I’ve been trying to get this rebooted column kicked off for a while now and this year’s football extravaganza has finally given me the motivation to do so. So welcome to the new trailer park, where we gather the latest trailers and commercials to hit the web and give you our opinions on how interested we are in the movies they promote – in other words, how well the trailers do their job.
I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed with this year’s crop of Super Bowl movie commercials. It feels like we’ve come a long way from the watercooler moments of trailers like ID4: Independence Day which kept people talking about the pending film with a sense of interest and mystery. Instead, most of this year’s commercials are just shorter, recut versions of the trailers that already exist for the same movies. There was very little new content, which I find sad and unimaginative. With all of the money invested in purchasing time, you would think the studios would want to leave people really curious about their movies. Instead we get a flash of what we’ve already seen. Add in some oddball absences (are they ever going to start marketing the new Die Hard film, which opens in a few scan weeks?) and you can sum up my feelings in a word: *Yawn*
At the beginning of the night, the trailer I had the most interest in was Star Trek: Into Darkness. The movie is easily one of my most anticipated for the year, largely because I liked J.J. Abrams take on the universe in Star Trek and largely because Abrams is insistent upon shrouding the movie in mystery, refusing to let anyone in on what the story is about. Combine the two and his technique certainly has me interested. The trailer didn’t give us a whole lot more to pick apart, but at least it maintained the aura of mystery that is helping to keep the buzz buzzing.
Star Trek: Into Darkness
Probably the biggest trailer of the night was also the movie that needed it the least: Iron Man 3 gave its audience a look at the title figure attempting to rescue plummeting passengers from a air flight disaster. We still lack a lot of details about what the storyline is going to follow, but do we really need to know any more? Hell, the tension alone from the airborne rescue sequence was enough to remind me how much I like what they’ve done with Iron Man, even if I didn’t care for Iron Man 2 as much as the rest of the Marvel franchise.
Iron Man 3
As far as I’m concerned, the next big show of the night was Fast & Furious 6, which showed a lot of returning faces, including Fast Five addition Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and the previously-thought-dead Michelle Rodriguez, who was hinted at in Fast Five. As much as I want to write these movies off as fluffy popcorn fare, the truth is I really enjoyed them once I gave them a chance, and I’ll admit the commercial for a new chapter got my heart pumping yet again.
Fast & Furious 6
Of course, the Fast & Furious franchise isn’t the only film to benefit from Johnson’s involvement. His Snitch had a heavy presence on Super Bowl night, with quite a few commercials hitting during the pre-show. I’ll admit that Snitch looks about as generic as an action picture can be, but I kind of feel like that’s been most of The Rock’s action career as well, so why should Snitch be any different?
Snitch
Less interesting to me is the new commercial for Disney’s The Lone Ranger, which looks more and more like it should have been called Tonto instead. Johnny Depp has top billing and his involvement is more of a selling point than Armie Hammer playing the title character. Every time I see more footage from this film I can’t help but wonder if the western really is dead in Hollywood, relegated more to ridiculousness like Wild Wild West and Lone Ranger than anything with any real weight to it. I hope the movie proves me wrong, but this hasn’t increased my interest in the movie at all.
The Lone Ranger
Speaking of less interesting, I can’t believe how badly it looks like they missed the mark with World War Z. The novel is one of the best pieces of fiction in the past decade, with or without zombies, but every trailer makes this look more like a complete departure from the source material. It may wind up being very good on its own, but it’s not going to be the story fans of the book are looking for – at least not as indicated by any of its marketing, Super Bowl ad included.
World War Z
Finally, the trailer for Oz the Great and Powerful. What can I say? I really want to look forward to this movie but I can’t help but feel like we’re seeing the same footage over and over again. It’s impressive looking footage – don’t get me wrong – but I want to know more. Fortunately, the release date for Sam Raimi’s Oz romp isn’t far off, but I wish we had gotten a little more bang for the studio’s Super Bowl buck.
Oz the Great and Powerful
So how did you feel about this Super Bowl crop of commercialism? Did anything actually heighten your interest in a movie or did you feel like it was a bunch of “same old, same old”?
