Hollywood Babble On & On #1199: Trailer Trashing: Jurassic World

They released a trailer for the upcoming Jurassic World, continuing the saga of cloned dinosaurs run amok started by Stephen Spielberg in the 1990s. Let's look at the trailer:

Okay, we have Chris Pratt playing the hunky gamekeeper/dino-trainer/voice of reason, and Jessica Chastain Bryce Dallas Howard as the icy corporate chick who plays God and comes to reject the error of her ways when it unleashes chaos and death. They even have what appear to be trained raptors running alongside the cycle-riding Pratt, no doubt to save the day against the evil hybrid-dino.

Now I actually don't have a problem with the trained raptors. Much has been made about their intelligence in the Jurassic franchise, so it's not much of a stretch for someone to figure out how to train them.

What I do have a problem with is the unseen hybrid-dinosaur created by the Jurassic World scientists. Not so much with it's existence, no doubt the studio thought the franchise needed to go beyond the possibilities of nature for thrills, but I am worried about the excuse they're going to use in the film for why the lab-rats made a horrible monster.

Now there are two possible reasons for the scientists to create a new hybrid-dino. One sort of fits with the themes and concerns that were present at the franchise's creation. The other one is a tired cliche the studios love to trot out as an all purpose excuse for anyone to make a monster.

Let's deal with the cliche first.

The cliche is "We did it for the weapons division." Which means that they created a powerful, almost indestructible, and completely uncontrollable monster so that a defence contractor can sell them to the military.

This excuse first popped up in the movie Alien as the reason why the android Ash tried to force feed Ripley a back issue of People Magazine. They were allowed to get away with it because as a conceit it was new, and it fit with the dark image people had of the whole military-industrial complex.

I held that image myself for a long time, because of the creation of things like the "A-Bomb." However I came to realize something when I learned more about how defence industries operate.

Developing weapons for the military is a big business, but there's a catch. Despite the billions spent by the military the profit margins are actually pretty thin, with most being sucked up into research and development.

That means one thing: If a defence contractor wants to make serious money, then they need to find profitable civilian uses for their products.

Missile guidance systems become the circuitry in your game console, body armour becomes safety equipment, fighter and bomber technology find their way onto commercial aircraft. Even the A-Bomb heralded nuclear power.

That's why you don't see big contractors making bio-weapons, and they've become the realm of deranged dictators. Bacteria and viruses make terrible weapons, since you can't really aim them, they can backfire horribly, and any weapon you can't control is not a weapon, it's a problem. It also has no civilian commercial use that they can make money from.

Same goes with a homicidal monster-dinosaur. It's not useful, it doesn't follow orders, and is just as likely to eat its own people than the enemy. This too has no civilian use, and that's another problem.

If the typical American corporation had its druthers to create a hybrid dinosaur, it would make a harmless and cuddly pugosaurus that it can sell as a pet with accompanying animated series and multiple lines of merchandise.

That's where the money is.

So if they use the whole "we built it to sell it as a weapon" excuse, then the whole premise of the movie is bullshit.

Then there's the other excuse, the less cliche one.

And that is "shits and giggles."

What do I mean by that?

Well, I mean that the scientists created the hybrid-dino simply because they could without asking themselves if they should.

(See, I paraphrased a line from the original to show you how it fits in thematically)

Give scientists the resources, and many of them will try anything simply to see if it can be done. Many great discoveries and more than few disasters have occurred because of it and that's a historic and scientific fact.

The plan may have started out of curiosity, which then grew to obsession, and eventually resulted in something they didn't predict. Or it may have started as an attempt to create one thing, like the pugosaurus, and an unpredicted mutation turns it into something else that's nasty.

A pretty reasonable and under-utilized premise which will probably not be used. The cliche is just easier, both creatively and socially for Hollywood to go for.

I'll be interested in seeing which one they use in the movie, because it will have some influence on whether I'll spend money on seeing it or not.

Trailer Trashing: CHAPPIE

Neill Blomkamp, the man behind District 9 and Elysium has a new flick coming, it's called Chappie and they've released the first trailer.

First thing I noticed: IT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE EVERY OTHER NEILL BLOMKAMP MOVIE.

I suspect that if you gave Neill Blomkamp unlimited resources and historical research to make a film about the Emperors of Ancient Rome the Imperial Palace of the Eternal City would look like a slum in Johannesburg.

I understand that auteurs have a certain aesthetic sensibility. However, with Blomkamp it looks like visually he's either in a rut, or has a one track mind.

Second thing I noticed was that I noticed it all before.

The trailer doesn't make the film look like an entertaining and unique work but a mishmash of  Short Circuit, Short Circuit 2, Edward Scissorhands, Wall-E, and all points in between. It's practically a remake.

They even have Hugh Jackman playing the stereotypical vaguely kinda military looking guy who has to destroy the poor innocent robot because that's his job. 

Why should I pay money to see this movie since it looks like I've already seen it a dozen times before already?

Trailer Trashing...

Bit busy today, so here's some trailers and I hope to get back to my usual erudite mix of analysis and sarcasm soon…

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

The upcoming Cinemax series about Victorian surgery called THE KNICK

It's been directed by Stephen Soderbergh, who said he was going to be long retired by now. Anyway it promises lots of drama, lots of gore, and since it's on Cinemax there has to be lots of nudity that has nothing to do with the story.

Indie Trailer Spotlight: Jodorowsky's Dune

Sony Classics is releasing a documentary about the making of Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune, considered one of the most influential films never made.

Long story short, Jodorowsky got his hands on the movie rights to Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi bestseller Dune. He hired French comics artist Moebius, and Swiss Artist HR Giger to design the film, while American Dan O'Bannion was to work on the special effects.

The project kept getting bigger and bigger, and more ambitious, but everything came to a screeching halt, allegedly when the project couldn't land an American distributor. (They may have been turned off by Jodorowsky's trippy surrealistic films like El Topo and Holy Mountain.)

Anywhoo, the people working on Dune went on to make things like Alien, Blade Runner, and their influence can still be seen in movies to this day.

Personally, I saw some of Jodorowsky's work in film school, and while visually he might have created something impressive, I'm not sure if he was able to pull off the complex narrative in a coherent, or at least understandable fashion.

Anyway, the full story should be interesting to see and hear.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1033: The 3 Decisions of Warner Brothers

Today I have 3 stories that all involve decisions being made by Warner Brothers, 1 I can understand, 1 that I can sadly understand, and 1 I don't get at all.

1 DECISION THAT I CAN UNDERSTAND

Warner Brothers, as the parent company of New Line Cinema, passed on Dumb & Dumber To, the sequel to Dumb & Dumber reuniting the original stars Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels and the original's creators the Farrelly Brothers. 

But that's not the end of the story.

Indie producer Red Granite Pictures has agreed to produce the movie with Universal Pictures distributing.

Now some folks are saying that Warner Brothers made a mistake passing on the picture. They say that the proposed $35 million budget would have made the film a sure thing considering the original made over $240 million at the box office on a $17 million budget.

Those people have their points. But if you look at it from the perspective of Warner Brothers you might think about it differently.

Yes, the first movie was an out-of-the-blue blockbuster that convinced Hollywood that the success of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective wasn't just a fluke.

However, as a franchise it's not exactly the golden child people think it is.

First, the original came out almost twenty years ago. That's 20 years of constant replay on cable television to wear it's become the equivalent of a test pattern on certain channels. Then there was the animated series, which lasted a season and was cancelled because no one watched it, then came the high school set prequel, which did okay compared to the production budget, but when you toss in P&A probably lost money, and then there's the people in the Dumb & Dumber franchise.

The Farrelly Brothers had two monster hits with  Dumb & Dumber and There's Something About Mary raking in a combined box office of nearly $600 million. But lately their record has been a bit more checkered. Some films did okay, some did poorly, but it was obvious that the near explosive success of the 90s is in the past.

Same with Jim Carrey. He had a run as Hollywood's golden fool, but the last 10 years have been a lot leaner. The costs of his films skyrocketed, often because of his salary, while the box office performance of his live action roles declined. While still capable of occasionally cracking $100 million, those that did, still probably lost money. Also, he's been actively alienating large swathes of the domestic ticket buying audience due to his public pronouncements on the evils of vaccinating children and gun ownership.

The audience doesn't see him as the loveable, rubber-faced clown like they used to. Now when they look at Jim Carrey they see a smug millionaire who seems to live in luxurious isolation completely out of touch with the real world.

That might make the audience a bit iffy on spending their hard earned money to see him as the goof from Dumb & Dumber again.

1 DECISION THAT I CAN SADLY UNDERSTAND

See this trailer...

Normally, I'd ask "Why?" but I know why.

The people running the studios are a pack of nutless wonders, and here is a movie that's just one big product placement toy-commercial that they think brain-dead children will flock to, dragging their money-bearing parents with them.

It's sad, but true.

1 DECISION THAT I CAN'T UNDERSTAND

Thomas Tull, the head honcho of film financier Legendary Pictures says he will have a decision on whether or not the company will renew their co-financing deal with Warner Brothers within the next 60 days.

The fact that he's considering moving on, and Warner Brothers isn't bathing him with offers of cash, hookers, and blow to stay illustrates a dissonance in how the studios operate.

The studio, though cash rich, love to "poor mouth," and make partnerships with outside financiers to make movies. However, since they don't really need those financiers they tend to treat them like red-headed step-children riding rented mules. This treatment, and the studio's bordering on felonious accounting practices, mean that the bulk of studio-financier relations end sourly and often in litigation.

By all accounts the Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures partnership has done pretty damn well. Especially when it comes to breathing new life into DC's comic franchises that Warner Brothers had allowed to be outshone by Marvel.

From what I've been able to gather the biggest complaint Warner Brothers had about this partnership was that Legendary's super efficient script-to-movie development process made them look bad.

The fact that they'd prefer to let Legendary go rather than learn from their success says a lot about the state of the studio system.

Trailer Trashing: Elysium

Let's take a look at the extended trailer to Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to his surprise hit District 9 called Elysium.

First impressions...

I had no idea Blomkamp would build a film around an apartheid metaphor. Really, I'm utterly gobsmacked.

Okay, I'm being sarcastic. The whole thing is like a rehash of District 9 but with poor people and robots instead of aliens, and the whole world turned into one big Soweto because the rich people seem to want it like that for some reason.

I'm also a little iffy on the social and economic mechanics of the year 2154. All the rich people live off the planet in Elysium because the planet's resources are all spent. There they live in luxury with technology that's near magical by the standards of the people below. 

Now Elysium can only survive in two ways for the movie's plot to be possible. 

1. They leech the few remaining resources from the planet below, and use advanced military technology to keep the oppressed masses from rising up and turning off the tap. However, if they push that too far, they could end up destroying what they need to stay alive. It doesn't matter how much cash you have when there's no food at all to buy.

Or...

2. Elysium is a completely self-contained uses their super-advanced technology to create a completely self-sustaining eco-system. However, since it's so much nicer up their it's constantly facing attempts to infiltrate it by the poor and the desperate, though exactly what they'll do when they get there seems to be a mystery, since any contact with the residents will result in either their return to Earth or their death.

Then there's the other question.

How do the rich support their lifestyles on Elysium?

Everyone on the planet is portrayed as living in Third  World conditions where even if you have a skilled trade, you have to live in shitty slums swimming in garbage.

Who is making the Elysians rich?

People are wearing rags and living in ruins, it is stated that the entire planet is one big ghetto with no resources. Illnesses that can be cured on Elysium in minutes are death sentences on the surface. So how are the people on Elysium able to afford their luxuries and high technology?

No matter what they're going to have overhead. Either paying for the resources they get from Earth to stay alive, or, if they're self-sustaining, paying for the weapons and mercenaries needed to keep the great unwashed from the gates.

The people of Elysium also just can't sit on a pile of money. They need a steady income to support themselves and Elysium.

It's in Elysium's best interests to use their advanced technology to make life on the planet better. The better off things are on the surface, the cheaper it will be to get resources off planet, and also cut down on the number of illegal immigrants trying to get into their station, and the mercenaries and weapons needed to keep them out.

And the cherry on top is that if they get the planet's economy working again, they can use that to make themselves even richer and not have to worry about Jodie Foster tossing them out an airlock when they can't pay the rent or having cyborg-modified Matt Damons causing explosions and property damage.

So if there was some actual knowledge of how economics work both Matt Damon's character, and the cute kid he has to save would only be meeting in the waiting room at the clinic for their 5 minute medical treatment.

But it the premise had some real economics in it, there wouldn't be a movie.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1026: Random Drippings From The Brain Pan

SCRUTINIZE YOURSELF?

French actress Audrey Tautou told the UK Independent that she doesn't care to work in Hollywood. 

This is not because of any antipathy towards America, American films, or American filmmakers, quite the opposite is true. She says she loves American movies and working with Americans. What she can't stand, what keeps her holding Hollywood at a distance, is the constant and merciless scrutiny that Hollywood gives women's bodies.

She's right.

We've all seen it, people constantly harping on who looks fat, who looks too thin, and who has done something or wore something that keeps them from matching some sort of unattainable ideal without radical surgery that usually leaves them looking like someone wearing a leather mask that's supposed to be of someone attractive but it doesn't quite fit right.

Naturally, we feel the need to blame someone for this problem, and the usual suspect is something the academics like to call "The Male Gaze." The Male Gaze is an unconscious desire to feed men's unconscious desire to ogle and objectify women by assuming the narrative stance of a heterosexual male.

My first problem, is that the desire to ogle women is not totally unconscious in heterosexual men, but my second problem is that you can't blame Hollywood's treatment of women, especially the almost sadistic scrutiny they get in the media on men.

Look at where the most intense scrutiny occurs: The E! Network, home of that cackling harridan Joan Rivers who judges women's appearances all the time, tabloid newspapers, gossip web-sites & TV shows, and fashion magazines.

What do all those things have in common?

Their main audience is women.

Then there's the whole film/fashion/celebrity nexus. To be considered a "star" an actress has to get a lot of magazine covers, because too many of them need the hype to cover up their real box-office performance. Outside of a handful of magazines aimed at men, the bulk are targeted at women, and tightly linked to the fashion industry which has a standard of beauty that goes beyond Hollywood's traditional juvenile dementia to essentially turn women into glorified clothes hangers.

And I don't think it's going to get any better, in fact, I fear it's getting worse.

I recently heard a possibly apocryphal, but believable story of an actress who was in the range of unbelievably beautiful when she was a teen starlet in the 1980s. As a prank she put a picture of herself at 17 into a stack of head-shots of young actresses being considered for a CW type teen show for girls by a friend who was a casting agent. The casting agent saw the photo didn't recognize who it was and immediately said: "No way, too fat, too ethnic."

Is there a solution to this problem?

Yes, but it requires a change in the mindset not only of Hollywood, but of a certain segment of the audience as well.

You know who you are.

TRIM THAT TRAILER

Theatre owners would like shorter trailers so they can have a faster turnover in screenings. Studios are naturally hemming and hawing, but I have a suggestion to solve this problem. Take out all the stupid spoilers they put in trailers and they'll be naturally shorter.

It's bad enough that I usually guess correctly how a story is going to turn out, I don't need to have the few possible surprises blown by the trailer.

MENDES TO DO BOND AGAIN?

Skyfall did boffo box-office and got great reviews, and Sony/MGM would like Sam Mendes to jump straight back in and do the next Bond movie, even if it means delaying production. Some are even saying it's already a done deal.

If you ever think of recasting...

Personally, I think no one director should do consecutive Bond films. Part of what's kept the franchise vital over the years is that it's not wed completely to a single star or filmmaker, and it would be a mistake to start doing that now.

Let someone who isn't JJ Abrams, who is doing every other franchise, do it, then have Mendes back. It'll give everyone the breathing room they need to keep their creativity fresh, and force the other guy to bring his A-Game in attempt to top Mendes and Skyfall.

Trailer Trashing: Man of Steel.

There's a new action-centric trailer for The Man of Steel take a gander kiddies...

First thought: If Kal-El is worried that people will reject him, a hunk in a cape, simply for being an alien, then poor Martian Manhunter is doomed to develop an eating disorder.

Second thought: The trailer shows Zack Snyder's visual flair coupled nicely with Christopher Nolan & Co.'s ability to update and expand on the modern folklore nature of the superhero story. Finger's crossed that the script keeps that up.

Third thought: The action looks properly "super" with lots of high speed heavy walloping.

Fourth thought: Amy Adams looks like she can pull off Lois Lane, which is not an easy job.

Fifth thought: Superman's biological and adoptive father were both Robin Hood.

MIND BLOWN!

Those are my thoughts. 

What are yours?

Trailer Trashing: World War Z's Second Trailer...

Paramount has unleashed a second trailer for their upcoming horror/sci-fi epic World War Z. I had reviewed the first trailer and expressed some misgivings, let's watch this new trailer and see if it assuages any of those misgivings...

I'm afraid this new trailer hasn't really eased my misgivings and I may be forced to repeat myself.

1. It still looks like they spent the Gross National Product of Bolivia to make this movie.

2. I still think Brad Pitt's "I'm the producer, I don't need to shave or get a haircut" look doesn't fit in with someone who is supposed to be a senior UN official. Also, making him an official for an organization known for impotence and corruption doesn't seem all that heroic.

3. I think they miss the point of zombies that author Max Brooks was trying to get across. Zombies are your friends, family and neighbours who have had their humanity forcibly removed, and now they want to feast upon your flesh and make you one of them. The movie's faceless blob of body parts that moves with the speed of a cheetah on meth is a completely different kind of monster and might have worked in another movie, but not this one.

You can go click the link to the piece on the first trailer for the rest of my misgivings, which are not assuaged, not assuaged at all.

Trailer Trashing: Robosapien

There's been a lot of talk lately about movies causing real world violence, and all my life I've thought it was a load of hooey.

Then I saw the trailer for Robosapien.

Now I'm convinced that certain films can inspire real world violence. In fact, I dare you to watch this trailer and not have the urge to hurt someone...

Did you watch it?

Do you have the urge to kick someone in the crotch with a frozen steel toed mukluk?

Because if you say that you don't, you're a dirty, filthy, excrescent liar.

That trailer is a veritable cornucopia of shit. It's is a parade of bad movie cliches that were hackneyed and old when I was a child, and that was about two days after the Earth cooled. It even fails as a self-parody, because parodying those cliches has become hackneyed, old, and extremely unfunny.

The trailer makes a lot of the fact that it's produced by Avi Arad, the former owner of Marvel Comics, and it loves to trumpet the fact that he has a producing credit on various Marvel movies.

After this movie his name should be removed from the credits of those movies out of shame.

I don't want to know how much money and time was wasted making this movie. Any amount of money would make me weep, because it could have been spent doing something slightly less malignant, like doing bio-weapons experiments on war orphans.

I guess you could say that the trailer did its job. It's summarized the movie perfectly, telling everyone that this film is a black hole of suck so they don't waste any real time watching the actual movie.

Trailer Trashing: World War Z

Hello.  It's been a while, I know.  I'm still sick, and it's rare for me to be sick this long, but here I am, attempting to do something reasonably coherent.

I'm going to take some baby-steps back into blogging by nitpicking a movie trailer, this time World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, and is sort of based on the best-selling novel by Max Brooks.

Here's the trailer...

Here are my thoughts on the obvious points.

1. They spent a shit-load of money on this movie.

2. Brad Pitt is the producer in more than just title, he had more say than usual, because he didn't get a shave or a haircut for the role even though the odds are pretty good that a senior UN employee would probably be clean-shaven.

3. Having a UN employee as the hero shows that the film's makers do not know anything about how the UN really operates. Standard UN procedure for handling any crisis is to appoint a commission of professional bureaucrats, mostly from Europe, to look into it, spend millions of dollars, and all you get is a report condemning Israel, because anything else would get vetoed by the Russians.

4. Judging from the reactions of fans of the original book there is NOTHING from the novel in the movie. No familiar characters, scenes, or even zombies.

5. Which brings me to the zombies themselves. What make them so unsettling is that they were once human, but now are soulless, unthinking, predators who only want to rip you apart and feast upon your innards. Traditional zombies move slowly and awkwardly and are most dangerous in swarms that can overtake you.

Judging from the preview, this movie not only ramps up their speed, but makes them form into huge amorphous masses of computer graphics like The Blob, but made from body parts.

6. I also get a sense of the widely reported problems they had with the script's third act, they didn't have one. There's no sense of a destination, or a target, just a lot of running around with no clear idea where they're supposed to be going.

Verdict: This flick's going to have a hard time competing against the undead drama of The Walking Dead.

_____________________

Ever wonder what it would have been like if the great works of literature had to deal with the same mindless meddling that goes into modern feature films?

Then buy STUDIO NOTES FOR LITERARY CLASSICS, a collection of over 200 mind-bending dollops of literary lunacy for your Kindle.

$2.99 at Amazon USA.

£1.93 at Amazon UK.


Read it, love it, give it as a gift that will amaze your friends and worry your family.

Trailer Trashing: The Lone Ranger

Here's the first trailer for Disney's epic $200+ million it better be a mega-blockbuster The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer.

Take a look and I'll let you know what I think...


UPDATE: Disney is blocking sites from embedding the video and will only let you watch it at the main YouTube site.

Now I thought the reason you released a trailer on YouTube was to get it all over the world as quickly as possible.  That is unless you fear the overpriced film will be a John Carter sized dud and seek to control commentary around it.

At least that's my theory.  Go on scroll past the black box Disney left us for my thoughts on the trailer.

First impressions:

1. Damn they spent a shit-load of money on this movie. Cash is literally dribbling down the walls. Why have ten extras in a scene when you can have ten thousand.

2. The Lone Ranger really doesn't seem to matter all that much in this movie. There's no excitement associated with him. There's no build up to his appearance, he's just a guy who happens to be wearing a mask that just happens to show up to hang out with Johnny Depp. 

He's a nonentity in his own movie. I don't know if this is from a lack of charisma on the part of the box of baking soda they cast in the title role, director Gore Verbinski's marked preference for Johnny Depp, or just bad editing at the Disney/Bruckheimer trailer department.

3. Meanwhile Johnny Depp appears to be in some sort of fantasy film, and not a Western action-adventure.

4. There is a very good chance that Verbinski, Depp, and Bruckheimer are going to literally price themselves out of the business if they can't control the high costs that follow them everywhere they go.

Overall the feeling I get from this trailer can be described with the word "Feh."

That's what I think, tell me what you think in the comments.

Trailer Trashing: Barry Levinson's The Bay

Barry Levinson the director behind films that range from respected classics like Diner to that one where Jack Black makes dog poop disappear is dipping his toe in the whole found footage horror fad with The Bay. Let's look at the trailer...

My verdict: I'm just not feeling it.

It looks like a parade of not just horror/zombie/found footage cliches but the kind of cliches filmmakers use when they try to make what they think is the "important" horror movie.

There's the references to ecological disaster, and that the US government is somehow remotely capable of covering up the zombie-parasite related slaughter of an entire large town.

Feh.

Then there's the final bit where someone does a "too dumb to survive move" by getting into a car, during a zombie outbreak, without looking in the back seat.

Double feh.

I think his last attempt at science-fiction/horror the flaccid flop Sphere would have reminded him to stay out of this sort of genre work.

That's what I think, what do you think?

Trailer Trashing: 2001?

Here's a fan made trailer for Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey done as if it were a modern day Michael Bay style summer blockbuster. Both blasphemous and amusing...

The only other big movie news is that Peter Jackson is going to make a 3rd Hobbit movie, and you can read what I think about that idea here, which I wrote when it was just an idea. Plot-wise: It's going to be a buddy/road-trip movie about Gollum searching for his lost ring with Jar-Jar Binks.

Trailer Trashing: Jack Reacher

Today Paramount released the first teaser trailer for their upcoming action thriller JACK REACHER starring Tom Cruise in the title role. Let's have a look, then I'll tell you what I think...

I've written about the subject of Cruise's casting before, but if you're too lazy to click the link I'll give you a recap.

The character of Jack Reacher is an ex-Military Policeman who roams the country helping people in trouble with bad guys, and troubling bad guys with some brutal payback. Now key to the character of Jack Reacher is his imposing physicality. He's described as being over 6'5" and 250 lbs and looks as mean as he is to wrongdoing. In the Reacher's presented as an unstoppable righteous force of nature coming down on wrongdoers like the wrath of a pissed off deity.

That's not Tom Cruise. The image Tom Cruise has fostered over the past three decades has been as a hyper-active super-charming go-getter out to succeed over the hassles and villains that appear, in their way, much bigger than he is.

Tom Cruise is not a massive charmless wall of righteous vengeance, but the trailer makes it look like they filmed Cruise like he is.

That kind of makes him and the film look ridiculous.

Trailer Trashing: New Dark Knight Rises Trailer

Whoever is doing the trailers for The Dark Knight Rises is really bringing their "A Game." Just about every bit of this montage is carefully constructed to increase anticipation to see the film.

Take a look for yourself...

Trailer Trashing: The Dark Knight Rises

Here's the trailer for the conclusion of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy The Dark Knight Rises.  Watch it, then let me tell you what I think...

The first thing I noticed was the quiet.

Where most superhero movies try to hammer you with the deafening roar of loud explosions and bombastic music this trailer goes in the opposite direction.  The music is subtle, there are no sound effects like gunshots and explosions, and the only other sound comes from snippets of dialogue.

The dialogue itself is ominous and foreboding.  It tells of a great disaster, on befitting the conclusion of this saga.  Accompanied by images of destruction, chaos, and despair, lightly salted with flickers of potential hope, as Gotham is literally torn apart by the forces of villainy with the music growing, not in volume, but in intensity as clips come in showing the good guys starting to fight back.

Whoever put together this trailer knew what they were doing. It captures Nolan's treatment, nay reinvention, of the superhero genre perfectly.  Nolan redefined the origin story in Batman Begins, turned The Dark Knight into a massive crime epic that just happened to involve men in costumes.

This trailer gives the viewer the message that the transformation Nolan started is coming to an extremely dramatic conclusion.

It does everything a trailer should do.