Trailer Tracking 3: The Best and Worst in Recent Movie Trailers by Tom Burns
Perhaps the best thing about the internet, aside from its tireless efforts to bring the world together through anonymous complaining and pornography, is how it’s revived the classic art of the movie trailer. Now that moviegoers have to sit through 30 minutes of energy drink and video game commercials before the lights even dim at their local multiplex, more and more film fans have been showing up at the theatre just in time to catch their feature. The time-honored pre-show ritual of snuggling up with your Raisinets and critiquing the new crop of coming attractions has been tainted by irrelevant consumerism and the frustrations of a generation that’s used to being able to TiVo past the commercials at home. So let’s quit with the Red Bull and Dentyne Ice ads, Madison Avenue, and make with the dancing hot dogs and the bright green “this preview is rated” screen.
But thanks to the internet, movie trailers are a big deal again. Links to teaser trailers, international trailers, red-band trailers, etc. fill up e-mailboxes all day long, as friends plead with their pals to check out the new first look at Tropic Thunder or Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2: Pants-Off Dance-Off (OK, we made that last one up). 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 spew some praise (and some bile) at the best and worst of what we’ve seen recently.
Sequel Trailer That Totally Made Us Forget the Sins of the Original: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
We realize that it’s probably not a good idea to cheese off Guillermo Del Toro now that he has the keys to the Hobbit franchise, but let’s be frank, the first Hellboy movie...was only so-so. Don’t get us wrong. We love Mike Mignola’s original comic book, and Ron Perlman ruled the effing school as Hellboy - his charisma and spot-on take on the character made the whole damn movie. And it’s a very rewatchable movie, which we peruse with interest whenever it’s on FX every single weekend, but that doesn’t mean it was without its faults. Abe Sapien basically came across as a merman version of Counselor Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Rasputin might be the least interesting movie bad guy of the past few years, those weird tentacled terror dogs got way, way too much screen time, and, in the end, Hellboy defeats the giant H.P. Lovecraft monster with a gag lifted straight from the closing minutes of Men in Black. But, again, we LIKED the movie. We just didn’t think it was Guillermo’s best work. And because of all that, the idea of him revisiting Hellboy’s film universe made us nervous.
However, all those doubts about the HB movie franchise flew out the window once we saw the newest trailer for Hellboy II: The Golden Army. We still totally admit that the movie will probably have flaws, but the trailer is pure uncut kick-ass. While watching it, we forgot EVERYTHING we disliked about the first Hellboy. We just drooled and snickered at the "You woke the baby!" And once it was done, we hit the play button once more and watched it again and again.
What did we like about the trailer specifically? Well, aside from the fact that the movie obvious takes some design cues from Del Toro’s sublime Pan’s Labyrinth (does Doug Jones play every make-up covered character in the movie?), the trailer really hits home that the time for origins is over, and it’s time for Hellboy to drop the papa-issues and kick some butt. (This is the same reason why we’re so excited about The Dark Knight.) The plot is classic Mignola Hellboy fodder – the long-hidden faerie folk decide that they want the world back – and, although it offers HB some great action opportunities, it also gives him a fantastic moral dilemma ("Why are you fighting with them when you are so like us?"). Perlman’s quips sound solid, we LOVE that Jeffrey Tambor is back, and the mecha-golem Golden Army looks like a fantastic third-act adversary (or is that the Ent/Cloverfield monster on the Brooklyn Bridge?). Thanks to Counselor Sapien in the first movie, we’ll admit, Abe makes us uneasy, particularly since he apparently gets an elf romance in this one (fish-man needs to man up). But, as we mentioned, we forgot all such complaints when that groovin’ action music kicked in during the last 20 seconds of the trailer and Hellboy brought out the baby. We may be judging the original Hellboy a bit harshly, but with trailers like these – we’re all about the forgive and forget.
The “Haven’t We Seen This Movie Before?” Trailer – Lakeview Terrace
There are books written about how, in all of literature and beyond, there are only really 20 original plots in the history of storytelling, and how every single story known to man is just a variation on those twenty - boy meets girl, heroic quest, etc. So, if that’s true, should we really be surprised that, after awhile, movies and books and TV shows all start to sound a little...familiar? While that’s a valid point, it’s pretty sad when, during a 2-minute trailer, all anyone can think about is "Man, this movie looks like a rip-off of _______." And that’s exactly what happened when we watched the preview for Lakeview Terrace, the new domestic thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, and Kerry Washington.
Maybe we’re dating ourselves, but we were the only ones who watched this trailer and immediately thought "So, it’s Pacific Heights meets Unlawful Entry?" For those unfamiliar, Pacific Heights was a thriller about an overwhelmed young couple trying to evict the tenant from hell (Batman, no less), and Unlawful Entry was all about how creepy it would be if a cop became obsessed with your family and started stalking your wife (Who do you call for help? His work buddies?). Sadly, that’s pretty much all we’re given to go on in the Lakeview Terrace trailer (Doesn’t that title just sound like Pacific Heights?). A couple (Wilson and Washington) move into a nice new neighborhood, they immediately come into conflict with their overbearing, over-aggressive new neighbor (Jackson) who happens to be a cop, this starts a war between the houses, and it quickly escalates out of control. Honestly, watch Pacific Heights and Unlawful Entry (both halfway OK films in their own right), and you can find the direct analog for almost every scene in the Lakeview Terrace trailer. And, strangely though, even though these types of home-bound scarers are supposed to draw in audiences with the allure of "this could happen to you" (What if your neighbor WAS a crazy cop?), the trailer makes it look like the confrontation ends in the kind of guns-drawn, over-the-top action spectacle that never really happens to real people.
And that’s not even our biggest complaint with the trailer. As the trailer begins, Sam Jackson seems abrasive, but fairly normal. There’s even a scene where he talks to the new neighbors about his kids witnessing them fooling around in the pool, and you understand him for a minute. You get why he’s pissed, and it seems like (for a moment) maybe this movie will be more like Changing Lanes, where you’d be hard pressed to say who the bad guy really is. But then Sam turns on his s***-eating, “I’m a bad mother-****er” grin and, all of the sudden, he’s a broader-than-broad bad guy. We hate to say it, but Jackson is in danger of turning into the new Jack Nicholson, a talented veteran actor who NEVER disappears into a part anymore because he’s always got to flash you his trademark wink. And, film fans, notice how the trailer never even mentions that the film is directed by Neil LaBute. Yes, The Wicker Man was embarrassingly, shamefully bad, but – wow, they’re not even putting your name in the ads anymore, Neil? That’s rough.
