Viola Davis in a film where they were not the Dora Milaje. Then, Bullet Train was a lot of fun, featuring Brad Pitt and Brian Tyree Henry. The second Kenneth Branagh film with him as Hercule Poirot, Death on the Nile, is better than the other film. Everything Everywhere All the Time is a great film, but the fact that Michelle Yeoh is the main protagonist, though the remainder of the cast was amazing. German film All Quiet on the Western Front was a solid remake on Netflix this year. There was a new Scream this year too (and next year as well).
Winner#1
Black Panther:Wakanda Forever
This cast is amazing. Featuring the skills of Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan, Winston Duke, Danai Gurira, Dominique Thorne, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Martin Freeman, Mabel Cadena, Michaela Coel, Florence Kasumba and Lake Bell.
This was a very emotional film for the cast to make, since they were moving on without their “king” Chadwick Boseman, who passed away in 2020. You can tell that the actors in Wakanda Forever were definitely bringing it in honor of their fallen friend.
Winner #2
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
The second winner is another sequel, but there is only one returning character. Benoit Blanc, as played by Daniel Craig, is the pne connective tissue between the original Knives Out film and Glass Onion.
However, the rest of the cast is tremendous as well including Edward Norton, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, Kate Hudson, Madelyn Cline, Jessica Henwick, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., and Hugh Grant.
The idea of following Benoit Blanc into different mysteries with new ensemble casts is very engaging and Glass Onion was a ton of fun.
I did not have a ton of nominees for this award this year. Next year it sure looks like Harrison Ford’s young Indiana Jones has to be considered a leading candidate, but this year was slight.
In fact, I only have two nominees.
Runner-up: Luke Skywalker (The Book of Boba Fett)
The Kurt Russell EGO De-Aging Award
Previous Winners: Robert DeNiro (The Irishman), Mark Hamill (The Mandalorian), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man: No Way Home)
2022 Kurt Russell EGO De-Aging Award goes to…
Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven (Stranger Things Season 4)
The flashbacks of Eleven that helped tell the origin of Vecna included many scenes with a young Millie Bobby Brown. At times they used Millie and other times they had a young actress Martie Blair (from Young & the Restless) do the scenes with a de-aged Millie Bobby Brown head CGIed on her body. Amazing what they can do with technology these days.
I actually had a difficult time with this award because I had several choices to become the 2022 I See Kid Actors Award but there was not any that really jumped out at me. I mean, there were several decent performances and several solid work by the youngster of the movie world, but I did not think there was that real standout.
In fact, I found a lot of serious contenders who just did not made the age cut. For our purposes, a “kid actor” is a performer who was under the age of 18 during the calendar year. I had considered Sadie Sink from Stranger Things 4, but she was 20 years old. Her work on “Dear Billy” was brilliant (and you’ll see her name later in the Year in Review, I am sure). Then I thought a shoo-in would be Jenna Ortega for her work in the new Netflix series, Wednesday, but, she too, was 20 years old.
Then I found the winner.
I See Kid Actor Award
Previous Winners: Emjay Anthony (Chef), Jacob Trembley (Room), Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things), Dafne Keen (Logan), Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade), Noah Jupe (Honey Boy), McKenna Grace (Troop Zero), Jeremy T. Thomas (Antlers)
Runners-Up: Marlow Barkley did a solid job in the under appreciated Slumberland on Netflix. She carried much of that film with Jason Momoa. Real life twin brothers Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti played twins in the horror remake of Goodnight Mommy. They were the best part of that movie. Walker Scobell appeared in two films this year, the biggest being The Adam Project with Ryan Reynolds. He looks to be a star of the future. Then there was Banks Repeta who starred opposite Anthony Hopkins in Armageddon Time and looked like he belonged. How many adult actors could say that? Mason Thomas and Madeleine McGraw were so epic in Black Phone that one or both nearly took this award. In fact, they were probably the frontrunners until just recently. Then, Rueby Wood was fun in the surprisingly entertaining Disney + show Better Nate Than Ever.
However, I saw a film today that, 15 minutes into the film, I knew this would be my “I See Kid Actors” Award winner for 2022.
The I See Kid Actors Award for 2022 goes to…
Alisha Weir (Matilda the Musical)
She was so spectacular in this movie that I knew that she was going to take home this award. She sang beautifully and provided so much emotion and energy that she could hold her own with Emma Thompson and make a character that was beloved by many from a 1996 movie and make it her own.
It has been a great year in the WWE. Even when a lot of the storylines were repetitive or not as interesting, the matches were still delivering, especially with Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes and Seth ‘Freakin’ Rollins.
#15. Bianca Belair, Becky Lynch, Asuka, Mia Yim and Alexa Bliss defeated Damage Control, Rhea Ripley and Nikki Cross, War Games, SummerSlam
#14. Roman Reigns defeated Logan Paul, Crown Jewel
#13. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin defeated Kevin Owens, Wrestlemania
#12. The Bloodline defeated The Brawling Brutes, Drew McIntyre and Kevin Owens, War Games, SummerSlam.
#11. Seth Rollins defeated Roman Reigns by DQ; Royal Rumble
#10. Matt Riddle defeated Seth Rollins, Fight Pit. Extreme Rules
#9. R.K. Bro defeated Alpha Academy and Seth Rollins/Kevin Owens. RAW
#8. Roman Reigns defeated Drew McIntyre. Clash at the Castle
#2. Gunther defeated Sheamus. Clash at the Castle.
Quite the year for Roman Reigns, who was in six of the top 15 matches, Seth Rollins who was in five, and Kevin Owens and Matt Riddle (who found his first name!) were in three each. Two matches that appeared live and free on TV made this list, one from RAW and one from Smackdown. This is the first year in quite awhile that NXT did not make the list. Gunther and Sheamus had the banger of all bangers at Clash at the Castle and it solidified Sheamus as a fan favorite and a tough, tough man. Some runners-up outside the top 15 included Bianca Belair vs. Bayley, Ladder Match, Bianca Belair vs. Becky Lynch, Wrestlemania 38, The Bloodline vs. R.K.Bro nd Drew McIntyre, Wrestlemania Backlash, The Usos defeated The Street Profits, Money in the Bank, AJ Styles vs. Finn Balor, Survivor Series, Ricochet vs. Carmelo Hayes, NXT World’s Collide, Wes Lee wins North American Championship in Ladder Match, Bron Breakker vs. Ilja Draugnov vs. JD McDonagh, Halloween Havoc
…and the #1 WWE Match of the
Year…
#1. Cody Rhodes defeated Seth Rollins, Hell in the Cell
There may have been better technical matches this year (including from these two), but the fat that Cody Rhodes went into this match with a severe injury, having torn his pec off the bone, and still was able to deliver a match full of drama and intensity, lacking nothing, speaks highly of both Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins. The legit injury looked horrible and created such a stir in the audience. I remember when I first saw the injury that I couldn’t believe it was real and that the WWE would allow Cody to compete. The success of the match really sent Cody into the next stratosphere and set him up to be a huge babyface upon his return.
The world of WWE is always interesting and it went through a major shift backstage this year as Chairman Vince McMahon stepped down from the creative and the control of the WWE. As all wrestling fans believed that hell had frozen over, Triple H, aka Paul Levesque, took over the WWE and immediately began making changes and re-signing wrestlers who had been let go. There was a lot of excitement in the world of wrestling and the WWE was on a roll.
Here are our World of WWE Awards.
Male Wrestler of the Year: Roman Reigns (runners-up: Sami Zayn, Seth Rollins, Bobby Lashley). Roman Reigns has been the WWE and Universal Champion for the whole year and he has been involved in the hottest storylines of the year.
Female Wrestler of the Year: Bianca Belair (runners-up: Liv Morgan, Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch). Bianca Belair has been dominating the RAW Women’s Division since regaining her championship at Wrestlemania. She seems to be the female John Cena.
Tag Team of the Year: The Usos (runners-up: Street Profits, RKBro, New Day, The Brawling Brutes). Jey and Jimmy Uso have set the all-time record for the longest Tag Team Championship reign of all time and defeated every one of the runners-up this year. The Usos never fail to deliver an awesome match.
Manager of the Year: Paul Heyman (runners-up: MVP, Scarlett). Technically, he is a “Wise Man.” But that is the general idea of the position and nobody plays his role better than Paul Heyman.
On the Mike: Kevin Owens (runners-up: Bray Wyatt, Paul Heyman, Edge). Kevin Owens has been killing it on the microphone this year. His confrontation with Austin Theory, Roman Reigns and the continuing storyline with Sami Zayn has elevated both Owens and his opponents. KO has been outstanding.
Faction of the Year: The Bloodline (runners-up: The Brawling Brutes, Imperium, The Judgment Day, The OC) The Bloodline group with Roman Reigns, The Usos, Solo Sikoa, Sami Zayn and Paul Heyman has dominated and has been involved in the best work of the year. They win all the time and when they finally go down, it is going to be a huge thing.
Feud of the Year: Cody Rhodes vs. Seth Rollins. (runners-up: Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesner, The Usos vs. Street Profits, Bianca Belair vs. Becky Lynch) The American Nightmare and The Architect put on three classic matches starting at Wrestlemania this year. Then, Seth took Cody out with a sledgehammer. This was so great.
Underused Performer of the Year: Shayna Basler. Shayna was a killer in NXT. She came to the main roster and immediately lost so much luster. She has just recently been linked with Ronda Rousey and hopefully that will be able to get her back on track.
Comeback of the Year: Cody Rhodes (runners-up: Brey Wyatt, Edge, The OC). Cody’s return at Wrestlemania is so great. It was so sad that he got hurt, but those months of his work was thrilling and the crowd absolutely ate it up.
Celebrity of the Year: Logan Paul. Who thought this guy was going to be good? He turned out incredibly well. His match with The Miz and Roman Reigns was excellent. He is not the typical celebrity.
Heel of the Year: Roman Reigns. Of course.
Face of the Year: Cody Rhodes. He will get one of the best face pops when he returns. Will it match his pop at Wrestlemania?
Storyline of the Year: The Bloodline/Sami Zayn. This has been so compelling and watching it every week was epic. You never knew what was going to happen next. And it is going to pay off BIG TIME.
Best Broadcaster: Pat McAfee. McAfee is so entertaining. He carries himself like a fan and he has helped Michael Cole so much.
Breakout Star: Solo Sikoa. This guy feels like a star in the making. He has been great since coming up from NXT. In fact, he has been so much better on the main roster than he was in NXT, which is not the typical.
Shock of the Year: Cody Rhodes reveals his torn pec at Hell in the Cell. The picture was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe that Cody was still going through with the match vs. Seth Rollins. It was legendary, but, sadly, we haven’t seen him since.
The Expendables Awards are next up for the Year in Review…
Best Expendable Actor in a Film: Glenn Powell (Devotion). Powell is excellent in this film opposite the amazing Jonathan Majors. The film itself was okay.
Best Expendable Voice Over: Antonio Banderas (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish). I haven’t seen this yet, but the trailers look cool. Dolph Lundgren is the runner up for Minions: Rise of Gru.
The Bruce Willis Quantity Over Quality Expendables Award for Most Movies Made: Mel Gibson. Six movies this year for Mel. On the Line, Bandit, Hot Seat, Father Stu, Agent Game, Panama. I did not see any of them.
Expendable Actor Villain of the Year: Antonio Banderas (Uncharted) He played Santiago Moncade who died too quickly. When he went, the movie was definitely hurt.
The Expendable Women’s Wrestling Champion of the Year: Ronda Rousey. Ronda Rousey returned to the WWE and won the Smackdown Women’s Championship a couple of times.
2022 has been a good year. Things at the theater started to move back to normal and there were a ton of streaming films. However, it is always a challenge to choose the EYG Star of the Year because I’m looking for someone who dominated the year. The list was short for 2022, but I did finally make the decision.
EYG Star of the Year
Previous Winners: Gal Gadot, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jennifer Lawrence, Marvel Studios, J.J. Abrams, Josh Brolin, Damon Lindelof & Regina King, Netflix, Andrew Garfield
The runners-up were:
Florence Pugh was in several films this year and she is consistently good, no matter how good the film she is in was.
Margot Robbie was another solid performer who does well in everything that she does.
Dwayne Johnson is always a bundle of energy and the limited success of Black Adam is right on his back.
2022 EYG Star of the Year….
Tom Cruise
Top Gun: Maverick was the biggest film of 2022 and Tom Cruise’s star power drove the success of the unlikely sequel. I was not a fan of the original Top Gun but Cruise was very charming and carried this film. The truth was that Tom Cruise was a big reason why this movie was as great as it was.
Could he end up the year with an Oscar nomination for his role in Top Gun: Maverick? It is a possibility which is astounding.
One of the few remaining “Movie Stars” in the world, Tom Cruise has his first EYG Star of the Year Award.
The John Carter Memorial Award goes to the biggest flop of the year. A flop does not necessarily mean that the movie is poor. It just means that the film was not a financial success, whether it lost money or whether it didn’t make as much as they thought it should have.
John Carter Memorial Award
Previous winners: John Carter, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Lone Ranger, A Million Ways to Die in the West, Expendables 3, Jem and the Holograms, Pan, Rock the Casbah, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Robin Hood (2018), Mortal Engines, Playmobil: The Movie, The Rhythm Section, Reminiscence
In fact, this year is the first time that I am presenting the John Carter Memorial Award to a film that I gave a positive review.
Before we go into that…
Runners-Up: I thought that Morbius was going to win this award. It was a flop twice. Once at the original release and the second time when they thought that the whole meme meant people wanted to see it again. Still, we got a much worse film later. Lightyear did not do well. It was not promoted very well and people were confused. I liked Lightyear though. Fantastic Beasts: Secret of Dumbledore was yet another flop in this series. The Northman was another film that did not quite find the audience that it wanted.
The John Carter Memorial
Award for 2022 goes to…
Strange World
Strange World was a really good movie for me. However, it was not a success monetarily. It is expected to lose upward of $100 million dollars. People did not know what this movie was about. The promotion of Strange World was just terrible, hiding items that they should have been front and center in trailers. They thought that this was an animated Disney flick and that would be enough to attract the audience. It was not. How many people just decided to stay home and wait for it on Disney +?
It only made 12 million in its opening weekend during Thanksgiving and then dropped 60% in week two. There is no two ways around it, Stranger World, even though I enjoyed the film myself, it the John Carter Memorial Award winner of 2022.
Unlike when I was compiling the list for the Gomer Award, when I was looking for the disappointing film of the year, I was having a hard time finding them. I did eventually come up with six possible choices.
The Spider-Man 3 Disappointment of the Year
Previous Winners: In the Heart of the Sea, The Snowman, Amazing Spider-Man 2, After Earth, Dark Knight Rises, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Batman v. Superman, Christopher Robin, IT: Chapter Two, Tenet, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins
Runners-Up: The film that ALMOST won this award was Morbius. The only thing about this was I kind of expected it to be bad and that is what eventually happened. The School for Good and Evil was a show on Netflix that I thought was going to be the new generation of Harry Potter. I guess not. Shudder had a film with a character of Edgar Allan Poe called Raven’s Hollow. I love Poe, but this was terrible. Disney’s remake of Pinocchio with Tom Hanks was such a wash. The final runner-up was Jurassic World’s Dominion, which took these dinosaurs, which was across the whole world, and stuck them on an island where our heroes had to try an escape…just like all of them. This could have been an epic conclusion to the series and it just fell flat.
This year’s Spider-Man 3 Disappointment of the Year is…
Halloween Ends
I had gotten excited for this by seeing the trailer. Then, the movie they provided was nothing like the trailer until the last 15 minutes or so. It felt more like a reboot of the series than a finale of the series. The ending with Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie vs. Michael seemed tacked on to another film.
I started looking at my list of movies for 2022 in search of the Gomer Award winner. The Gomer, named after Gomer Pyle whose catchphrase was ‘Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!’, goes to the film that was the biggest surprise of the year. A film that came out of nowhere… a film that I expected to hate… a film that transcended the viewing experience.
The Gomer for the Biggest Surprise
Previous Gomer Award Winners: The Gift, Ferdinand, Edge of Tomorrow, We’re the Millers, The Campaign, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Bumblebee, Crawl, Greenland, Free Guy
As I was going through the films, I realized that my notes were filling up. I wound up with 19 films as possible Gomer winners. That was huge! This was easily one of the most surprising years on record.
There are a ton of awesome movies in this category and it was difficult to narrow it down to a winner.
Honorable Mentions: So the Netflix film Slumberland had such a low Rotten Tomatoes score that I did not expect much and yet I had a good time with it. Both The Menu and Violent NightI approached expecting to enjoy them because of the word of mouth, but they made this list because of how much I loved both of them. They are both in consideration for the top ten films of the year. As is RRR, another film that I had no expectations on liking. I disliked the original Top Gun film so I was surprised with how much I enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick. I have never been much of a fan of Adam Sandler so any film he is in that I enjoy is a surprise. This year it was the basketball film, Hustle. The trailers for the film Dog starring Channing Tatum were so overplayed that I had no interest in the movie and yet, it was really quite good. Hulu’s horror film Fresh was one of the most unexpected films of the year. Another film with no expectations was The Outfit, which was so good. There was no way that I was going to like the Minions: Rise of Gru with how much I hated the last Minions movie. And yet I did, who thought it was possible? Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris was another film that I had heard good things about, but I never thought it would interest me. The historical biopic Till featured a powerful performance and left me with an emotional theater experience. The mockumentary When the Screaming Starts followed a serial killer before he became a serial killer. Really funny and dark at the same time. Superman and Batman: Battle of the Super Sons was a DC animation that really engaged me with a couple of characters (Damien Wayne and Jonathan Kent) that I had never cared for much. How could a sequel of a film from 40 years ago be any good? Well, A Christmas Story Christmas pulled it off. The reboot of the Fletch series was great with Confess, Fletch starring Jon Hamm. Barbarian I went into blind and had a great time. Finally, Beast had no chance to be anything good, and yet it was so great with Idris Elba battling a killer lion.
So with all of that, the Gomer Award for 2022 goes to….
Deadstream
There was no way this was going to be good, but with some of the most clever writing of the year, Deadstream took aim at the YouTube culture of live streaming and the reactors that populate the web. Them Deadstream was legitimately funny and frightening. I loved this film from Shudder and the unexpected pleasure of a film that surprised me from the start.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 