In My Opinion: Super Bowl Trailers
The Super Bowl is a bizarre mix of action and tedium which, for the outsider, makes the advertisements a welcome respite. Film companies paid vulgar sums to get trailers for their blockbusters on the air during the game and they’re now all online for those that missed them. I’ve analysed them with my expert’s eye and come to some rash, unfounded conclusions.
This movie seems to spend most of the time filling the screen with robot alien things that sound like electric elephants achieving orgasm. Which means that it’s ripping off Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise, with a good dose of Predator-like extra terrestrials thrown carelessly on top, like a teenager’s wank sock on the family laundry pile. At least Liam Neeson, Rihanna and Gerald McHandsomechap (or whatever) are on hand to save the day. They’re going to need a bigger boat.
Years of hype have led to this moment and it’s difficult to tell whether the results of this superhero mashup will be worthwhile based on a minute-long trailer.* If they can balance the swollen cast, which reaches Love Actually levels of ensemble-ness, and improve upon humdrum efforts like last year’s Thor, then there is a chance that this might work.
Dr Seuss’ The Lorax
Movies can’t help but missing the point of these minimalist kids’ tales. The colour pallet is right, but I wish someone was still making hand-drawn features.
Overbudgeted, underwhelming live action Disney nonsense set on Mars, featuring the same Gerald McHandsomechap from Battleship. The fact that the protagonist is supposed to have been a former captain in the Confederate Army should make anyone with a liberal leaning slightly nervous about taking their kids to see it. Because I presume he’ll spend the whole time screaming ‘The South will rise again’, without any context, into the faces of space monsters, whose confusion will be rendered in glorious 3D. That’s pretty much the same as the plot of Avatar, to be fair.
Samurai swords, guns and a rubbish quote from Jay-Z recited with hilarious conviction by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson define this confusing trailer. Watch it with your eyes closed and you’ll realise how similar this ex-wrestler sounds to President Barack Obama.
Continuing his trip around the world of stereotypes, Sacha Baron Cohen’s next character comedy piece will be a little more contemporarily satirical than either Bruno or Borat before it, what with all the revolutions and dead autocrats making the news in the past year. It’s just a shame that a Kardashian reference is pretty much the only thing deemed suitable for a Superbowl crowd.
Tub-thumping anti-terrorism action, presumably depicting a world in which Team America: World Police does not exist. A woman sits anxiously in Patriotville USA, suggesting over a satellite linkup that her military husband keeps his safety in mind during a covert rescue mission of some kind. If I was that bloke I’d be all like ‘Thanks for the advice, MUM’. The selling point of this movie is that it stars some active Navy Seals. Which seems like a waste of resources.
*Interesting that I’m willing to pass judgement on other films after seeing seconds of footage, but not this one.
