RogerBW's Blog

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: Burn it. Burn it all.)

A Shaun the Sheep Movie - Farmageddon: ignoring the narration telling you where to laugh, this might be quite amusing. For me the films are never as good as the shorts, though.

The Dead Don't Die: Man, Bill Murray got old. Zom-com has been done (for that matter zom-rom-com has been done) so what freshness does this bring?

J.T. LeRoy: not the same thing as "Author - The JT LeRoy Story". So fascinating that they had to make two films out of it? Doesn't appeal to me.

Joker Teaser: meh. Many people's lives turn to shit without their feeling the need to put on a silly costume and become violent criminals. (But I suppose it might be an effective counterpoint to Gotham.)

My Spy: I've not knowingly seen Bautista before, but he looks here as if he's half software, deliberately built into the stereotype of a big tough guy. This isn't even his first film, but it looks like an attempt to emulate Mr The Rock… only without the charisma. Then add cute spunky kid. (And Ken Jeong, now a sure sign of something to avoid.) Bleah.

Stuber: asshole and straight man. Which I suppose makes a change from comedian and straight man.

The Addams Family (Teaser): well, at least they're not doing a live-action remake. This seems more prone to physical comedy than previous iterations, but there might still be something there.

Anna: yeah yeah, stone cold fighty chick is better than stone cold fighty bloke, but not by all that much. Who and why and all that good stuff? Which the trailer can't show, of course, though it does its best to give away the character arc.

The Lion King: still not really interested in this series of "live-action" remakes of Disney films that I didn't particularly care about in the first place. Realistic animals… look like realistic animals.

Holy Lands: why am I supposed to care about this person? Still, old white men gotta old white man.

In Safe Hands: I suppose? I mean, it's not offensive or badly made. But nor does it reach out to me.

The Swan Princess - Kingdom of Music: not aimed at me, and number eight of a series. With an even more transparent excuse for musical numbers than usual.

The World Is Yours: at least the reason for the one last job is vaguely amusing. But apart from that, just more nasty criminals.

Wine Country: feels as if someone threw some plot elements into the Script-o-Matic and hit "feel-good".

Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker (Teaser): doubtless other people will be going over this frame by frame, but really all it needs to say at this point is "yeah, we're still doing this". Oh, and "I have lots and lots of Force Points".

Playmobil - The Movie: Lego had one so obviously this toy had to follow. Soulless CGI all looks the same, and I don't see anything here that's more appealing than the usual collection of noises and moving coloured shapes. (I assume The Beast is a cat.)

Hobbs & Shaw: so now they're mostly dropping the supervillain stuff, but it's still basically grunty macho men largely not using the comic chops which I find most appealing in them, in favour of one-liners. Or maybe that's just the trailer.

Gemini Man: not based on the TV series from 1976, but on an SF idea that's rather older. Well, they started trying to make this in 1997 after a demo reel of de-aging effects, it's been through six total re-writes since then, and any plot is clearly very much secondary.

21 Bridges: the villains look a bit, er, pathetic for the size of the operation. Presumably they're going to turn out to be not the real villains, or some such.

Balloon: looks as though it's much more about the sneaking around than about the flight, and that aspect has been heavily fictionalised to make it more tense. Still, it should do a better job than the Disney Night Crossing of 1982.

Peel: so the manchild becomes even more a manchild than usual. Doesn't hold the slightest interest for me.