New Year, new things to expect - 2012 Edition

It's that time again, folks!  Since I made something like this last year, I figured, "what the hell," and decided to do it again this year.  However, instead of compiling one list of what happened in 2011 and then compiling one list of what will happen in 2012, I've decided to go the lazy route and just compile the latter list.  Why?  Because that's how I roll.  It's a brand new year, so let's see what I give a crap about in 2012.

• The Amazing Spider-Man.  I never really had much respect for the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, what with the Green Goblin looking like a rejected Power Rangers villain (and there's a new clip showing what could have been a better Green Goblin suit, WTF Sam), and the mess that was Spider-Man 3 in general.  However, it's been five years, so hopefully the reboot should do good.  I really don't mind the new Spider-Man costume (nor do I mind the actor playing Spider-Man to have a silly hairdo), but the Lizard's design...his head reminds me of the Goombas from the god-awful Super Mario Bros. movie.  Well, it may be a half-way transformation, so who knows.
• The Dark Knight Rises.  This is probably the superhero movie to get the most attention, seeing as though The Dark Knight is considered by many to be the best Batman movie ever made (and me and my brother agree).  With Christopher Nolan in the director's chair one more time, I'm sure we can expect a damn good ending to a damn good movie trilogy.
• The Avengers.  Oh.  Hell.  YES.  The first ever superhero team-up movie and it looks AMAZING.  You've got Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Nick Fury, Black Widow, Captain America, and Hawkeye, assembling together to fight off...whoever's the antagonist (judging by the trailers, Loki's in it, but there's been rumors of Skrulls being the big bads of the movie).  I cannot wait to see this movie, along with the other two I posted.  The Avengers is the movie I want to see the most this year, and hopefully all the characters get a decent amount of screen-time.
• Wii U.  After E3 last year, I was disappointed with what we got overall.  And then Nintendo shows up, gives us a little Zelda music concert, shows off some 3DS games, and then the big reveal of the next Nintendo console.  As I had said in my E3 2011 post, I did not like the controller.  It still looks like an iPad got eaten by a Wii Classic controller, but I digress.  Since then, we've had not a lot of new info regarding Nintendo's next-gen console.  Hopefully in a week, when the 2012 CES takes place, maybe Nintendo could shed some more light on what the Wii U will do.  If it offers Gamecube games as part of the Virtual Console service, then I may be interested, just as long as I have somewhere to plug a Gamecube controller into (though I highly doubt it).
• Power Rangers Super Samurai.  Yes, it seems Saban has decided to have Power Rangers Samurai run for two seasons instead of one, somewhat taking a cue from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.  Unlike MMPR (and subsequently every season after that up to RPM) where they used footage from one Super Sentai show per season, Super Samurai is basically just the second half of Samurai Sentai Shinkenger.  I guess it makes sense, since Saban still needs to reestablish Power Rangers as a name brand, what with Disney holding it for eight years and all.  Nothing much I can expect from "Super Samurai", other than the Samurai series ending.
• Halo 4.  To be honest, I wasn't expecting this to ever happen.  But then again, Microsoft fucked up their E3 conference by showing off the Kinect for an hour, so I guess this is their way of saying sorry for wasting everyone's time.  From what info we know so far, it's the first in a new "Reclaimer Trilogy", so I'm assuming that there's more doomsday weapons built by the Forerunner for Master Chief to deal with (seriously, what is it with aliens and ancient doomsday weapons).  The only thing I want to know is if Halo 4's multiplayer won't suck like Reach's did.  I could care less about the campaign, or the story, or anything else.  As long as the multiplayer is fun, and there's no armor abilities to put up with, I'll buy the game on day one.
• Transformers Prime season 2.  SPOILER ALERT!  After the end of season 1, where both Optimus Prime and Megatron defeat Unicron, Optimus Prime (for some reason after using the Matrix) loses his memories and thinks he's still Orion Pax.  Megatron, seizing the opportunity, takes Optimus Prime away, and makes him a Decepticon.  This is what worries me for season 2:  we don't know if Optimus Prime regaining his memories will be solved in a few episodes, or if it will be the overall story-arc for the season.  I honestly want to believe it's the former, but something tells me it may be the latter.  If it is the latter, then I'm not prepared to have the Autobots yell at Optimus Prime, telling him to remember who he is for the next 26 episodes.  Maybe I'm wrong, and this plot point may be something that will be solved in a short time.  Nevertheless, we can only wait until next month when season 2 premieres.
• The 2012 Mayan doomsday apocalypse bullshit.  It's Y2K all over again; stupid people freaking out over something that won't even happen.  We've been wrong about doomsday dates before, and chances are we'll be wrong again.  You wanna know what's really gonna happen, come December 21st of this year?
  
  NOTHING!
  
  Nothing will happen at all!  If anything, some people will probably commit suicide for wasting their time and money on fallout shelters, and even quitting their jobs because of this stupid false prophecy.  It's just going to be another day in December.  You want real doomsday theories that could spell the end of the world?  Here's mine:
  
  -Michael Bay making a GOOD movie.
  -A live-action film adaptation of a cartoon or anything from our childhood that DOESN'T SUCK.
  -Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft joining forces and making a super video game console.
  -Carlos Mencia admitting that he steals jokes.
  -Dave Chappelle coming back to do a proper third season of Chappelle's Show.
  -George Lucas releasing the original, unaltered Star Wars trilogy on Blu-Ray.

That's all my thoughts for what the new year entails.  Hope everyone has a Happy New Year.