In case you haven’t heard, there’s a movie being made which is ostensibly a live action version of Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots starring Hugh Jackman. When the first trailer came out my reaction was largely “Uh, what?” but I was still kind of interested in a goofy sort of way ’cause you know, fighting robots. Yesterday I watched the second trailer and that’s when I realized that kids are the cold shower of action movie trailers.
I went to see District 9 with a whole bunch of friends yesterday. If you like science fiction you’re probably already intrigued or have seen it already. If you haven’t seen it SEE IT ALREADY!!! It’s rare to see such a well produced film that’s totally original and has such amazing story, special effects, makeup and practical effects and just EVERYTHING. Turns out the trailer spoiled more than I thought but not as much as it could’ve. I’ve been saturated with commercials for it on TV, but was pleasantly surprised how little was actually shown.
Anyway, this comic is about something that I do with all movies. Since I’m a trailer junkie there are certain movies that I’ve basically memorized all the trailer dialogue. Especially if I see multiple TV spots I know going into a movie that I’m not going to be laughing at certain jokes because I’ve heard them so many times before. I almost wish I didn’t like trailers so much because then I could see more movies fresh which is always a unique experience.
When I saw Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” I remember being so distracted because all the dialogue takes used in the trailer were different from the ones in the film. Also in Star Wars Episode I there was one line of dialogue that was cut in a different order (There’s something else behind this, they will kill you if you stay).
Luckily the “There’re a lot of secrets in District 9″ and a lot of the expository dialogue was at the very beginning so I wasn’t waiting for the dialogue to come up.
Oh and btw, SEE IT NOW!!!
I thought this thing was total crap that they showed this stupid Madagascar short film. Thus far I have nothing but utter disdain for all the Dreamworks CG animated films, Shrek included. I hate how Shrek has started this trend towards putting in oodles and oodles of pop culture references for cheap laughs. Though even as much as I dislike Shrek I can understand how its idea of manipulating and mixing up the fairy tales with the pop culture references worked for itself. Everything else following it is just following what they considered to be a formula and so far it’s been to little success. What I like about Pixar is that they can have adult humor and in-jokes without winking and nudging us through the process screaming out “Hey! Look at us! Aren’t we clever?”
I actually did see Madagascar which is why I can attest to its crappiness. The only reason I look positively on the experience of seeing it was that it was the first time I had ever gone to a drive-in theater.
The short film they played before the Wallace & Gromit movie has the penguins in it whom are arguably the funniest part of the largely unfunny movie. Yet the “short” film (technically it was a short film, but it had to have been at least fifteen minutes which is way too long for a film to be played before a feature) managed to be almost completely unfunny.
The entire experience reminded me of this time in college I went to a screening of “Trekkies” that Denise Crosby was supposed to be attending for a Q&A. The screening was run by an NYU fraternity which was a joke upon itself since NYU is so not a greek school. One of the members apparently was a film student so before they played the feature we were forced to watch this guy’s really horrible short film about death, God and the afterlife and other things film students in general should avoid. Denise Crosby ended up not showing supposedly because she was sick. My friends and I were convinced she was never actually going to come and it was all just a ruse to get us to see their crappy film.
So the Episode III Trailer is out. Not sure if this is going to be the last trailer or if they’ll have several like they did with Attack of the Clones. Yes, I’m one of those Star Wars fans who was severely burned by Phantom Menace. Then I went to see Attack of the Clones and enjoyed it more than Phantom Menace (if that says anything). But really I never looked back. I never even saw Attack of the Clones a second time straight through. Episode I I saw multiple times in the theater partially because it was a new Star Wars film, and also because I was hoping I’d like it better if I saw it more. Oh sweet naivete.
Attack of the Clones’ segments with Obi-Wan were cool, but pretty much cutting back to Anakin killed it, or god forbid if Anakin was in a scene with Padme *gag* That seems to be one of the big problems with the prequels, whenever they have scenes with the person it’s all supposed to be about I really don’t want to watch. Plus the big action scenes at the last twenty minutes of Episode II only were cool the first time through, on repeat viewings not so much. Plus the whole Yoda thing is just pure fanservice. I could go on and on about what I hate about the prequels but it wouldn’t be anything you haven’t heard a million times before.
I could someday see myself buying the prequels (I don’t own any as of yet) for the sake of completion, but I can just as easily see myself never ever owning any of them and being completely fine with it. At this point the Star Wars prequels have become like Jackie Chan films in that most of the time I just skip to the fight scenes and then I’m done with it. The lightsaber duels in the prequels are really the most redeeming thing about them, everything else doesn’t do much for me. So I guess that would really be the primary reason I would be excited about Episode III is that supposedly the Obi-Wan/Anakin duel is going to be something ridiculous like fifteen minutes long with no cutaways to separate battles.
Mmmm, lightsabers…
When I saw parts of the Catwoman trailer I practically thought the CG looked like the Playstation 2 game they were that crappy. It’s a continuing fascination how crap like this gets made. The problem is that it’s not that someone had a Catwoman script that they pitched. It’s that someone said “Make me a Catwoman movie!” Then someone wrote a script, it fit the criteria and they pumped it through the machine.
Obviously seeing the trailer for “Return of the King” was a momentous day, but finding out that Square was planning to make a movie sequel to Final Fantasy VII was one of those moments where you go into a coma and jaw hangs low until a friend realizes you’ve been gone for a while and uses their emergency key to check if you’re all right and wakes you up.
Those of you out there who are either not gamers or haven’t played Final Fantasy VII I don’t expect to understand completely, but let me try to put this in perspective a bit. I have friends who will be on the verge of tears when they listen to the music. Being reminded of this story and the characters is a near religious experience for some. I have some friends who cried during moments in the game when characters died. Final Fantasy games are big experiences in themselves, never mind that by the time it’s finished you’ve invested at least 36 hours in it. Now imagine taking an emotional rollercoaster such as this and give it one of the most unsatisfying endings in all of video game history. This is why the movie sequel is such a big deal.
There are other reasons too. Final Fantasy VII was the first Final Fantasy game to be on the Playstation, which meant the graphics weren’t really up there in terms of sophistication (by today’s standards). This basically meant that during most of the game the characters are blocks of 3D shapes where hands might as well be big boxing gloves. Final Fantasy: Advent Children from what I’ve seen is damn near some of the most incredibly CGI filmmaking I’ve ever seen. Way better than the crappy Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie which was constantly touted its “photo-realistic” CG characters which also happened to be terribly animated. Basically, imagine that the first Star Wars movie was made entirely with legos, and that the follow up was going to be the films as they actually are. Not sure if this came out terribly coherent, but I hope at least some of the excitement came through.
Back to the comic. One thing I find amusing is when people are so happy their spontaneous acts of joy involve strangers around them. Equally funny are people who are frightened by said acts of joy.
Too bad the movie sucked. Still though, watching the trailer for the second and third Matrix movies is still a very satisfying experience for me. It’s an interesting experience because it reminds me of the disappointment of seeing the films, but it also reminds me of the excitement of seeing the trailers for the first time. Somehow the revisited excitement is genuine enough to overshadow the disappointment. Though I don’t get this with all trailers for movies that sucked.
For example, periodically I watch the first teaser for “The Phantom Menace,” and pretty much all I feel there is betrayal. That’s the first high quality quicktime trailer I ever downloaded, watched it over and over and over again. I remember I was in my living room at home on my beige Power Mac 7200, looking at this tiny window that couldn’t have been bigger than 320 x 240 and the audio levels were REALLY LOW. Rewatching that trailer is just depressing to me.
I remember the first time that the descriptions for preview ratings started getting really absurd in how specific they were. The film is “Blue Crush” (surfing movie with Kate Bosworth) which was rated PG-13 for teen partying and a fight. I think it’s nearly reached a point where the preview rating can be counted as a spoiler. For example Martin Scorsese’s film “The Aviator” is rated PG-13 for “Thematic elements, sexual content, nudity, language and a crash sequence.” Great, now we know he crashes his plane during a scene and it’s violent to some degree.
The other stupid thing is that you could have all these reasons for different ratings. I shudder to think of parents who won’t let their child see a film because it has “thematic elements, violence and language” despite it having a PG rating. Obviously PG violence is different from an R rated violence. There are some other descriptions that are dumb by virtue of the fact that you’re not going to be able to decide to see the movie because of the content or a lot of people won’t know what the description means. My favorite of that type is “The Medallion” a really bad Jackie Chan film rated PG-13 for “Action violence and some double entendre.”
I have a comic similar to this later talking about video game ratings.
Preview narrators I think haven’t quite reached their comic potential for the things they could be saying. The trailer for “Comedian” was a step forward, but I’d like to see them be a bit more creative for comedic films. The people who think that they’re fooling the entire audience when they set up the trailer like a horror movie, but then reveal that it’s a comedy should find a new line of work. Conversely, the people who are fooled by those trailers need to get out to the movies more. I don’t remember ever being fooled into thinking the movie was actually going to be a horror movie.
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