Since none of the Xmas movies are of much interest to me this year, I thought I'd comment on a pair of new trailers for big action spectaculars coming this summer.
Die Hard 4 and
Transformers. Each has a pretty, explosion-filled trailer, but neither really grabbed me and neither looks much like what I expected it to look like.
The
Die Hard 4 trailer is pretty much unrecognizable as a
Die Hard movie. Isn't the whole point of the series to get Bruce Willis stuck in some confined location, fighting terrorists while his annoying, soft-focused, big-haired wife is in jeopardy? I guess
Die Hard 3 got away from that scenario, and as best I remember it most of the movie had Willis running around New York with Samuel L. Jackson while they tried to defuse bombs a terrorist was planting. There was some subplot about gold theft or whatever, but it's been years and it's all a blur now.
Die Hard 4 though, could be any action movie. Mission Impossible 4, a new James Bond, anything. My impression is that it's meant to rip off TV show
24, by setting it in NYC and having lots of fast action sequences. (Which 24 may or may not have; I've never actually seen the show, and I wonder how much action they can possibly have per episode when they've got to drag the plot out over 24 weeks.)
There are a couple of good stunts in the DH4 trailer though; I liked the flying car that nearly lands on them when two other cars pull up at the last second, and the car jumping up a toll both into a helicopter. The fact that Bruce looks about 60 now doesn't help though, nor does the fact that that sulky, unshaven pretty boy in the car with him is apparently the Robin to his Batman. Or something like that. Remember when action heroes were um... heroic? Not vulnerable pouters straight from the cover of
Tiger Beat?
Elsewhere, the
Transformers trailer is online, and it's also full of lots of big explosions and a strange mood. Maybe I was less than a true believer, but my young boy recollections of Transformers was as a very cheesy, GI Joe/He-Man quality cartoon with talking trucks and fighter planes that turned into robots with no conservation of matter. They had guns and they fought and every week the evil Decepticons betrayed and tried to murder the good Autobots who always won, and then let the bad guys go because good guys are noble and don't punish bad guys, thus freeing them to return with another nefarious scheme the next week. Essentially the way Dr. Evil treats a captured Austin Powers, just out of the kindness of their robotic hearts rather than incompetence.
The Transformers movie has been getting a lot of geek hype though, and it seems that some people actually take the plot (there was a plot?) seriously, and are all upset that the role of humans is too large, or that there are minor cosmetic changes to the trucks and cars and planes, (well duh, the series was drawn in the 80s; vehicles look a lot different now), and that it won't live up to their childhood memories. I'm not worried about that. My memories are of a cartoon with a cute concept targeted towards nine year old boys (robots in disguise!). It was poorly animated, filled with stupid voices, and reused the same plot every episode. God forbid someone tamper with the sacred formula!
That being said, this trailer sets up a film I did not at all expect. It's way, way, way overserious, with attempts to make it myseriously and scary and shocking and full of revelations. Why? It's as if they made a new
Ghostbusters movie and the whole trailer was this mysterious, dark,
The Grudge-like creepfest: are there really ghosts? What do they want? Can they be stopped? Who are they fooling? It's a stupid movie about giant robots blowing up puny human tanks and fighting each other. It's
Godzilla vs. Mothra with sparkplugs. Drop the pretentions, kids. No one's buying a ticket for the suspense and mystery, and if you take more than 15 minutes to get to the robots blowing each other up, viewers will feel ripped off.
That being said, the special effects and explosions look pretty cool, and I can more easily imagine myself sitting through
Transformers 1 than
Die Hard 4, just because I've seen gun fights and cars and helicopters blow up before, but I have not seen an unlimited budget action fest with giant fighting robots.
Labels: movies
