We've already had Fast & Furious getting petrolheads excited about exceeding the speed limit in disco-coloured cars back in April, while Star Trek, X-Men Origins:Wolverine and Angels & Demons are still raking in the cash. Now, with the school holidays on the horizon, the next few months herald the summer of zero-subtext, from Christian Bale's turn as the Terminator all the way through to August's GI Joe: the Rise of Cobra.
Hollywood's thinking behind plying our screens with entertaining nonsense is quite simple. The world is gripped by recession and depression, but the studio suits still want to plunder the public's purse. How to do that? Give the people some uncomplicated bang for their hard-earned buck.
Turn back the clock 70 years to the Great Depression and the movie business was playing the same role. "Hollywood knew the most precious commodity for the times was escapism and they were in a unique position to deliver it via their best films," says The Huffington Post film critic John Farr. "They served as a tonic for battered souls in dire need of laughter and reassurance."
Hence It Happened One Night (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938) and a whole host of screwball comedies that allowed fed-up audiences to laugh at the protagonists' shallow absurdities and to forget their own, deeper woes. "If the public had to survive without all the good things that money could buy," explains Farr, "at least they could live vicariously through on-screen characters that did possess them."
So, GI Joe: the Rise of Cobra and JJ Abrams' Star Trek are to the straitened Noughties what It Happened One Night and Bringing Up Baby were to the austere Thirties – but with added lycra and extended fight scenes. What this year's blockbusters share with the Great Depression films is a desire to amuse, albeit with far more CGI and a whole lot less screwball.
Perhaps cinema will be the recession's great survivor. Already, many huge US productions – Gulliver's Travels, Clash of the Titans, Nottingham – are set to shoot in the UK because of the strength of the dollar against the pound, while statistics released by the Film Distributors' Association show cinema attendances up 16% year-on-year for the first quarter of 2009. If cinema owners want to keep the people coming – and there's no World Cup or Olympics to distract this year so the public is there for the taking – they could do worse than latch on to the tactics of the Great Depression. Back then, as extra incentive for the poverty stricken, enterprising cinema folk offered deals or bonus cartoons and B-Movies ahead of the "Featured Attraction".
It's about giving the audience that little bit extra, something they wouldn't get from sitting at home and watching the television with a can of supermarket own-brand lager. Suddenly the explosion of 3-D movies – Bolt, Coraline, Up, Avatar – seems suspiciously well-timed. For two hours, you've got to help the people to forget.
SCREEN SCORCHERS: Ones to watch
TERMINATOR SALVATION (3 June)
With its humans vs machines yarn neatly encapsulating the humans vs bankers struggle, this is a film to reunite a disparate world. Early reviews have been positive, almost rendering Christian Bale's on-set rant a forgotten (sweary) blip.
THE HANGOVER (12 June)
For the five people who didn't consider 'Dude, Where's My Car?' the nadir of cultural civilisation, 'The Hangover' should make your year. All it does is replace the doobies with drink. It stars Heather Graham and Bradley Cooper ('He's Just Not That Into You') in a plot that pivots on a gang of lads retracing their steps in Vegas after a stag party.
THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (12 June)
The 1972 original was psychopathic and sadistic. Thirty seven years on – made for our miserable times – it's slicker, glossier and stars pretty people. Still brutal, sure, but unlikely to be banned or as notorious as Wes Craven's original. A must for horror fans.
LOOKING FOR ERIC (12 June)
Take one dollop of gritty Ken Loach realism, add a happy ending and call it comedy. Once famous for kicking things, Eric Cantona stars as himself, giving life lessons to a depressed Man Utd supporter. It's Premier League meets The Samaritans, but funny.
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (19 June)
There's Optimus Prime, goodie saviour of mankind. There's Megatron, baddie enemy of the Earth. There's The Fallen, he's new. It's massive robot aliens kicking metal lumps out of each other! Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox star. This sequel has twice the budget of the original – which ended up taking over $700m worldwide. Recession? What recession?
YEAR ONE (19 June)
Putting the fun back into Biblical flicks, the Judd Apatow-produced 'Year One' stars Jack Black and 'Juno''s geek par excellence, Michael Cera, as castaways in the ancient world. They're garbed in Fred Flintstone loincloths and meeting up with Cain, Abel, Isaac and Abraham in various farting-in-the-general-direction-of-religion skits.
ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS (1 July)
Ice age? Dinosaurs? Beardy palaeontologists may quibble, but nobody's listening. Those of us who know that squirrels can talk and that Jack Black is a sabre-toothed tiger look forward to another cracking animation packed with clever gags. They say this is the last of the 'Ice Age' series, but if it ain't broke, why scrap it?
PUBLIC ENEMIES (3 July)
Economic meltdown, greedy bankers, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale robbing the rich in full gangster chic? Do the Hollywood fat cats want a revolution? Its FBI vs Mobsters in a cracking Depression-era romp. Ah, the good old days.
BRUNO (10 July)
This will be without doubt the funniest film of the summer. Sacha Baron Cohen plays the flamboyant Austrian fashionista Brüno, heading to America in tight, tight leather shorts and an assortment of silly hats. From footage already seen, it'll be more outrageous than 'Borat'. Prepare to be very entertained.
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (15 July)
With 'The Order of the Phoenix' enjoying the third highest five-day box office opening of all time, this sixth instalment of the boy wizard blockbuster should once again ring the tills. The usual cast of pupils and teachers returns. And this time it's dark, too.
THE PROPOSAL (24 July)
If only you could buy shares in romantic comedy. Predictable and safe it may be, but we just can't get enough. Due a big hit, Sandra Bullock plays an ice queen exec who forces her assistant to marry her so that she can avoid deportation.
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 (24 July)
Tony Scott directs a treat of a trio in this remake of the 1978 train-hostage adventure. John Travolta leads the hijackers, coming face to face with Denzel Washington's negotiator, while James Gandolfini is cast as the mayor of New York.
LAND OF THE LOST (31 July)
Will Ferrell takes a break from sports comedies to face beasties and myriad surrealist twists as Dr Rick Marshall, who stumbles into a hidden land to rub shoulders with dinosaurs, giant crabs and massive mosquitoes. Daft hardly covers it.
GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (7 August)
Following the monstrously successful 'Transformers' model of taking a beloved 1980s toy line and sticking it in front of the cameras, Stephen Sommers (of 'The Mummy' fame) has cast Sienna Miller and Dennis Quaid as Action Man-style heroes fighting evil in a lycra-clad world.
THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE (14 August)
What do librarians do all day? They daydream about Eric Bana playing an archivist who suffers from a rare genetic disease. The symptoms? When stressed he travels through time and wakes up naked. The film rights were bought before the book was even written, apparently.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (21 August)
The Second World War goes high camp as Quentin Tarantino takes a 160-minute look at Jewish-American soldiers offing Nazis, bloodily. Want Gulf War II analogies? Not here. Offering relief from our own very real wars, QT's latest stars Brad Pitt and Mike Myers. Critics were split down the middle in Cannes, but all agreed that it's pretty fun for a war film.
BROKEN EMBRACES (28 August)
Men want her, women want to be her. Penélope Cruz lights up yet another Pedro Almodovar gem about broken families, films-within-films and sexual confusion. You may not understand what's going on, but you'll love it all the same.
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