Read More @HJ Previews: Are Blockbusters Busted? Jacob Sahms

Just as audiences expect that filmmakers typically make their Oscar submissions in the fall, summer audiences expect Hollywood’s fireworks display. This summer’s film releases promise to be stuffed with humor, coated in action, baked, and delivered from May to August. Rather than just having to swallow hard, health-conscious viewers will find that the film industry has been mindful of their moral diet. These five anticipated summer films, at least, appear to re-establish core cultural values and perceptively explore moral themes.

The newest magic of the Pixar wizards, WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class) opens June 27. After 700 years of being responsible for the impossible task of cleaning up the trash that the departed humans have left on earth, the comically curious robot-hero WALL-E develops the astonishing ability of human emotion—first of loneliness and then of love.

According to an interview with www.hollywood.com, director Andrew Stanton said that among many sources for the idea, he remembers a comment that Tom Hanks made while he was working on Toy Story 2. Hanks, who was also filming Cast Away at the time, said that the greatest human fear is that of loneliness.

“We just loved the loneliness of that character,” Stanton said in an interview with the Badger Herald, “and the futility of a character that didn’t know it could just stop doing what it does, and would it ever eventually question its existence and why it’s doing what it’s doing, like a lot of people do in real life.”

The filmmakers chose to use non-verbal robots as the main characters in order to increase audience identification. Instead of characters telling the audience how they feel, the robots give subtle hints that then cue the audience to extract those emotions from themselves. And while we may be reminded of what loneliness feels like, we may learn afresh how to feel love as well. 

Though perhaps less philosophical, the new DreamWorks animated film Kung Fu Panda (opening this Friday, June 6th) will certainly be no less funny and also speaks to a core human experience. Set in ancient China, the film has Jack Black voicing a panda named Po who works at his family’s noodle shop until he gets the chance of realizing his secret dream of being a Kung Fu master.

Interviewed by www.emanuellevy.com, Kung Fu Panda co-director Mark Osborne said that early on he was trying to figure out not only why Po would have the dream of becoming a Kung Fu master but why he would keep it a secret. He soon discovered Po’s inner-conflict: “He’d rather keep his kung fu dreams as a safe haven to escape to, than risk the ‘Cosmic Shame’ of trying to realize it and fail. If you go out on a limb, you can fall (especially if you are a fat panda) and Po doesn’t believe in himself enough to think he can make his dream come true. His accidental hero’s journey, however, ultimately takes him to a place where he must try with all his heart.”  

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is the first of the historical characters from the American Girl franchise to be adopted for the screen, and will open July 2nd. Scripted by the screenwriter of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the film follows the brave and compassionate nine-year-old Kit Kittredge (played by Abigail Breslin from Signs) and her determination to become a reporter during the Great Depression. Against the backdrop of her father being laid off, their house broken into, and the family finally facing foreclosure, Kit’s inquisitive and optimistic qualities stand out along with her sincere and encouraging relationship with her parents.

Though this film is certainly marketable to the general public, the American Girl franchise took a neat step in involving the girls that frequented their site by offering open auditions for supporting roles in the film.  

Very little has been posted or publicized about the film Swing Vote, opening August 1st, but from the trailer the film seems to anticipate the presidential election. It gives a Disney-flavored commentary on a campaigning process that seems so distant from the values the process seeks to represent. At one point in the film, the Republican presidential candidate asks reflectively, “What are we really about here?”

Bud Johnson is the portrait of a father who, after failing to succeed many times, is passing the rest of his life in a trailer accompanied by a six-pack and his vivacious 12-year-old daughter Molly. When the presidential election comes down to Bud’s single vote, both parties vie for his allegiance. The unusual circumstances that Bud and the politicians are placed in force them to reflect on the positive influence they can have in other’s lives and the accompanying responsibility.

The second installment of Christopher Nolan’s reinvention of the comic superhero Batman, which comes out July 18th, is possibly the most anticipated film of the summer. By necessity of the message of the film and the character development of Bruce Wayne, The Dark Knight will be darker than Nolan’s 2005 Batman Begins.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Christian Bale, who plays Batman, said that instead of being the naïve Batman of the 2005 film, now he is “somebody who has caused change, who has achieved what he had set out to do, but is now seeing consequences that he hadn’t anticipated. So it’s now somebody with the burden of his power—the difference between the man trying to attain that and the man who finds himself with it, and how very different it is.” According to the trailers, one of those consequences is that Batman’s sacrifice of normality for the sake of doing what is right will increasingly position him as an outcast from the people he is trying to save.

These five films promise to be as edifying in their message as they are entertaining in their content. Hopefully that will make for a fun and healthy summer at the theatres.