BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: The Spirited Trailer
Friday, December 26, 2008
The Spirited Trailer
I don't mean to make a habit of tearing into bad movie trailers, but here we go again. This one I don't actually hate, unlike the last two, but I do find it equally perplexing. The trailer(s) are for The Spirit, and I'm only remarking in it now since it's opening soon, and the reviews are eye catchingly scathing.
You can see links to the teaser and both versions of the theatrical trailer here. The teaser is vague and puzzling, while the theatrical trailer adds to it, but only just. It's still got zero hint of a plot; just lots of trying-to-be-artistic profile shots of the actors, with very quick snippets of semi-action scenes. Everything is obviously done with special effects and green screen, and it's all very clear and crisp and cold; there are no textures or depth or rounded edges or organic shapes; just hard, straight angles and primary colors; almost all black and white with a few accents of red. I got tired of the monochromatic nature of it in a 2.5-minute trailer; I can't imagine that much visual monotony for 102.
As for the critics, they are not happy. The film's average score is in the low 30s on MetaCritic, and it has a 17% approval level on Rotten Tomatoes. Even Ebert gave it 1 star, which is about 2.5 below the average he's posted since they removed his ability to dislike things along with some rather tenacious cancer.
The funny thing about the critical consensus is that it meshes almost perfectly with my reaction to the trailer. I saw the teaser months ago, online and in the theaters, and both times I had the same *shrug* of a reaction. It's not even clear that the trailer is for a movie. It looks like an artsy student film, or a demo reel for some kind of iMac movie editing program. All of the images are silhouettes, showing a young man in a black suit and a skinny red tie, wearing children's sneakers, running (none-too-gracefully) over archetypal big city rooftops, while a voiceover whispers non-sequiturs about how he loves the city and she's his breath, or something like that. Frankly, it's baffling.
Intentionally baffling, I guess, since the promotional goal seemed to be to create suspense and wonder. That's a reasonable approach; the movie had a huge hill to climb since it was based on an obscure comic strip from the 1940s. Virtually no one but hard core comic book geeks (or maybe their grandfathers) had any idea who or what "The Spirit" was, so the movie's ad dept. had two options. 1) to explain the movie and introduce the characters and convince viewers the old ideas were still cool (a dubious proposition). 2) be vague and intriguing and reveal nothing, while hoping to entice with mystery. That's also a dubious proposition, but I think it had a better chance of succeeding than the first choice. We'll see how well it worked when the box office returns come in this weekend.
It definitely didn't work on me, since I saw the teaser and was more annoyed than enticed. It seemed like it was trying too hard to be cool, and like it was an empty pose, one born of desperation rather than strength. I (think) I can tell when a movie's promotion is cool and vague as a marketing stance, rather than because it's a crappy movie without any content. And The Spirit immediately triggered my BS detector on that front. It looked like warmed over, less-filling Sin City, which I thought was a pretty crappy movie in the first place, since it substituted (allegedly) cool imagery for actual story or character far too often. That Sin City was said to be very true to the comic it was inspired by made perfect sense to me; I've never been able to get into comics as an adult (though I enjoyed them as a pre-teen) since they seem to put 90% of their emphasis on imagery and 10% on story. And I'm not enough of a fan of gritty illustrations of muscular guys in torn tights and capes for that to hold my interest.
I did get a good laugh from one of the reviews, at least. It's one of the lower scores, (D-) and it appeared on Oregon Live. The review wasn't funny, but then I got to the comments and couldn't help but chuckle. Here's the first one:
Posted by sergal on 12/24/08 at 11:33PM
I'd like inform you that Scarlett Johansson (actress)actually is a clone from original person,who has nothing with acting career.Clone was created illegally using stolen biomaterial.Original Scarlett Galabekian last name is nice, CHRISTIAN young lady.I'll tell more,those clones(it's not only 1)made in GERMANY-world leader manufacturer of humans clones,it's in Ludwigshafen am Rhein,Rhineland-Palatinate,Mr.Helmut Kohl home town.You can't even imaging the scale of the cloning activity.But warning,H.Kohl staff strictly controlling their clones spreading around the world,they're NAZI type disciplined and mind controlled,be careful get close with clones you will be controlled too.Original family didn't authorize any activity with stolen biomaterials,no matter what form it was created in,it's all need to be back to original family control in Cedars-Sinai MedicalCenter in LA.Controlling clones is US military operation.Original Scarlett never was engaged,by the way
The weirdness of that was perfectly enhanced by the second comment:
Posted by shawnlevy on 12/25/08 at 2:22PM
Best. Comment. Ever.
I think we can all agree on that, even if opinions on The Spirit differ.
