After a couple of tricky, uncertain years, everything went big in 2022. There were big controversies, from Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, to the metaphorical slap in the face of Batgirl being dumped by Warner Bros. There were big surprises too. Who saw the international success of the epic RRR or Everything Everywhere All At Once coming last December?
And, of course, there were big movies – and this year’s smash-hit flicks felt like particularly vast, stadium-sized sagas, with the head-spinning spectacle of Top Gun: Maverick, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and Avatar: The Way Of Water leading the charge. These were the movie and TV moments that defined the year that just was.
Encanto’s ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ breaks the charts
It’s generally a fair indicator of a good year at the movies when we get a new addition to the Disney tunes pantheon – and ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ was yet more proof that Lin-Manuel Miranda knows one end of a banger from the other. Slinky, sly, and jammed with more hooks than a convention for Peter Pan villains, it spent seven weeks at the top of the UK charts and its Latin beats pointed to a more adventurous palette for future Disney megahits. Next time you’re in a karaoke booth, get it cued up. Seven foot frame! Rats along his back!
READ MORE: The Making Of 'We Don't Talk About Bruno'
The Empire Podcast hits Episode 500
Allow us to be indulgent for a minute: we celebrated our big 5-0-0 with a live extravaganza at King’s Place in London starring loads of brilliant guests. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg reminisced about the making of Hot Fuzz (supported by a voice note from a Covid-hit Nick Frost recalling the ‘breakfast wine’ they grabbed after night shoots), Brett Goldstein swore a lot, West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler chatted Spielberg, Johnny Knoxville waxed lyrical on explosive farts and kaiju splooge, and only Tom bloody Holland swung by to talk about getting the three Spider-Men back together. And, naturally, there were loads of lovely Empire readers there too. Thanks for coming, guys.
The Slap overshadows the Oscars
In the most did-that-actually-just-happen moment of 2022, Will Smith got up on stage at the Oscars and slapped presenter Chris Rock when Rock made a (not particularly good) joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia while introducing the Academy’s Best Documentary Feature prize – overshadowing Questlove’s much-deserved win for Summer Of Soul. Then things got even more bizarre when, 40 minutes later, Smith won the Best Actor gong for King Richard. “Love will make you do crazy things,” he reflected during a tearful acceptance speech. Smith’s now serving a 10-year suspension from the Academy.
Bruce Willis retires from acting
In one of the saddest stories of the year, the former John McClane announced that his movie career was over. “As a family we wanted to share that our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” Willis’s family said. Nonetheless, he’ll always be one of the greatest ever to do it, his screen presence a mixture of hard-boiled wisecracking and pained vulnerability. “As Bruce always says, ‘Live it up’,” the Willis family added, “and together we plan to do just that.”
Everything Everywhere All At Once becomes A24’s biggest hit
Sentient rocks. A raccoon-led reimagining of Ratatouille. Hot dog fingers. There weren’t many places that the directing duo Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All At Once didn’t go, and in a year when the multiverse became the first port of call for every major franchise looking to join up scattered heroes and plotlines, it made everyone else look like they were setting their sights embarrassingly low. Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan’s love story spanning all of time and space mixed with manic comic energy and low-key family drama – and many thousands of arses kicked along the way – made for something pretty irresistible. It banked $103 million at the box office, knocking Hereditary’s $81 million into Raccacoonie’s cocked chef’s hat.
Sam Raimi returns with Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
Speaking of multiverses, Benedict Cumberbatch returned as Marvel’s resident beardy shaman to join up this phase of the MCU with last year’s small-screen success WandaVision. We saw Wanda Maximoff go off the deep end, met America Chavez and (finally!) got John Krasinkski as Reed Richards – but perhaps the most remarkable thing about the second Doctor Strange movie was that it brought Sam Raimi back to the director’s chair nearly a decade since his last film, Oz The Great And Powerful. And there were enough Raimi-isms present and correct to make you realise how much cinema’s missed him.
Top Gun: Maverick blows up the box office
After nearly 40 years away – two of which were thanks to extra Covid-enforced delays – Tom Cruise and his flyboy pals returned to the skies with the runaway hit of 2022. It zoomed its way to almost $1.5 billion at the box office, which presumably makes the grueling three-month boot camp the cast had to go through before flying in F/A-18 fighter jets worthwhile. Eyeball-rattlingly spectacular it might have been, but probably the most affecting bit was the way it handled the cameo appearance from Val Kilmer as Iceman, giving Cruise’s Maverick some sage advice about life and leadership – and, naturally, jabbing at him at the same time. Aw.
Kevin Feige unveils Marvel’s Multiverse Saga
After some rumblings of discontent about where exactly Phase 4 of the MCU was going, Comic-Con in July reset the excitement-o-meter. We got confirmation of all the Phase 5 movies and series – including Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, Secret Invasion, Guardians 3, Blade, Captain America: New World Order and Thunderbolts. And on top of that, there was confirmation that the new Fantastic Four movie is due in 2024, with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars coming six months apart in 2025 to end Phase 6. How’s that for a plan?
READ MORE: Marvel has unveiled its Multiverse Saga plan – now, let's enjoy it
RRR becomes an international sensation
When RRR, SS Rajamouli’s epic revenge drama set during the British Raj, came out on Netflix in March, he expected its mixture of action, brotherhood and a bigger-is-better ethos to find a healthy fandom among Indian diasporic audiences. “But then the reception started coming from Westerners,” he told Empire in October. “I didn’t expect any of this.” RRR turned into perhaps the year’s biggest word-of-mouth success. Rajamouli put it down to “RRR’s unapologetic action sequences; its unapologetic heroism”; we’d add the fact that it’s the only movie we saw this year brave enough to send its hero into battle backed by a truckful of wild animals which proceed to eat his enemies’ faces. But who are we to argue? Masterful stuff.
House Of The Dragon vs. The Rings Of Power
The battle of the heavyweight TV fantasy spin-offs kicked off with a vengeance when the Lord Of The Rings and Game Of Thrones both went back to the future for the next phase of their stories and dropped them within a week and a half of each other. In the blue corner: Jeff Bezos’ billion-dollar deep dive into the Second Age of Middle-earth. In the blonde corner: HBO’s Targaryen civil war saga, set centuries before anyone in the Seven Kingdoms has heard of Jon Snow or rogue Starbucks coffee cups. The winner? Television.
Batgirl is unceremoniously canned
This year looked like a golden one for Gotham. Robert Pattinson’s reboot did the business, and Leslie Grace’s Batgirl was set to pick up the cape and cowl alongside JK Simmons as Jim Gordon and – holy mackerel, Batman! – actual Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader. Until, suddenly, she wasn’t. Despite a reported $90 million budget, Batgirl will apparently never see the light of day. “The decision to not release Batgirl reflects our leadership's strategic shift as it relates to the DC universe and HBO Max,” a Warner Brothers Discovery spokesperson explained. Abruptly binning off your much-hyped film? Quite the strategic shift.
Andor revitalises the Star Wars galaxy
If there wasn’t exactly Star Wars fatigue this year, there was at least a feeling that we knew what to expect from the galaxy far, far away on the small screen. And there’s been a lot of stuff to keep up with: The Book Of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Bad Batch… When Andor came along, you’d have been forgiven for assuming it’d be one you could tap out of. A prequel to… a prequel? Likely not essential. But Andor was so, so good – our #1 series of the year, in fact. Diego Luna returned as Rogue One’s Cassian Andor, still a street thief trying to outrun his past. Andor looked gorgeous, and what set it apart was the fact it was so interested in the seamy, uncomfortable spaces between the dark side and the light. Nicholas Britell’s score helped it carve its own niche in the galaxy too.
Henry Cavill returns as Superman…
Black Adam saw Henry Cavill suit up as Superman for the first time since Justice League five years ago for a tiny cameo that was so secret, he couldn’t even tell his bosses at The Witcher why he had to pop out for a few days during filming. That short scene was, Cavill said, “a small taste” of his future plans for Superman. “There is such a bright future ahead for the character, and I’m so excited to tell a story with an enormously joyful Superman,” he added. Exciting! Can’t wait to see what he does next!
…Henry Cavill does not return as Superman
“I will, after all, not be returning as Superman,” a not enormously joyful Cavill wrote on Instagram just a few weeks after he’d announced that he would, after all, be returning as Superman. “After being told by the studio to announce my return back in October, prior to their hire, this news isn’t the easiest, but that’s life.” Not only that, but Cavill’s cameo as Superman has reportedly since been cut from The Flash. Ouch.
James Gunn and Peter Safran take over DC
If DC has taught us anything this year, it’s to expect the unexpected – and they left perhaps the most quietly surprising surprise to the end. Guardians Of The Galaxy’s James Gunn took the reins of the newly-dubbed DC Films in late October alongside long-time Warner producer Peter Safran, marking the first time a writer-director has taken on an exec role for the studio. “The opportunity to make DC as great as it can be and as it should be – that is the reason why I’m doing this job,” Gunn said. On the other hand, it did have some slightly unfortunate knock-on effects for a certain lantern-jawed superhero. Sorry, Supes.
James Cameron finally unleashes Avatar: The Way Of Water
After 13 years, $250 million, and a seven-minute world record underwater breath-holding record for Kate Winslet, James Cameron splashed back down in cinemas with the follow-up to his box office-swamping megahit Avatar. There were some worries that the world might have moved on since the properly game-changing 3D and motion-capture tech of the first movie, but Cameron was not one of those worriers. “The trolls will have it that nobody gives a shit and they can’t remember the characters’ names or one damn thing that happened in the movie,” he told Empire ahead of release of Avatar: The Way Of Water. “Then they see the movie again and go, ‘Oh, okay, excuse me, let me just shut the fuck up right now.” Welcome back, Jim.