Sunday, February 17, 2019

Trailers! Trailers! Early 2019 Edition

I'd normally wait until a little later in the year for a trailer post, especially as we're only starting to see some of the smaller summer pics premiere trailers now.  However, there have been a couple of interesting ones that have popped up, and I'm also going to take this as an opportunity to discuss some trends and a few titles that may be overlooked in the months ahead.  

Spider-Man: Far From Home  - Tom Holland is looking a lot less puppyish and more settled into the superhero role.  I like that this run of Spidey movies is committed to doing its own thing apart from its predecessors, putting Happy Hogan in the mix and not keeping Aunt May in the dark.  There's not much to say about Jake Gyllenhaal's Mysterio yet, though I remain optimistic. Gyllenhaal is overdue to play a supervillain. And, of course, there are no hints about "Endgame."  I wish Sony had held back on this trailer until after the big reveal, but that would've been logistically impossible, of course.

Yesterday - I've been hearing about this project for a while, as the Danny Boyle/Richard Curtis musical comedy collaboration, and mentally filed it away as another one of those quaint little rom-coms about struggling mucisians trying to make it big.  It wasn't until I saw the excellent trailer that I realized what the premise actually is - and it's irresistable. I love that the star is a mostly unknown Indian British actor, Himesh Patel. I love that after years and years of notoriously high licensing fees, the whole Beatles catalogue is apparently fair game for this project.  Between this an "Rocketman," it's going to be a very classic rock summer.

Frozen 2 - This early trailer doesn't tell us much, but it looks like the tone is going to be darker and more serious.  Elsa's putting her powers up against an ocean, Anna has a new hairstyle and is throwing knives - it's all very tense and mysterious.  Compare to the teaser trailer for the original "Frozen," which was just Sven and Olaf goofing around on a frozen pond. Still, keep in mind that the film will definitely still be a musical and is still going to be aimed at a target audience of little princess-loving girls, so "Frozen 2" is likely to turn out much lighter than this preview is hinting - and I expect that future marketing materials will reflect that.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw  - Vin who?  Even without the ties to "The Fast & The Furious" franchise, I'd totally be onboard for this.  The Rock and Jason Statham teaming up in an action comedy with Idris Elba as the bad guy and Vanessa Kirby in the mix?  Sold. I hope they keep the fourth wall breaking for the actual film, but that may be too much to ask. The release date isn't until early August, but I'm betting that this is going to do "Fast & Furious" level business and give all the superheroes a good fight for the box office crown this summer.    

Child's Play  - Chucky's back!  And it looks like he's gotten a few upgrades thanks to modern day technology.  The teaser doesn't ever actually let us see Chucky directly, though, and I'm curious as to whether he'll look much different than the 1980s original.  We already know that Brad Dourif won't be back to voice him. He will, however, be voicing Chucky in the planned television series continuation of the original run of "Child's Play" movies, which only had its most recent sequel two years ago.  Why is this franchise being rebooted again?

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum  - I wasn't a big fan of the second John Wick movie, but I thought that it set up a fabulous scenario for the third.  John Wick fighting his way out of New York City with a contract on his head and a new dog? It's also nice to see Halle Berry and Mark Dacascos again - and I hope that Halle Berry gets to do more here than she did in "Kingsman."  

Birds of Prey  and Untitled Ghostbusters Project  - Finally, we have the very interesting case of two teasers being dropped for films that aren't coming out until 2020.  These don't have a frame of film that's actually going to be in the finished product either. "Ghostbusters" hasn't ever started filming.  These are essentially proof of concept videos being released to kickstart some hype and awareness among franchise fans. I thought that super-early previews like this had fallen out of favor, but here we are.
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