The Dark Knight Rises
Dir: Christopher Nolan – Planned release date: July 20, 2012
Allow me to begin with this: I am incredibly excited for The Dark Knight Rises. I don’t believe it will be as good as The Dark Knight—there isn’t a Batman villain in existence that can top Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker—but I don’t see Christopher Nolan completely messing it up this late in the game. I also understand the studio's desire to get a teaser trailer out as soon as possible, particularly when a box office sure thing like Harry Potter is hitting the theaters. However, the trailer they’ve decided to rush out isn’t very good at all. It feels like it was cut together at the last second, has no real flow, and contains virtually no new footage. Well, at least none that’s all that interesting.
That said, as disappointed as I am by this teaser, I’m not sure how much better it could have been. The Dark Knight Rises isn’t coming out for almost a year exactly, so it stands to reason that maybe Nolan doesn’t have a great deal of finished footage quite yet. This is a teaser that feels like it was released just so people will know that the movie exists. I usually like that advertising strategy, but there needs to be a bit more to chew off of than this. Slightly more effective is the poster, which in just one image illustrates the kind of movie we’re likely to get. As far as the teaser trailer is concerned, there’s just nothing there. (The only real image to get excited about is the final one, where we get a brief shot of an exhausted Batman facing off against nemesis Bane. You can check out a GIF of the shot here, and help me figure out who that is in the background.) I suspect the next teaser will be released around Christmastime, and maybe then Nolan will have more compelling footage ready to go.
The Amazing Spider-Man
Dir: Marc Webb – Planned release date: July 3, 2012
In a world filled with unnecessary comic book movies, The Amazing Spider-Man seems particularly superfluous. It is not merely that we’re getting another Spider-Man movie, it is more that this film is telling us the exact same origin story we heard ten years ago, with only a few alterations. This isn’t a Hulk situation, where the film bombed and they’ve decided to try it again. Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man movie spawned an incredibly successful trilogy, and just because Raimi and Maguire didn’t want to make another one, the “must have more!” mentality of Marvel and the studio triggered an immediate reboot with director Marc Webb and new star Andrew Garfield. The creation of this film is one of the more ridiculous stories of this 21st-century superhero movie explosion.
As I say this, I realize that the film itself could be very good, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is an absolutely needless project. I thought Webb’s last film (500 Days of Summer) was fantastic, and the cast here is actually really impressive. Besides the up-and-coming Andrew Garfield in the lead, the supporting cast includes the likes of Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Sally Field and Martin Sheen (who could probably play Uncle Ben in his sleep). Even if the movie is very good on its own merits, I get the feeling audiences will groan at the familiarity of it all. It might have been more prudent if The Amazing Spider-Man simply skipped the origin story altogether.
The trailer itself is fine, and it seems awfully well-polished for a film that isn’t coming out until next summer. The only outright mistake in the trailer is the final point-of-view section, which—I suspect—was simply made for this teaser. But as with The Dark Knight Rises, we still have a year of stuff like this to get through. It’ll just take a bit to sell me on this one.
Jack & Jill
Dir: Dennis Dugan – Planned release date: November 11 (Make a wish, America!)
Throughout this blog’s existence, I have tried to keep this a family-friendly place. (This is mostly because my family regularly reads this.) However, if I were to adequately express my opinion of the trailer for Jack & Jill, I would likely go on a tirade of profanity that would shock even the likes of Peter Capaldi. As I am trying to restrain myself, I will only say this: I hate everything about this. And I don’t even think I like movies anymore. Somewhere out there is a poor, nothing filmmaker trying to get a movie like Winter’s Bone financed, and all Adam Sandler has to do is make a phone call and suddenly we all get a movie like this thrust upon us. Remember Judd Apatow’s Funny People? Where Sandler’s character poked fun at projects like this? I’m not sure what happened since then. I realize Sandler wasn’t in Tropic Thunder, but you could honestly place this trailer alongside the fake ones at the beginning of that movie and no one would know the difference.
Just a look at Sandler’s face in this trailer and it’s obvious that he has completely given up. I suspect he even knows movies like Just Go With It and Jack & Jill are crap, but he keeps making money off of them, so why not? And as long as he can take all these vacations to New England and Hawaii at the expense of the studio, he has no reason to stop now. However, the optimist inside me is thinking that maybe Jack & Jill will be the first Sandler film in a while to fail at the box office. I believe enough in the movie-going public to think that maybe they’ll realize just how stupid this is. I mean, really. They have to, right? Anyone? Bueller?
Hugo
Dir: Martin Scorsese – Planned release date: November 23
Watching the trailer for Hugo is a strange experience, to be sure. I understand why Martin Scorsese would want to make a children’s film—Casino doesn’t quite do the job—but this preview doesn’t even seem to hint that he’s trying anything new with the genre. However, for me to overly-criticize this trailer would be wrong-headed. Scorsese has more than earned a lifetime pass to do whatever he pleases, and I think many of the problems here are actually the fault of those who edited together the trailer. Some of the visuals here could look great in 3-D, and the cast alone should more than make Hugo worth the price of admission. The problem is that the advertisers decided to market the film exclusively at children, and they figured the inclusion of Scorsese’s name would be good enough for the rest of us. I don’t see a way this film could be outright bad, but I can say I probably wouldn’t see it if Scorsese’s name was not attached. I will make no judgments yet, but I find this entire project to be curious indeed.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Dir: Guy Ritchie – Planned release date: December 16
I recognize there has been a lot of negativity in this post, but that is not going to stop with the trailer for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. I did not like the first of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films, as any and all real substance came from the fun performances of Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, among others. Worst of all, it wasn’t all that interesting. You can make Sherlock Holmes an action hero, but at least give him a relatively compelling mystery to solve along the way. In the hands of a different director, I think Sherlock Holmes could have been really good. Instead, there was not nearly enough humanity to be found.
If the trailer for the sequel is any indication, not much has changed. All we get is a bunch of action without rhyme or reason, and there’s little else to really make of it. This preview just wants to tell you how fun this movie is going to be, and screw everything else. However, I cannot deny that Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films have a real ability to please the average movie-goer, and as a result I have no real anger toward them. It’s just another mainstream Hollywood franchise that I wish was better. If A Game of Shadows is a substantial improvement, they aren’t advertising it in this trailer. It’s just more explosions and slow motion, completely devoid of any real context. To me, it could not look less intriguing.
-Just a reminder that there, once again, will be no Trailer Trash next week. I will be in Chicago, doing Chicago-y things.
The Dark Knight Rises - I guess it's good to get the buzz going. But we'll have much more to talk about when a full trailer is released next year. By the time this movie opens, it'll feel like ten years passed by. I'm just as excited for it as you are.
ReplyDeleteThe Amazing Spiderman - Would it really have killed the studios to re-cast the characters and carry on with the story that Sam Raimi had set up? I realize a lot of people hated Spiderman 3 but it was no derailment like Batman & Robin. The franchise was not beyond saving. Some people are quick to remind us that the Batman franchise was rebooted only eight years after the last one and look how great it turned out. Yes it was great but it also offered something new that hadn't been done before; a live action origin story. Unless the trailer is somehow misleading, Spiderman is repeating the exact same road again only with different people in the costumes. I'm not a big Spiderman fan. But if I was, I'd feel very alienated right now.
Jack and Jill - Even the most loyal of all Sandler fans are not feeling any love for this. Al Pacino's involvement can mean only one of two things. Either Sandler is so good at making friends that he can convince anyone to sign up for a role in his films or Pacino just doesn't care anymore. Forget Funny people. This is the kind of trailer South Park would create to parody an actor's career like how they did with Rob Schneider years ago.
Hugo - Wouldn't it be something if Martin Scorsese was able to make 3D skeptics re-evaluate their position? I mean...him of all people?
Sherlock Holmes 2 - I enjoyed the first film a lot so I'd have no problem watching more of the same unless it's a complete rehash like Hangover 2. Thankfully, I don't think that's the case here.