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| Jeremy Renner ain't taking none of your sass. |
Volume 21: ReBourne
The Bourne Legacy
Dir: Tony Gilroy – Planned release date: August 3
If there is one word that best describes the current situation in mainstream moviemaking, it’s “impatient.” It’s not that there’s a severe lack of creativity; it’s just that studios seem increasingly unable to move onto new blockbuster franchises. It wasn’t too long ago that a franchise would get a trilogy and then be put to rest for at least a decade or two. Now, it seems like three installments in a series is not good enough, and if the original cast and filmmakers are not willing to keep going then they’ll just go ahead and start over. Brand recognition has become one of the most important aspects of a film’s box office success, and that’s why studios aren’t just going to let popular franchises without a fight. (Rumors are that Hollywood is already planning a post-Christopher Nolan Batman franchise.) The Bourne Legacy is a product of this new mentality, and it’s the first film in the franchise not to star Matt Damon. Usual director Paul Greengrass is also gone, and now Tony Gilroy—who wrote the first three Bourne films—is in the director’s chair.
Despite the inherent ridiculousness of releasing a Bourne film without the titular character, if you’re going to move on you might as well do it with Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz and Edward Norton. This trailer for the new film doesn’t reveal a whole lot, and it has that groan-inducing line about Bourne being “just the tip of the iceburg” or something, but there’s enough here to suggest that this new direction really isn’t all that much of a new direction. There is the possibility that Legacy will be about Renner’s time working for the government—as opposed to Bourne’s three-film rampage against it—but I suppose it’s just a matter of time before he develops his own special case of amnesia. Or he just becomes self-aware. Whatever. At least he gets to punch a lot of people in the throat. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.
The Amazing Spider-Man
Dir: Marc Webb – Planned release date: July 3
Lo, a theme! The Amazing Spider-Man is yet another result of Hollywood’s growing impatience, and even if this movie is somehow the most transcendent piece of art to come out this year, I will always, always be dumbfounded by its existence. Even more so than The Bourne Legacy. Let’s not sugarcoat the fact that The Amazing Spider-Man is telling precisely the same story that we spent the previous decade watching, and this isn’t a situation where those films were terrible and the franchise deserves a fresh start. Nay, Sam Raimi’s films—the first two especially—were widely acclaimed and thought to be among the best superhero movies ever made. So, of course you completely start over once everyone else decides to walk. I mean, you can’t just expect Marvel to not make another Spider-Man film, can you? What a ridiculous thought!
At least this new trailer is a bit more clear about how this reboot is different from Raimi’s vision. First, Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker is a much more confident being, and he seems to already be dating Gwen Stacy when the movie begins. Also, this trailer does a good job of playing down the “origin story” aspect of the new film; something that completely derailed the first teaser. In short, this trailer just further validates my opinion of the project since I first heard of it: The Amazing Spider-Man will probably be a good movie. Perhaps a very good one. But it still is an example of everything I find annoying about current Blockbuster filmmaking. One last thing: who could have predicted a couple years ago that the man behind (500) Days of Summer would be directing that final scene in this trailer? They grow up so fast.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Dir: Timur Bekmambetov – Planned release date: June 22
Well, that’s it everyone. That’s all the ideas. Moviemaking is over, and you can all go home now. Once we hit the concept of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I think we’ve accomplished just about all we could have ever hoped to accomplish. Admittedly, this is based on a “mashup novel” (as Wikipedia helpfully puts it), but the fact that a group of people sat around a table and decided this would make a great action movie makes me scratch my head. Perhaps if it were played for pure camp or even dark comedy I would be more on board, but this trailer advertises an incredibly generic, self-serious film about vampires that just happens to be about Abraham Lincoln. I can’t imagine that the book came across quite this humorless. If nothing else, this is a trailer that I desperately want to see in a crowded theater. I know how people reacted to Cowboys & Aliens, and that was a premise I actually kind of liked. I’m not sure this is something the public is going to embrace very easily.
The Dictator
Dir: Larry Charles – Planned release date: May 11
Going into The Dictator, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen actually finds himself in slight need of a comeback. After the incredible success of Borat, people were far less receptive to his 2009 film Brüno, and since then he’s been more or less off everyone’s radar. He gave a very nice performance in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, but besides that there hasn’t been a whole lot of Baron Cohen for people to feast their eyes on. This will change in 2012, and how. Besides The Dictator, Baron Cohen is set to star in the Freddie Mercury biopic Mercury, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Quentin Tarantino’s Djano Unchained and is rumored to have a part in the new version of Les Misérables. So yeah, that’s a full slate. However, The Dictator is the most obvious “Sacha Baron Cohen film,” in that it seems to be a logical continuation of the characters he created in Borat and Brüno.
While he has retained director Larry Charles, The Dictator is allegedly a more tightly-scripted affair than his past two outings, but all the same ingredients seem to be in place. This film also has quite the cast, including an appearance by Ben Kingsley, which I like to think was the result of Baron Cohen asking Kingsley for a favor on the set of Hugo. Some of the jokes here worked for me—particularly the inspired bit during the race at the end—but some of the other gags just didn’t click for me. In particular, Baron Cohen’s shtick is getting a little too familiar with me. I hope The Dictator is able to take it in a whole new direction, but I’m not sure there’s much more to get out of his “silly foreigner” characters.
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Dir: Lorene Scafaria – Planned release date: June 22
We get so many deadly serious apocalypse movies these days that it’s about time we got a comedy about the end of the world, and that’s exactly what we’re getting with Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. What at first appears to be a sad little film about Steve Carell sitting by himself with a meteor coming straight for him turns into an apocalyptic road movie with Keira Knightley as they search the country for the ones they love. Along the way they meet a colorful cast of characters, none of them as inherently funny as a drunken Patton Oswalt. It’ll be interesting to see if the full movie can sustain the nice balance between comedy and tragedy seen in this trailer. I also hope that the movie doesn’t take the easy way out and have Carell and Knightley fall in love. I can maybe buy them as road trip buddies. A convincing romantic pairing? That’s another story.
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