Trailer Tracking 3: The Best and Worst in Recent Movie Trailers by Tom Burns
The “Are We Maybe Overselling Our Product?” Trailer – The Battle In Seattle
The problem with making films about true-life events, particularly modern day events, is that cinema is all about exaggeration – the exaggeration of action, emotion, character, you name it. These images are being projected onto 50-foot tall screens. Things need to be larger-than-life to sell on the silver screen. The other problem is, when you decide to make a movie about a real-life event, everyone in the audience will be thinking, “Did this really deserve a film adaptation?” World War II, 9/11, Watergate – sure. Hands Across America – maybe not so much. These are the problems facing The Battle in Seattle, the new movie about the riots that occurred during the protests of the World Trade Organization’s meeting in Seattle in 1999, and we’ll admit – from the trailer – we’re not sold on the idea.
Aside from the fact that the preview really, really goes out of its way to look like a low-rent version of Crash, we’ll admit – after Bobby and Crash and a million other recent dramas – we’re sick to death of the “told from the multiple perspectives of everyone who happened to wander within ten frickin’ miles of the event” movies. Plus the whole Rusted Root-loving hippies debating violent-vs.-non-violent protest thing doesn’t really grab us when Channing Tatum, star of Step Up, is the voice of the radical left. But that’s not the worst of it. After the trailer tries to impress us by showing off the ensemble cast (and we do love Charlize Theron and Woody Harrelson), it ventures right up its own ass by giving us the title card - "It Changed History." Really? REALLY?
,p>OK, this will probably piss off anyone reading this in Seattle, but while, yes, the protests did make a lot of news at the time, they didn’t exactly register on many people’s radar outside of the grunge-sphere. Sure, there’s probably more security at WTO meetings and Seattle cops take riot control a little more seriously, but… changed history? In the sense that a butterfly flapping its wings can change history – fine. In the sense of “it was one of the most significant events in recent memory” – not really. Plus we’d really hope that, if the incident was one of the most historically important events of the past ten years, then it could do better than having a film adaptation written and directed by Stuart Townsend, the British actor from Queen of the Damned who’s best known for losing the role of Aragon in LOTR (ouch) and bedding Ms. Theron (nice!) Who knows? Maybe the battle IS great fodder for a stirring fact-based film, but billing it as an event that “changed history” just smacks of pretension and hyperbole. Movies need to be exaggerated to work, but not this much.
Trailer for a Movie That Can’t, Can’t, Can’t Be as Good as Its Title – Zombie Strippers
Call it the “Snakes on a Plane” syndrome, but when movies have titles like Zombie Strippers, that just sound so genius, so trashy, so hilarious that you can’t help smirking when you hear them – the sad fact is… it’s going to suck. And not in a fun way, and not in a Grindhouse-esque B-movie way - although the trailer for Zombie Strippers is obviously going for those kind of comparisons (it looks like a cheap Robert Rodriguez designer-imposter) – it’s just going to suck. You’ll see some boobies, kind of laugh maybe once, and then get bored. Bored beyond belief.
And with a cast like Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund, what did you really suspect? But, fortunately, thanks to red-band movie trailers, you can check out the 2-minute sell of Zombie Strippers, laugh at the concept, get a glimpse of some silicon, and be out before the bad movie hangover even begins. We’ll recommend the trailer for a giggle – the best part is where the zombie pole-dancers always seem to bite first on their male customers – and suggest you avoid the hell out of it once it hits Blockbuster.
