Lots of interesting movie trailers online lately, and as I begin typing this it occurs to me that none of the good ones have Mr. Voice intoning over them. Perhaps he got laryngitis and inadvertently allowed a full season's worth of action film trailers to be produced without relentlessly-stupid and cliche-filled voice over work? No wonder these trailers are all good. Never fear; I'm sure he'll be back in form in time to ruin the summer films.
First up, I've got to plug
Iron Man first, since I liked the teaser months ago, and I really like the full trailer. It's entertaining in of itself, and it makes the movie look good too. As with the teaser, (classic) rock songs are fitted flawlessly into this offering, and they blend perfectly with the theme and mood of the scenes shown, and actually seem to advance the narrative.
I'm looking forward to seeing this film, which makes it almost a certainty that all of the quirky humor and intelligence the trailers show will be edited mercilessly, leaving nothing but the typical intelligence-insulting, Bruckheimerian swill we've come to expect from big budget superhero movies.
Speaking of, did you know they're making
a second Hulk movie? Yeah, it was news to me too, but there's a teaser trailer and everything. It sucks, frankly. The trailer, I mean. No idea about the movie, but I always found the Hulk one of the least interesting comic book characters, and when its trailers sucked I never bothered to see the first film. I didn't miss much, judging from the critical and commercial reception to Ang Lee's misguided attempt at artsy-stylings. It looks like they're going more serious with this sequel (?), and there's a new, better-known actor playing the lead, and the Hulk himself seems to be more realistic, or at least somewhat less like one of Jim Carrey's hydra heads from
The Mask.
No idea if the Hulk 2 will be any good, and it's highly unlikely I'll ever see it, but I could have possibly been won over. Hell, if the trailers can make me want to see
Speed Racer, then anything's possible with a good 2 minutes of careful editing. This
Hulk teaser is nothing special though, and the ending, with the indestructible Hulk fighting some sort of indestructible evil Skeletor Hulk in the rain in a ruined city is highly reminiscent of Neo vs. Agent Smith in
Matrix 3. You know, the one everyone hated, and the one that proved how cinematically boring it was to have two indestructible characters fight, even with an entire city to destroy in the process. Looks like Hulk 2 will reconfirm that fact, starting June 13th, in a theater near you!
(On second thought, Hulk vs. Skeletor Hulk looks more like the battle between Mr. Hyde and the steroid swollen evil monster at the end of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Not that that analogy exactly improves the film's outlook.)
In some good news, there's no reason to fall further down the well of unfunny by making
Austin Powers 4 (though I'm sure they will anyway), since every joke that wouldn't have been funny in that movie seems to have been crammed into this one. It's
The Love Guru!
You know how most of the "comedies" made from Saturday Night Live sketches are criticized for being 90 painful minute belaborings of concepts that hardly had enough meat on their bones to keep a 6-8 minute sketch lively? Well this one looks like they skipped the "good 6-8 minute sketch" part. On the plus side, it's got a lot of bright colors...
...but nothing like the ones in the jumbo Crayola box that is
Speed Racer! I blogged, in confusion, about this
some months ago, after I forced myself to watch the teaser, expecting to actively hate it. It took me three viewings, but I eventually had to admit I was nearly won over, and definitely curious.
The teaser was more innovative than the full trailer; as I said in that earlier blog post, it made the film appear to be essentially a live action Anime. To quote myself, "...there are moments of overwrought, overserious drama mixed in with madcap comedy, the costuming is highly distinctive, there are random sections of martial arts and physics-defying action scenes, the logo and graphics are super high tech and seem out of place compared to the cartoonish everything else, etc."
The full trailer doesn't have that aspect to things, or any hint of the plot. It sells the film entirely on visuals and action, and doesn't do a bad job of that. It's a spectacularly colorful, eye candy fest, and I highly recommend you watch it in HD, and do some frame by frame advancing with the aid of the arrow keys. The driving scenes are really interesting; the cars are always in super sharp focus, CG-style. Not blurred to show speed, but crystal clear, and the plastic-y, reflective, textured nature of the Mach-5 is just "reach out and touch it" tasty. The wildly-curving race tracks are equally amazing to behold, and even the obviously CG shots of the grandstands are somewhat fascinating, with the spilled-bag-of-Skittles splashes of color in the spectator's clothing.
It's CG to a new extent in live action film; nothing is meant to look realistic, it's all hyper-realistic, with more color, more detail, more visual information than the human eye can take in, or human brain can process, at the speed it zooms by. I'm reminded of the jaw-dropping visuals in some anime, such as
Ghost in the Shell 2. I'm not sure why I like how it looks in Speed Racer, though. I was unmoved by the equally-cartoonish, entirely-CG visuals in the
Star Wars prequels and
The Fifth Element, and while I thought they worked nicely in
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, everything was so golden-hued and oddly-tinted in that film that it was almost monochromatic. On the other hand,
Star Wars 1-3 and
The Fifth Element were awful films, while
Sky Captain was fairly brilliant, so it's entirely possible that what the directors did with the visuals was more influential on my judgmental memory than the visuals themselves.
Elsewhere, the full trailer for Pixar's new joint,
Wall-E, is online, and it's very good. The teasers made the robot look cute but gave no sense of the film. The trailer is the real deal though, and it provides a quick summary of the entire film's plot, great visuals, a good sense of the mood (humorous) and tone (light but sentimental), and even some laughs. It also makes it look like, once again, Pixar is setting up a story to challenge themselves commercially. There's a non-speaking protagonist, all the leads are not only inhuman, they're not even organic, and it's set in an unfamiliar, sci-fi future world. For a studio that could just churn out family friendly sequels to
Toy Story,
Finding Nemo, and
The Incredibles sequels until the end of time, (you know, like what Disney does with their straight to video
Cinderella 3: If the Slipper Fits sludge) it's damn admirable that they're not playing it safe.
Elsewhere, I'm sure I'll end up seeing
Mrs. Smith 2, I mean
Wanted, with Angelina Jolie as the super assassin, but the trailer makes it hard to love. The action scenes are cartoonish to the extreme (and not in an intentional, anime way like Speed Racer's), the male lead looks like 10 pounds of zero in a 20 pound suit, and the whole "curving bullet" thing is just risable. Nevertheless, it's Angelina doing cool action stuff and being a bad ass, so I'll probably be there.
I definitely would have in the old days, since I know Malaya's going to be at this one opening weekend, but we don't see movies together that much anymore, (one of those consequences of breaking up and living 40 miles apart) and my new semi-imaginary girlfriend isn't a fan of this type of film, though she does make occasional exceptions. And since she owes me for
The Other Boleyn Girl, (no, it wasn't exactly my first choice) maybe I'll cash in that chip on this flick. Or save it for
Iron Man?
Finally, I almost hesitate to mention this film, but how can I not?
Doomsday. It's one of those action movies they dump without critical screenings in the spring, when there's no action movie competition, and there's no way it's any good, but the trailer is almost required viewing for any action movie fan. You could make a drinking game out of it, but you'd be dead. The rules
are would be simple; drink every time you see something so clearly taken from a classic action film that 80% of theater goers could shout it out in unison.
I didn't catalog them all, but the basic premise is
28 Days Later meets
Resident Evil, and then as soon as they get into the action it's
The Road Warrior crossed with
Escape from New York. There are also clear "influences" from
Aliens' Alien vs. Predator 2's marine squad,
Gladiator's mortal combat,
The Matrix 2's car chase scenes, and several others. All crammed into 2 minutes of absurdity.
Bonus points for the most gratuitous, slow motion, butt shot in recent cinematic history?
I get the feeling that this film could be almost like an action version of those
Scary Movie,
Not Another Teen Movie, type films, where there's no real movie, just a bunch of homages and recreations of genre classics. Except
Doomsday's playing things seriously? Who knows, it might be good, or at least entertaining. At worst, it will motivate viewers to go watch all the movies it so liberally cribbed from, and that's a happy ending to any story.
Labels: movie trailers
