Trailer Tracking 2: The Best and Worst in Recent Movie Trailers
by Tom Burns

Let's say what we're all thinking - movie trailers are the best part of going to the movies. (That's why you eat all your candy and popcorn during them.) They're these beautiful little short films that are just so earnest and brimming with potential. They want your attention so badly, like puppies in a pet store window, begging and pleading with you - "Hey, don't you want to see Prince Caspian? Or Prom Night? What about Sex & The City? We promise that the chick from Mannequin is probably going to be naked a lot! Please remember us!" It's so equally cute and desperate, but we can't pretend that we don't love them.

As trailer devotees, The Deadbolt thought we’d take a look at some recent coming attractions and rundown what we’re excited about, what underwhelmed us, and what we’re planning to avoid - based on these terrific (and not-so-terrific) previews, first looks, and trailers. Join us as we judge these future releases - the products of years of hard work and endless hours of toil by some of Hollywood's finest film crews - on these two-minute promo-nuggets that some dude probably edited on his laptop. It's not fair, but who cares?

Trailer We Really Wished Didn't Remind Us of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Incredible Hulk

Maybe we're exaggerating a little bit here - the movie doesn't look bad enough to force Ed Norton into retirement like LXG did to poor old Sean Connery - but the design of The Abomination looks terrible. (For you non-geeks out there, The Abomination is the Tim Roth monster that the Hulk is throwing down with in the preview.) It reminds us of the horrendously rendered Mr. Hyde from LXG, or that weird hybrid skull-face alien at the end of Alien: Resurrection, or perhaps Doomsday from the whole "Death of Superman" story. Louis Leterrier told Empire Online that he purposely chose to alter the Abomination's appearance to make him an "über-human" and, normally, we never object to changing something from a comic book to make it better on-screen ("Good movies first, faithful adaptations second" is our motto.), but wow... not good.

Now that we've finished our geek rant, what else did we think about the trailer? We like that this movie is all about "Hulk on the run" rather than yet another origin story. (Or anything having to do with Hulk-poodles.) Edward Norton looks like he makes a strong Bruce Banner, although even though our inner-nerd knows that the preview opens up with Banner talking to long-time Hulk character, the psychologist Doc Samson, if we didn't already know that... it looks like the two dudes just finished a particularly romantic date. ("Hulk never met a man like you before.") Honestly, from all the chase stuff in the trailer, we're probably most looking forward to watching Norton come up with creative ways to keep one step ahead of William Hurt's General Thunderbolt Ross. (We're big Bill Hurt fans.) It looks like - and Leterrier has confirmed this - that the movie ends with a good half-hour Hulk vs. Evil Hulk smackdown, and we're kind of conflicted about that. While we hate that other superhero movies often fail to deliver on the super-battles (looking at you, Fantastic Four), 30-minutes of CGI "HULK SMASH" might be a bit much.

One last nerdy note - we're a little worried about how the movie seems to be casting Hulk as a savior (Leterrier's word, not ours). That's a terrible way to go in superhero movies, as can be seen in Superman Returns and Spider-Man 3. Gloomy, emo, messianic super-whiners have no place in a big blockbuster movie. The scene in the trailer where Banner chooses to jump out of a helicopter - forcing him to Hulk-out or die - comes directly from Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's The Ultimates Volume One comic book series, however, in that story, the good guys purposely kick Banner out of the helicopter against his will to force the whiny doctor turn into the Hulk to help them repel an alien invasion. Leterrier's version of events is more stereotypically heroic, but also, a little more boring. Let's hope that isn't how the rest of the movie turns out.

Best Example of How Editing Can Really Change Your Opinion of a Trailer: Speed Racer

Three new trailers for the Wachowski Brothers' Speed Racer hit the web this week - two pretty similar international trailers and one new domestic trailer - and, while they all use a lot of the same footage, it's amazing how different they are. Our initial reaction after watching the international trailers was "Uh-oh." Here's the thing - yes, we realize that this is supposed to be live-action anime and, as such, the world of Speed Racer is going to be very stylized, kinetic, kitschy, and exaggerated. We're totally fine with that. But we had two big problems with the international previews. First, they were all about action, action, action. Normally we love that, but it also makes the movie look shallow, shallow, shallow - particularly when so much attention is being paid to the design aspects more than anything else. We get no sense of character, plot, or motivations beyond "Let's go, Speed Racer!" Second, some of the green-screen action scenes, to be frank, reminded us of the half-assed, garage FX we saw in Spy Kids 3D: Game Over. If you're going to film your entire movie in an 8 by 10 room with minimal props, even if it's a live-action cartoon, it still has to look like your characters are interacting with their environments. There are moments in the international trailer that make it look like Speed Racer lives in a world made up of weatherman-quality blue-screens.

We were ready to write the movie off... until we saw the domestic trailer, which we actually really dug. Opening with the scenes of Speed as a young boy was a great decision. It instantly makes the character relatable - we can just imagine fifth-grade boys watching those moments and thinking "Dude, I want to be that guy" - and it sets up his relationships with his mom (Susan Sarandon) and his eventual gal-pal Trixie (Christina Ricci) beautifully. Plus showing Speed as a goofy little kid kicks him off his pedestal and makes him seem humble and human (remember our anti-savior screed in the Hulk review). This trailer is awash in quick, great character moments, giving us a taste of Spritle and Chim-Chim, Racer X, Speed's parents (the "I'm so proud to be your mom" moment seems genuine), and making Trixie seem both cool as hell and strangely sexy in a few quick seconds. (Ricci's line reading on "Cool beans" made our mouths go dry.) Plus there are some astounding FX scenes that just pop-off the screen much better than in the international version. The depth-of-field in the huge crowd sequences reminds us of the best moments of Pixar's Cars, and there's a moment about 54 seconds in where the Mach-5 darts around its competition and - it doesn't look like a big rubbery cartoon - it looks like real-life matchbox cars having a death race in the coolest Micro Machines playset ever. Consider us impressed.

These trailers really show how a few seconds worth of footage can deeply, deeply affect the effectiveness of a coming attraction. Sometimes, nothing but action, noise, and speed is a bad thing, just like how eating nothing but sugar will only make you sick, sick, sick. But thanks to the domestic trailer, we'll admit. We're looking forward to yelling "Go, Speed Racer, Go" this summer.

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