It’s that time again, folks! If you’ve been following this site for the past several years, you can probably guess how excited I am to make the following announcement. Yes, folks, it’s time once again for Rhode Island Movie Corner’s longest-running tradition: the annual End of Summer Fan Poll! For those who are new here, this is something that I’ve been doing for over a decade now ever since I first tested it out back in 2014 to try and produce some content for this site during the often-slow period in the world of film that is the end of summer season. Through this event, I encourage you, the readers, to vote for your favorite film from the past summer, and after a few weeks of polling, I tally up all the votes and do one giant Results Post that covers every film that earned a vote. Now, admittedly, the process of writing these Results Posts has started to get a lot more complex in recent years to the point where I don’t end up publishing them until after the summer season has long been over. Back in 2023, I didn’t get it finished until the very end of the year, and while I managed to get the 2024 Results Post out a little earlier… well, when I say ‘a little earlier’, that’s technically just one month earlier. As such, we’ll ultimately have to wait and see if I’ll be able to get this year’s Results Post finished a lot sooner this time around.
But until then, it’s time for me, as always, to explain the
rules of Rhode Island Movie Corner’s Annual End of Summer Fan Poll. The link
below (which will be shared repeatedly the next two weeks on my social media
accounts (including the BRAND-NEW Instagram page that I created
for this site that you can follow here)) will take you to a poll that I’ve
created on the surveying website Survio. There, you’ll be prompted to
list your favorite film from this past summer from the large list of options
that I’ve assembled. With that in mind, I must warn you all in advance that
there are a lot of options to choose from since, whenever I assemble these
lists, I always tend to include every major wide release of the summer. That
said, though, this doesn’t mean that they end up including every single film
that came out each year, which is why I always include a write-in section where
you can cast your vote if your film isn’t on the list. But when it comes to the
‘write-in’ section, here’s where this event’s biggest ground-rule comes into
play; the film in question MUST be one that has had a theatrical
release. So, with apologies to fans of films like Predator: Killer of
Killers and Happy Gilmore 2, I won’t be able to accept votes for
films that were primarily released via streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
That said, though, if you’re someone who hasn’t been able to get to a theater
this summer, whether it’s due to circumstances such as the increasingly dire
financial woes of our society or, if you’re like me, the kind of severe anxiety
that comes from being in enclosed spaces, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m willing
to accept votes from anyone who saw any of the films from this year’s list of
options via On-Demand or streaming services. And if you haven’t seen ANYTHING
this year… feel free to share this poll online; as I always say every
year, I truly appreciate those of you who help spread it around on social media
as it’s helped us garner bigger and better voter turnouts each year.
Voting begins today and will end on
August 31st!!!
As always, I like to
conclude these Annual Poll Introductory Posts by going through all our past
winners. So, without further ado, it’s time once again for…
RHODE ISLAND MOVIE CORNER’S ANNUAL
END OF SUMMER FAN POLL HALL OF FAME
2014
For an event that
started out as a ‘spur-of-the-moment’ idea, the inaugural End of Summer Fan
Poll had a decent turnout with 43 votes. Even better, it concluded with an electrifying
three-way tie as three uniquely different films ended up earning FIVE votes
apiece. First, there was The Fault in Our Stars, which
more than satisfied the fans of author John Green’s best-selling novel on
which it was based. Then, you had 22 Jump Street, one
of the rare instances of a comedy sequel that was not only just as good as its
predecessor… but quite arguably better. And finally, there was Guardians
of the Galaxy, which began as one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s
biggest gambles given how obscure its titular squad was at the time… and ultimately
became one of the MCU’s most beloved outings.
2015
Our sophomore event
saw an overall increase in its voting turnout with 47 votes. This time,
however, the winner ran virtually unopposed, garnering double the number of
votes that the 2014 trio of winners each got with a whopping TEN votes.
That’s just as many votes as the number of Oscar nominations that Mad
Max: Fury Road received at that year’s Academy Awards as the
long-awaited continuation of writer/director George Miller’s hugely popular Mad
Max franchise gave filmgoers a much-needed dose of cinematic serotonin in this
current age of CGI-heavy and IP-driven summer blockbusters.
2016
The turnout continued
to grow in Year 3, with 58 votes and our second-ever tie for First Place. The
two winners each earned NINE votes, and the resulting tie is one that I’ve
always cited as one of the most fascinating in this event’s history. On one
side of the equation, you have a film that was practically guaranteed to be one
of that year’s front-runners; Captain America: Civil War,
the first installment of Phase 3 of the MCU which managed to work around the
flaws of the polarizing comic storyline that it’s named after to produce one of
the MCU’s most epic installments. And then, on the other side, you had a film
that defied all expectations to be one of that year’s biggest hits amongst poll
voters; Bad Moms, a raunchy R-rated comedy a la The Hangover
(which I mainly bring up because the film’s directors, Jon Lucas and Scott
Moore, were that film’s screenwriters) about a trio of moms who opt to take a
day off from their stressful matriarchal duties to have the kind of fun that
they haven’t had in years. Simply put, a tie like this truly goes to show just
how unpredictable this event can be.
2017
The 2017 edition of
this event would ultimately match 2016’s 58-vote turnout and was also the first
year where we ended up with a ‘Top 5’ list of winners. This was also the year where
we all learned a valuable lesson about this event: never underestimate the one
and only Christopher Nolan. That year, Nolan gave us Dunkirk,
his kinetically thrilling rendition of the World War II event known as Operation
Dynamo, where over 338,000 Allied soldiers awaited to be evacuated from the
beaches of Dunkirk, France in the summer of 1940. Upon its release, this EIGHT
vote-getting epic of a blockbuster became one of the most well-regarded
films of his career, becoming the highest-grossing World War II film of
all-time up to that point before it was surpassed by another Nolan film that…
well, we’ll get to later…
2018
For whatever reason,
2018 was a slow year for the End of Summer Fan Poll. We only garnered 44 votes
that year, but at the same time, that year’s winner would set a new event
record with TWELVE votes. Some of you might be thinking that a big-name
blockbuster like Avengers: Infinity War or Incredibles 2 might’ve
taken the top spot that year… but that’s not the case. Instead, the honor went…
to a Spike Lee joint. Yes, in 2018, the legendary filmmaker achieved one of the
biggest hits of his career with BlacKkKlansman, which told
the story of police officer Ron Stallworth and the sting operation that he pulled
on his town’s local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Not only did it earn Lee his
first-ever Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, but it continues to be a timely
piece of social commentary on the horrors of domestic political extremists.
2019
For the first five
years of this event’s run, the MCU had two of its films take the top spot, but
in both instances, these ‘wins’ were shared with other films thanks to some
ties for first place. This changed in 2019 when, in what was easily one of the
most predictable outcomes in event history, Avengers: Endgame,
the Grand Finale to the MCU’s Infinity Saga, became the franchise’s first
unopposed champion. In a year where we saw a record-setting 89 vote turnout, Endgame
would also make history with a record-setting NINETEEN vote victory.
And just like how Endgame briefly stood as the highest-grossing film of
all-time for a few years before James Cameron’s Avatar retook the top
spot in 2021, that 19-vote result would be the number to beat for a few years
as far as this event was concerned.
2020
Because 2020 was…
well, 2020, this was the only year so far where we did not hold the Annual End
of Summer Fan Poll.
2021
The 2021 edition of
this event had a lot to prove, being the first of these to be held after we couldn’t
do it in 2020. Thankfully, it managed to make a decent comeback; its 69-vote
turnout may have paled in comparison to the 89-vote turnout of the 2019 event,
but I was personally satisfied with those results given the circumstances. In
first place, garnering a highly respectable SIXTEEN votes, was Cruella,
one of Disney’s many live-action re-imaginings of their animated classics
which, like their 2014 live-action retelling of Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent,
focused in on its story’s iconic villainess, Cruella de Vil of One Hundred
and One Dalmatians fame, and reframed her as a more sympathetic and
rebellious anti-hero.
2022
Thanks in large part
to a last-minute extra day of voting, the 2022 edition of the End of Summer Fan
Poll was the first time we were able to achieve a 100+ voter turnout with 119
votes cast. This was what ultimately helped that year’s winner, Top
Gun: Maverick, achieve a historic FIFTY-SIX (!!!) vote
performance. Granted, it was undoubtedly the front-runner of that year’s event
anyway given its status as one of the most well-received films of the summer
(not to mention its impressive $1 billion+ run at the box-office), but thanks
to that extra day, I still believe that its record-breaking performance in the
poll is one that won’t be topped anytime soon.
2023
Somehow, we managed
to outdo ourselves in 2023 as we managed to surpass the 119-vote total from
2022 with a record-breaking 122-vote turnout. Unlike 2022’s event, however, there
wasn’t an obvious front-runner this time around as the top three films all
managed to earn at least 20 votes each, thus making them the best-performing
films in these annual polls of ours outside of Top Gun: Maverick. As for
the Top 2, it was only fitting that the films would end up being the ones that
made up that summer’s viral double feature, ‘Barbenheimer’. And yet,
while Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was the biggest hit of both the summer and the
entire year, it was ultimately Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer
that took home that year’s top spot in the poll with TWENTY-FOUR votes.
Nolan’s retelling of the Manhattan Project managed to hold its own financially
against Barbie and would end up earning Nolan his first Oscar for Best
Director on route to it winning that year’s Best Picture Oscar. In other words,
as we noted earlier when discussing Dunkirk’s victory back in 2017, one
must never underestimate Christopher Nolan.
2024
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And finally, we have
last year’s event which, admittedly, did not see us achieve our third straight
100+ vote turnout but, nevertheless, still managed to garner an impressive
85-vote turnout. And for the first time since 2016, we ended up with a two-way
tie for first (TWELVE votes each) with another instance where one was an
obvious front-runner and the other an unexpected underdog. The front-runner? Inside
Out 2, the billion-dollar-grossing juggernaut of a sequel to Pixar’s
2015 masterpiece Inside Out that became the first animated film in this
event’s history to take the top spot. And the under-the-radar hit? Twisters,
the legacy sequel to 1996’s cult classic blockbuster hit Twister which,
to me, represented the film’s undeniable success in marketing itself as a good
old-fashioned crowd-pleaser.
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