Skip to main content

Today we are cancelling the apocalypse!


Attack of the Sci-Fi Trailers

The last week has seen a deluge of trailers for some of next year’s big bucks blockbusters, predominately science fiction-related and three of which representing something of a risk as they’re original material. So how do they stack up against each other?

Oblivion
UK Release Date: 12 April 2013
US Release Date: 19 April 2013


 Tom Cruise looks to further cement his career comeback (albeit based on one big hit) by attaching himself to this Joseph Koskinski film. Kosinski’s debut was TRON: Legacy, which earned both brickbats and plaudits but most agreed that it featured some stunning visuals. Oblivion will likely continue that at very least but, as with TRON, the script for this may be of questionable merit. Kosinski came up with the idea, an eight-page treatment that was turned into an illustrated novella (the release delayed until the film comes out), but there’s little sense of a meaty premise to this trailer.

Tom’s (as others have noted, Wall-E-like) a maintenance worker on a deserted future Earth who comes across Morgan Freeman. And Olga Kurylenko tells him he’s not who he thinks he is. And there are some monsters/mutants. And Tom may be in the future but don't worry he’s relatable because he likes the Superbowl and shoots hoops. And there are lots of BWAAAAA BWAAAAA sounds, so you know this is big and dramatic like every post-Inception trailer. Sometimes Morgan Freeman can be a real lift to a story, sometimes he makes Chain Reaction; I’m not getting a hugely positive vibe from him here. Nice eye goggles, though. And very nice design work generally. Tom’s getting ordered to stand down. Twice. Andrea Riseborough features quite a bit, which is a good sign, but no glimpse of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau or Melisa Leo (unless I missed them).

This looks like it wants to be intelligent sci-fi, which is to be celebrated. But in this trailer it hasn’t translated into a must-see factor. “Earth is a memory worth fighting for” is a wishy-washy tagline. Hopefully the next spot will have more of a grip on the story, or make the mystery more compelling.

Business: By the time this is out, Jack Reacher will or won’t have become a big hit. Oblivion has about five months to work out its marketing (provide it isn’t a stinker, in which case nothing will save it), but right now I’d be surprised if it does much more than $120m US/$300m worldwide.

***/5

After Earth
 UK/US Release Date: 7 June 2013


Oh look, another deserted Earth movie (this time quarantined), from Cruise’s buddy Will Smith. But is it really a Will Smith movie, or is it a Jaden Smith vehicle, the young nepote claiming a summer blockbuster by stealth under daddy’s star power? It’s been suggested that Will won’t see out the film, so that may well be the case. Along for the ride is M Night Shyamalan, who didn’t originate the screenplay but has a co-writer’s credit (Stephen Gaghan’s presence at least suggests it may have a bit of nuance). With this and The Last Airbender, the director has eased off on self-originated projects; probably because they have received increasingly mixed receptions.

So all the animals on the planet have evolved to kill humans (this seems peculiar, if there are no humans present). More importantly, we learn that fear is not real; it is a product of thoughts we create. Fear is a choice. Very rousing, Will. Are these those deadly engrams we must seek to eliminate? Whether or not Smith is espousing a doctrine, it has that whiff.

As trailers go, it’s better put together than Oblivion. Yet I have no interest in seeing a Jaden Smith movie, and I didn’t bother checking out Shyamalan’s last picture. What it does with the significance of the revelation that this is Earth is more questionable; it appears to be all about Jaden’s quest for survival (the imdb synopsis tells us he is trying to recover a rescue beacon, and that Will’s playing General Cypher Raige; I kid you not).

Business: Will this do well for Will? I can’t see it making much more than $100m US/$300m worldwide, unless there’s some added ingredient that makes it a discussion piece (the Shyamalan factor, basically)

***/5

Pacific Rim
UK/US Release Date: 12 July 2013


More BWAAAA BWAAAA. Big robots. Big monsters. Duking it out. It’s like Transformers meets Cloverfield. Or something. Fanboys have been getting all over-excited by this because it's Guillermo Del Toro directing. And I can understand that; he has a rock solid track record (even Mimic is okay), he’s an unashamed geek and presumably this premise is tickling an itch for many. And it features Idris Elba (although that didn’t stop Prometheus getting a drubbing).

But I’m not sold on this, or excited. Enlisting actors rather than stars (Charlie Hunman, Elba) can add credibility to your project (see Ridley Scott’s 2012 film)  it won’t save it if you can’t tell people why they need to see the film. Alien life came from a beneath the sea, a portal between dimensions? Lovecraft lives on. The premise is so cheesy that the self-importance of the trailer makes the whole thing look no fun at all. The robot designs aren’t all that, and the control suits’ virtual movement doesn’t come across very well. Worst of all is the dialogue, which is all-round terrible (“Let’s go fishing”, “Today we are cancelling the apocalypse!”)

This could be one of those movies that the internet goes wild for but the general public can’t see the attraction (Scott Pilgrim vs The World).

Business: I’m iffy at the moment, I can’t see this getting Transformers numbers, or being the hit Del Toro really needs to get In the Mountains of Madness off the ground. It may do decent business in the rest of the world, but at the moment I reckon $70m US/$250m worldwide.

**/5

Star Trek into Darkness
UK/US Release Date: 17 May 2013



Who Benedict Cumberbatch is playing is all everyone (everyone who gives a shit, anyway) can talk about. That, and how J J Abrams should quit already with being such a perpetual tease. Except Sherlock is playing John Harrison, a footnote in Trek lore. Is he actually someone else? An agent for Khan?

More voice overs, ominous BWAAAAs and proclamations (“I have returned – to have my vengeance”) and exciting glimpses of things you want to see more of; the Enterprise underwater, an alien planet with flora of a peculiar reddish hue, a provocative shot that echoes Kirk/Spock in Wrath of Khan (hands meeting against a glass wall). And de rigueur mass destruction.

Nothing terribly original, but effectively brief nevertheless.

Business: It will likely build on the success of the 2009 film, that only made $128m in the rest of the world (peanuts compared to the expectation for most films to now do the majority of their business outside the US).  It will probably end up with something not too far off the original’s $250m US tally, but what’s the ceiling on the series abroad? $250m US/$450m worldwide.

***1/2/5

Man of Steel
UK/US Release Date: 14 June 2013


I really liked the first Malick-esque teaser; this comes across as a little more generic, and all together more portentous than the Reeves era (but with Christopher Nolan producing, it’s little surprise that Clark has been dirtied up – why, he’s even sporting an unruly mass of whiskers!), particularly with the heavenly choir accompaniment. And glimpses of Zod and Lois (not sure about Crowe’s armour as Jor-El, but Costner seems like perfect casting). There’s not much plot here, but it neatly re-positions the question of how Supes would work in today’s era but I assuming that he would be rejected.

Business: For such a definably homegrown superhero, the films have historically done about 50/50 US and rest of the world. So far this is being sold with finesse and care, and expectation (and the desire) for a rebirth for the hero to take away the bad taste of Superman Returns is high. $300m US/$600m worldwide.

****/5
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…
1 comment
Read more

Dude, you're embarrassing me in front of the wizards.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…
2 comments
Read more

I don't like bugs. You can't hear them, you can't see them and you can't feel them, then suddenly you're dead.

Blake's 7 2.7: Killer

Robert Holmes’ first of four scripts for the series, and like last season’s Mission to Destiny there are some fairly atypical elements and attitudes to the main crew (although the A/B storylines present a familiar approach and each is fairly equal in importance for a change). It was filmed second, which makes it the most out of place episode in the run (and explains why the crew are wearing outfits – they must have put them in the wash – from a good few episodes past and why Blake’s hair has grown since last week).
The most obvious thing to note from Holmes’ approach is that he makes Blake a Doctor-substitute. Suddenly he’s full of smart suggestions and shrewd guesses about the threat that’s wiping out the base, basically leaving a top-level virologist looking clueless and indebted to his genius insights. If you can get past this (and it did have me groaning) there’s much enjoyment to be had from the episode, not least from the two main guest actors.
Post a Comment
Read more

When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry we must always pay strict attention.

Twin Peaks 1.5: The One-Armed Man
With the waves left in Albert’s wake subsiding (Gordon Cole, like Albert, is first encountered on the phone, and Coop apologises to Truman over the trouble the insulting forensics expert has caused; ”Harry, the last thing I want you to worry about while I’m here is some city slicker I brought into your town relieving himself upstream”), the series steps down a register for the first time. This is a less essential episode than those previously, concentrating on establishing on-going character and plot interactions at the expense of the strange and unusual. As such, it sets the tone for the rest of this short first season.

The first of 10 episodes penned by Robert Engels (who would co-script Fire Walk with Me with Lynch, and then reunite with him for On the Air), this also sees the first “star” director on the show in the form of Tim Hunter. Hunter is a director (like Michael Lehman) who hit the ground running but whose subsequent career has rather disapp…
Post a Comment
Read more

An initiative test. How simply marvellous!

You Must Be Joking! (1965)
A time before a Michael Winner film was a de facto cinematic blot on the landscape is now scarcely conceivable. His output, post- (or thereabouts) Death Wish (“a pleasant romp”) is so roundly derided that it’s easy to forget that the once-and-only dining columnist and raconteur was once a bright (well…) young thing of the ‘60s, riding the wave of excitement (most likely highly cynically) and innovation in British cinema. His best-known efforts from this period are a series of movies with Oliver Reed – including the one with the elephant – and tend to represent the director in his pleasant romp period, before he attacked genres with all the precision and artistic integrity of a blunt penknife. You Must Be Joking! comes from that era, its director’s ninth feature, straddling the gap between Ealing and the Swinging ‘60s; coarser, cruder comedies would soon become the order of the day, the mild ribaldry of Carry On pitching into bawdy flesh-fests. You Must Be Joki…
Post a Comment
Read more

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.
1 comment
Read more

Well, who’s going to monitor the monitors of the monitors?

Enemy of the State (1998)
Enemy of the State is something of an anomaly; a quality conspiracy thriller borne not from any distinct political sensibility on the part of its makers but simple commercial instincts. Of course, the genre has proved highly successful over the years so it's easy to see why big name producers like Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson would have chased that particular gravy boat. Yet they did so for some time without success; by the time the movie was made, Simpson had passed away and Bruckheimer was flying solo. It might be the only major film in the latter's career that, despite the prerequisite gloss and stylish packaging, has something to say. More significant still, 15 years too late, the film's warnings are finally receiving recognition in the light of the Edward Snowden revelations.

In a piece for The Guardian earlier this year, John Patterson levelled the charge that Enemy was one of a number of Hollywood movies that have “been softening us up f…
Post a Comment
Read more

Luck isn’t a superpower... And it isn't cinematic!

Deadpool 2 (2018)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps it’s because I was lukewarm on the original, but Deadpool 2 mercifully disproves the typical consequence of the "more is more" approach to making a sequel. By rights, it should plummet into the pitfall of ever more excess to diminishing returns, yet for the most part it doesn't.  Maybe that’s in part due to it still being a relatively modest undertaking, budget-wise, and also a result of being very self-aware – like duh, you might say, that’s its raison d'être – of its own positioning and expectation as a sequel; it resolutely fails to teeter over the precipice of burn out or insufferable smugness. It helps that it's frequently very funny – for the most part not in the exhaustingly repetitive fashion of its predecessor – but I think the key ingredient is that it finds sufficient room in its mirthful melee for plot and character, in order to proffer tone and contrast.
Post a Comment
Read more

You're going to need a nickname, cos I ain't saying that every time.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
(SPOILERS) I had a mercifully good time with Solo: A Star Wars Story, having previously gone from considering it a straight-up terrible idea when first announced, to cautious optimism with the signing of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, to abject pessimism with their replacement by little Ronnie Howard, to cautious optimism again with the advent of various trailers and clips. I have numerous caveats, but then that's been par for the course with the series ever since Return of the Jedi, whichever side of good or bad the individual entries end up falling. The biggest barrier to enjoyment, judging by others’ responses, seems to be the central casting of Aiden Ehrenreich; I actually thought he was really good, so the battle for my allegiance was half won right there. No, he isn't Harrison Ford, but he succeeds admirably in making Han Solo a likeable, brash, smug wannabe scoundrel. Less so at being scruffy looking, but you can’t have everything.

It looks as i…
Post a Comment
Read more

Whoever comes, I'll kill them. I'll kill them all.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
(SPOILERS) There’s no guessing he’s back. John Wick’s return is most definite and demonstrable, in a sequel that does what sequels ought in all the right ways, upping the ante while never losing sight of the ingredients that made the original so formidable. John Wick: Chapter 2 finds the minimalist, stripped-back vehicle and character of the first instalment furnished with an elaborate colour palette and even more idiosyncrasies around the fringes, rather like Mad Max in that sense, and director Chad Stahleski (this time without the collaboration of David Leitch, but to no discernible deficit) ensures the action is filled to overflowing, but with an even stronger narrative drive that makes the most of changes of gear, scenery and motivation.

The result is a giddily hilarious, edge-of-the-seat thrill ride (don’t believe The New York Times review: it is not “altogether more solemn” I can only guess Jeannette Catsoulis didn’t revisit the original in the interven…
Post a Comment
Read more