I bet you KNEW there was a plane crash in this movie. Weird, huh?

When we walk into a theater, we usually know a fair amount about the movie we’re going to see. For instance, I haven’t seen Transformers 2. But from the trailer, I know that Sam Witwicky goes off to college and absorbs some sort of alien code from a mysterious artifact. I know that Optimus Prime fights in a forest, and it probably doesn’t go well for him. (There’s something about the way Shia yells “Optimus!” that reminds me of the way Ewan yells “Noooooooooooo!” in that Star Wars: Episode I trailer I memorized in 1999.) I know that Megatron returns. I highly suspect that the final sequence takes place at the pyramids.

(By the way, someone remind me to make a list of movies in which ancient Egyptians had direct contact with aliens: Transformers 2, Stargate, The Fifth Element…)

This is all right there in the trailer—it’s information the studio wants me to have. Depending on what other movies I went to see, I might have been shown this trailer whether I wanted to see it or not. Being surprised by Megatron’s return just wasn’t an option.

Now compare that to the District 9 trailer. (Warning: D9 spoilers ahead.)

(DISCLAIMER: This is an article about porn. You may not believe this, but I’m not a huge porn fan. I’m totally not.)

The greatest fictional adult film director of all time, Jack Horner, had a dream: he wanted to make a real film. He wanted people to care about his characters and his story. Then, VHS came along and ruined the industry forever. By the end of Boogie Nights, Jack’s movies were stripped (ha ha) down to their most elemental form – people having sex in his hot tub, shot on a video camera in one take. It’s a minor tragedy, but it still feels sad.

This is pretty much what happened to the porn industry in real life. Back when XXX films had to be seen in theaters, porn producers (or as I call them, “pornducers”) actually put effort into creating high-quality entertainment to lure in audiences. (“High-quality,” by the way, is relative. The very best of 1970’s porn was still worse than almost everything that was coming out of Hollywood – not that I’d know.) Once porn became available on video, people decided that enjoying it in private was the way to go, for obvious reasons. Since there’s a lot more room on video store shelves (behind those saloon doors) than in adult movie theaters, and since it’s a lot cheaper to make a video than a film, the market was glutted with product. Hot, hot product.

Is it possible to tell a single story that incorporates every major movie that came out this summer? Let’s find out.

PROLOGUE

A stylish woman sits in a coffee shop, typing on her laptop. We hear a familiar voiceover:

“Sometimes, it seems like every man is an action hero… until the clothes come off.

“Take my new squeeze – let’s call him Bruce. Billionaire. Playboy. Sure, he lives in Gotham, and I’m not a huge fan of long distance relationships… but a private jet has a way of bringing people together. However, there was one place Bruce had never taken me in two months of dating: the bedroom. As soon as night fell, he would suddenly say he had a lot of work to do and send me home. If he tries that one more time, I’m sleeping with the butler.

“Samantha was having her own problems. Tony was legendary for his sexual exploits – rumor has it he’d been gradually working his way through the entire cast of Gossip Girl. But recently, he had been spending all day in his basement workshop, leaving Samantha no chance to get her hands on his, um, lug nuts. He may have been the CEO of Stark Enterprises, but he wasn’t boldly going where no man had gone before.

“Miranda wasn’t doing much better. Her boyfriend – let’s call him Bruce too – was a scientist, even more of an overeducated wolkaholic than her. But whenever she tried to ignite his Bunsen burner, he’d say it was a bad idea to get him excited, leaving her in an incredible sulk. She even shelled out for an appointment with the legendary Love Guru, but not only didn’t he help, they found him unbearably annoying. It wasn’t exactly a Banner summer for her sex life.

“The one person who seemed satisfied was Charlotte. She was dating some mystery man, and none of us had ever seen her so relaxed. But she wouldn’t tell us a thing about him.

“I had to wonder… do ALL men have secret identities?”

Movies introduced in this chapter: Sex and the City, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Love Guru

I’m currently trying to come up with a plot that ties in every single summer movie this year. It’s tricky – there are a LOT of summer movies.

While I’m cooking that up, here’s a similar mashup from last summer. I’m actually pretty proud of this. Maybe prouder than I should be.

CHAPTER 1

It’s Bart Simpson’s eleventh birthday, and the family is driving to New York so he can tour the offices of Mad Magazine. Along the way, the car has been followed by owls trying to drop envelopes in the windows.

On the Brooklyn Bridge, they’re attacked by witches on broomsticks. The Simpsons don’t know it, but this is a group of Death Eaters, led by Bellatrix Lestrange. Spider-man swings in to help, trapping Lestrange in a web, but he’s outnumbered and soon overpowered. Just when it seems that he and the Simpsons are doomed, a gigantic boat rises out of the Hudson River. It’s the legendary Flying Dutchman, and it fires magical cannonballs that chase the witches away. The Simpsons are taken aboard the ship, and its captain introduces himself as Jack Sparrow, Professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.

Aboard the Dutchman, now safely underwater, Sparrow answers some questions. He explains that he’s hundreds of years old, immortal thanks to the Fountain of Youth. Apparently, a new prophesy says that in the final battle between Voldemort and Harry Potter, the winner will be decided by a first year wizard with yellow skin and spiky hair. Sparrow was sent by Dumbledore to escort Bart and his family safely to the school, before Voldemort could kill him. “I’m afraid you’ll all be living at Hogwarts for a while. Savvy?”

“Mmm,” says Homer. “Hog.”

Movies introduced in this chapter: The Simpsons, Harry Potter, Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean

This one was inspired by the five Trapped in the Closet episodes all at once. I started thinking about other pieces of video that shared a soundtrack, and could potentially be synced up. So here you go – the closing montages to Love Actually and Boogie Nights. Take it away, Brian Wilson:

The film composer Howard Shore has written an opera. It is an adaptation of one of the movies he did the music for. However, it’s probably not the one you’d expect/hope. Here’s a list of operatic movies Howard Shore has scored, that are NOT the movie in question: The Lords of the Rings, The Departed, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, The Aviator, and The Gangs of New York.

Instead, Howard Shore looked back upon his body of work, and decided The Fly really needed to be an opera. And there’s a photo after the jump.