A Tale of Trailers: A Peek at This Year’s Film Line-Up

If you want to waste a few hours on the internet and feel OK about it, check out iTunes movie trailers page. There they are–previews for dozens of movies, soon-to-be and already-in theaters, usually multiple clips per, laid out for you to peruse and click on whichever posters intrigue you. Three or four times a year I’ll check this page just to see what’s on the horizon, usually smaller-budget or foreign films. It includes trailers for big-ticket movies, too, but since you’ll see most of those on TV or during the previews for other movies, scan this site for different snippets or really clear HD clips of trailers you’ve already seen. This is how I found out about The Way Way Back and Another Earth, viewed some choice Terminator Salvation trailers that made me even sadder when the movie turned out to be a turd, and discovered several other really good movies I probably would never have seen. What sold me on this a few years back was a lazy Saturday, clicking on these things like I was tearing through 100 Most Important Cat Pictures of All Time. I clicked on a Norwegian film whose poster looked pretty normal but had a hint of something wrong. To my recollection, the thing didn’t even have subtitles, and since Norwegian sounds to me like people speaking English backward, I couldn’t suss out the details. However, I remember being completely engrossed by what appeared to be a story of a man being wrongly accused of either child abuse or kidnapping, and I thought, “damn, if a preview that I can’t even understand gets me this worked up about a film…” Now I watch almost–almost–every trailer so I don’t miss something that could be awesome. The following trailers caught my eye for one reason or another. Links to the trailers are in the movie title. FURY Another Brad Pitt movie, another WWII movie. So it ain’t exactly under the radar, but I’m convinced. Pitt can do anything from laconic heartthrob (Meet Joe Black, Legends of the Fall) to stoner (True Romance) to crazy (12 Monkeys) to…another WWII officer (Inglourious Basterds). I’ll go ahead and address a criticism I lob later about there being nothing new in certain trailers: yes, there doesn’t seem to be much new in this trailer. Small band of brothers with rookie introduced faces seemingly insurmountable odds fighting the good fight. However, I can’t remember a film where a large portion of the action takes place inside a tank. Fury might actually try to contrast the claustrophobic confines of a tank with the gigantic scope of the Second World War itself, and explore how the actions of individual groups of soldiers played into the entire war effort. From a technical point of view, it will also be interesting to see how the panoramic battle scenes play without the often shaky-cam POV chaos of Saving Private Ryan. This one deserves a viewing in theater. COHERENCE This film officially debuted in the US in 2013, but it’s really getting some press after rave festival reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations. Honestly, the trailer itself is a little meh. Comet flies past, sh*t gets weird. Been there, done that. The trailer does a good job of hiding just what goes weird, though. Aliens? Cosmic rays? Space virus? Led Zeppelin reunion? The intimate feel grabbed me, too: if some weird sh*t really is happening, how would it affect a close group of friends? I’m a sucker for movies that explore how a crisis breaks down the social and even friend/family dynamic. How much do you really know about someone else, even your closest friends? How much can you know about people? How much do you even want to know about them? If Coherence looks at that with any depth, I’ll be happy, even if the trailer itself is littered with tired sci-fi gimmicks like blank alien(?) stares and strange lighting. THE IDENTICAL I told you I watched almost all of these to make sure I didn’t miss out. This trailer makes sure that I’m not going to see The Identical. No spoilers here, since the trailer gives it away: identical twins, separated at birth. One becomes rock star, other drawn by fate to follow. The trailer gives it an “if Footloose were about Elvis” feel, but way less interesting. And I don’t know about you, but something about this trailer, the whole thing, kept me thinking it was a parody, like this was the first, rejected draft of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Also, the name: The Identical? That should be a movie about an evil clone or body-snatcher or something, not identical twins in the music biz. Nothing in this trailer generates interest. Oh well, you can’t win them all. FRANK If Coherence uses forgivable gimmicks in the trailer (and maybe the movie?), Frank goes all out. Dude who wears a giant fake head fronts a band that actually might find mainstream success. The catch is that he never takes off the fake head. Ever. Films built around gimmicks, like Being John Malkovich, can offer viewers something interesting by simply removing a barrier or introducing a “what if?” and going from there. The gimmick of a musician who wears a giant fake head, though, doesn’t seem like enough to warrant its own movie. If the dude’s a real weirdo, which we might assume from an ever-present fake head, couldn’t the movie have revolved around a real weirdo who doesn’t have a fake head? Maybe the whole giant head thing is explained or plays a big part in the movie, but from the trailer it just seems like Moe Szyslak’s definition of post-modern: weird for the sake of weird. Don’t get me wrong–I like weird, and Frank is tagged as a black comedy, but it’s going to take some great friend reviews to get me to invest time in this one. A BRONY TALE As the trailer explains, a Brony is a male who is obsessed with My Little Pony. Why is there a documentary about Bronies? I mean, there isn’t a documentary about guys obsessed with G.I. Joe, right? Let’s just say it. Guys aren’t supposed to like My Little Pony. My Little Pony was made for girls aged 2-12. But for whatever reason, a whole bunch of guys aged 13+ don’t just like the toys and cartoons, they are obsessed. Tattoos, costumes, conventions, the works. The trailer hints that the director actually attempts to understand what draws these men to My Little Pony, and finds the same things that draw together superfans of anything: a sense of community, meaning, understanding, and maybe rainbow-colored wigs. I’m glad someone made this movie in this way, because it would be really easy to make fun of Bronies as a bunch of perverts (as the movie’s narrator, a My Little Pony voice actress, initially admitted) or stunted adults or a dozen other epithets. However, A Brony Tale looks like it will take the stance that yes, adult men obsessed with a toy marketed to young girls is a bit strange, but what obsession–UK sports included–isn’t? RAGNAROK I’ll watch just about anything related to Vikings, from The 13^th Warrior (bad bad) to Outlander (fantastic bad). It is with great sadness, then, that I will be skipping Ragnarok. Check out the clip. There is absolutely nothing new. If you’re going to make a movie about an archeological expedition unleashing an ancient hunger/horror/terror, at least make something about it unique, and play that up in the trailer. Hell, I would have watched this if I’d just seen the Netflix synopsis and not the trailer. Seriously, how do movies like this keep getting made? Is there an Everything Must Go fire sale at some studio lot that happens to include an animatronic monster for $500? Make the movie for under a million, name it something Norse, and rely on dumbasses like me to watch it. Ragnarok would have been better off with no trailer. There you have it, y’all. Some tentpole flicks and a smattering of possibly worthwhile non-blockbusters await. Seems like slim pickins so far. New trailers are added frequently, though, so keep checking. Enjoy!