That Trailer blew my Mind

I have never been pumped by a trailer, even TDK's trailers.

Words can't describe how I'm feeling now.

While I'd been optimistic about this movie I did have concerns.  Now those concerns are gone.

In 2008 and for awhile after I thought there was no way I'd ever be as excited for a movie as I was for The Dark Knight. Not unless a live action Legend of Zelda film was ever made.

but now, that I saw that, I have have called The Dark Knight the greatest film every made repeatedly.  Think this will be better.

This IS THE Movie I have waited my entire life for.  Star Wars will hold me over, but this is the main course.

Captain America: Civil War may kill the MCU

I have seen every MCU film so far but Ant-Man and I have liked each of them, I've gone against convention and considered the first Iron Man the weakest.

I've been less consistently impressed with Marvel on television but still liked much of it, the AOS tie in with Winter Soldier was fantastic, and I loved Agent Carter season 1.  I haven't gotten a chance to check out the Netflix shows yet.

I have defended Winter Solider and Guardians of the Galaxy against their critics.  And I personally love that Iron Man 3 wasn't another generic foreign terrorist but actually dealt with false Flag Terror.  My Dad hated Iron Man 3 at first but upon re-watching it he really liked it.

But I have felt that doing Civil War was a bad idea from the start, I tried to be optimistic for it but the Trailer has not alleviated my fears.

The original story-line in the Comics was one of the most hated Marvel has ever done, probably only One More Day and the Clone Saga are more hated.  And the people who do like it would probably all agree that an only 2 to 2 and a half movie could not do justice to the story-line.

Now it's being adapted into a universe where the initial premise doesn't apply because the MCU doesn't even do secret identities.

One thing that can be said about the original story-line, as stupid as it was, Steve taking the position he did made sense with his character there.  But this trailer is telling us Steve is simply against the idea of Superheros having accountability what so ever.  I like seeing Captain America go against the government when it over reaches it's power, but this does not fit that.

The people at Marvel were considering Civil War before Batman V Superman was announced.  But the earliest reference to it was considering it for an Avenger movies, no latter then the 3rd one.  Not a movie coming only a year after Age of Ultron.

Everyone was talking before Age of Ultron came out about how the disagreement between Steve and Tony in that was going to set up Civil War.  And continued to think that even after it came out.  But it didn't.  Even leaving side that Steve and Tony's issues in that film were resolved by the end, this Civil War trailer if anything has switched them around from were they were in that film.  It's completely random.

What's really grating is it seems like most of Steve's reasons for his actions is just about Bucky.  It shouldn't be that damn hard to get understanding for the fact that Bucky was brainwashed.  The whole set up is contrived to fit where the previous films left everyone.

I will of course disagree with anyone who said this trailer revealed too much.  Any entire important character were absent.  As I've said before I like a trailer to tell me what I can expect, and I appreciate that this one has told me to expect exactly what I feared.

The Force Awakens meanwhile is the first time ever this close to a film coming out that I honestly don't know if I'll like it or not.  I'm someone who's expectations have always been right.  With TFA it could go either way, it could be exactly what I'm hoping for or exactly what I fear base don what little we've been shown.  I'm going to see the movie, the fact that it has John Williams assures me that it at least can't be as boring as Superman Returns.

Star Wars: Into Darkness

I've seen a lot of people praising how Abrams has been revealing so little in the trailers for The Force Awakens,  Like BrosWatchPLLToo.  And in so doing being quite condescending to people who would like more to be revealed.  Saying this is how it should be.

Problem is, this is in fact the exact same thing Abrams did with Star Trek: Into Darkness.  Choosing to never actually reveal who the Villain was before it came out.

The thing about that is I felt confident all the people speculating it was Kahn were wrong, because to me there was no logic in hiding it if it was Kahn, making who the villain is a twist would be worth it if it was someone hardcore Trek fans knew but not so much the general public, or at least a villain who'd never been in a movie before.  Of if you did want to do it with an Icon like Kahn then don't give away that the villain is a mystery, he should have promoted the film with the stuff about the movie's other Villain then Khan being relevant could make a decent twist but still not a great one.

Now I don't hate Into Darkness as a movie, when I finally saw it on DVD I found it better then I expected.  But like the prior film I like far less, it still did not feel a True Trek film to me, and what was Trekish about it was all via rehashing what came before.  Like Nemesis it aped Wrath of Kahn, and the things about the movie that weren't like TWOK, dealing with corruption in Starfleet, felt like a DS9 plot being done with pale imitations of TOS cast.  But I can understand why the general Public thought that was something Trek never explored before, and maybe Abrams was one of those.

I know the trendy thing online is to complain about Trailers revealing too much.  Well I did a post on that before, and I guess you can consider this a follow up.

When a movie is supposed to breath new life into an old franchise, I want to be reassured there will be something truly new.  I don't want to know the whole plot, but some reassurance that the movie isn't running solely on mechanically churning out more of what we've seen before.

Jurassic World's trailers kept plenty from the audience, but made it absolutely clear we were seeing something different.  And it was able to provide that Nostalgia factor at the same time.

So what I've learned from Into Darkness is that trailers trying too hard to hide what the movie is about, are hiding that they have no real creativity.  And TFA being the same director means it's not likely to be an exception.

I'm a Prequel fan, I don't care if TFA throws any bones for Prequel fans, I've said before the test of the new Movie is if it can bring in new fans.  But what that does make me though is someone who can provide somewhat more of an outside perspective on these trailers.  The people who worship the OT as God's Gift to Mankind keep going on about how these trailers were soooooo awesome and mind blowing.  To me the teasers were adequate teasers, but for a full trailer this latest one did not strike a cord with me at all.  I can honestly say I'm less sure I'll bother to see the movie then I was yesterday.

I know, people love to mock those who threaten to not see something.  Well I'm not making any threats, I'm just saying I have opted out of seeing sequels to movies I liked in theaters often. And right now I might not be able to afford to see TFA even if I 100% wanted to.  I greatly fear I may lack the finances to see BvS in March, which is the movie I want to see more then any other.  So I may very well decide not to waste money on a film in December that is sending me all the wrong messages.

So far all I get from the trailers is a bunch of obvious OT Nostalgia , a female lead who was clearly cast at least partly for her resemblance to Portman and Fisher, two villains who people think are "Soooo Cool" because they were masks, just like Vader and Boba Fett.  And some narrators saying lines they clearly wish they had Alec Guinness to say.

The only things remotely innovative are the Cross Guard Lightsaber, a few new Droid designs, and having a male lead who's African American.  I find it interesting how all the people complaining about Boyega being Black are also Prequel haters.  It reaffirms my suspicions that Prequel haters simply hate change.

Do Movie Trailers give away too much now days?

A perception that many movie trailers give away way to much, effectively the entire movie, is a common thing for internet complainers to complain about.  I think it's a complaint that's not as accurate as they make it seem.

I find it amusing how certain people often are that a trailer revealed everything when they still haven't seen the movie.  Remember, no matter how much you may think a trailer has revealed all it's cards to you, it's still only 2 minutes of a two hour movie.  I know of a few movies I could make a trailer for that seemingly reveals an entire beginning, middle and end while still not showing the actual final act at all.

It's likely they grossly under estimate how much a movie can do.  The way I see it, if it was even hypothetically possible for a 2 minute trailer to truly give away everything about a 2 hour movie, it wouldn't have been a very compelling and worthwhile 2 hours anyway.

I find it especially annoying when they act like it's a modern problem, that the tendency to give away too much has increased since like 2000 or something.  Have they seen any classic movie trailers?  They were often quite literally a narrated summery of the film, in chronological order, like Richard Burton's Alexander The Great.  And with Star Wars, the pre 2000 Episode I trailers gave away far more then any SW trailers since.

With modern trailers, no matter how much they show, that the scenes are in a mostly random order highly skews one's ability to actually guess how the movie will play out.  For some reason the trailers for The Dark Knight had me certain that the confrontation between Batman and The Joker that happens in the Street (where the semi truck gets flipped over) was the final confrontation.  Not sure why but it did.

What prompted me to do this was partly this article about the Terminator Genysis trailers.  Now I don't give a crap about that movie, but he talks also about Terminator Salvation which I enjoyed, it's the only Terminator sequel I really like, but still flawed thanks to still being bound by the mutilated canon of T2 and T3.

He says that the reveal of Sam Worthington's character being a Machine was an important dramatic moment in the movie, therefore it was stupid of the trailers to give that away.

No matter what the trailers had revealed, you'd have to be a brain-dead idiot to not know he was a Machine right from the start.  It begins with him about to be executed donating his body to science and thus signing it over to Cynbernyme.  Then he wakes up all Rip Wan Winkle like in the future having not aged at all.

See I've talked before about why I feel the value of surprising the audience is frankly overrated.  The reveal of his character being a machine is a source of drama for him and the characters around him, the notion that it's meaningless if the audience already knows is frankly a stupid simplistic way to look at it.

This reminds me of how people claim that it'd be sooooo horrible for any new Star Wars fans to watch the films in chronological order first because then the "I am your Father" scene looses it's impact.  To me if you think that scene's impact and importance is dependent on the audience not knowing then you're the ones who don't appreciate the scene.  The scene's importance in the story is that Luke learns he'd been lied to.  And I think it's Mark Hamil's best acting in the trilogy.

Let's speculate while we're at it.  If the Prequels weren't Prequels, if they'd been made first.  Would trailers for ROTS have given away Anakins' fall to the Dark Side?  Would it really be considered a twist without the future already being seen given all the foreshadowing in episodes 1 and 2?

I really don't mind knowing what is going to happen at all, because my mind is still curious about the details of how and why.  Revealing that John Conner becomes a Machine in trailers for that stupid looking new Terminator movie makes the viewer wonder "How the Frak did that happen".

So no, a trailer giving away what seems like a "twist" does not equate to giving away the entire film.

Update: I have a new post that is sort of a follow up to this.