Judging A Movie By Its Trailer

Just to spice things up a bit, I thought I might try something a little adventurous. There have been a few trailers for highly anticipated films recently, and I thought I might try reviewing each movie based on its trailer. Later on down the line, I’ll actually watch the movies and review them proper and we can all look back at this little article and see how accurate I was. I should add a little disclaimer that these are just some of the most popular trailers to have hit the net. They are not particularly movies that I’m jonesing to see (a few of them are). Well, here goes nothin’:

The Hobbit directed by Peter Jackson.

The Lord of the Rings is the epic trilogy of my adolescence. I saw the first one in the middle of high-school and the last one the year before I graduated. When I first heard that The Hobbit was going to be directed by Guillermo Del Toro, I was a little sceptical. Not because I think Del Toro is a bad director, I just didn’t think he was right for it. Then I heard that Peter Jackson was actually directing and saw a few of the onset video diaries for the movie, and worried that they were going to make it a CGI-fest like virtually every other blockbuster out there. Plus I read that they were shoe-horning in a whole bunch of characters that weren’t in the original book. I realise that I must appear a little pretentious, especially considering I’ve only read The Hobbit twice in my lifetime, but I’m old-school, and I don’t like film-makers fuckin’ with the source material.

It was the trailer that turned it around. It opens with an establishing shot of Bag-End, complete with Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, and the whole thing just feels like The Lord of the Rings. The original set is back, the original actors too. Gandalf is there, and so is Frodo (in some capacity). You almost get the sense that the whole thing is a reunion of sorts, despite the fact that it’s a prequel. Gandalf asking Bilbo if he would like to come on an adventure is the stuff that goosebumps were made for.

Despite it all being very emotionally stirring; there is one aspect of the trailer that I struggle with. That is, the song that is sung by the dwarf leader Thorin Oakenshield. It is very sombre in tone, as if Bilbo, Gandalf and co. are all going to march to their deaths for the sake of saving Middle-Earth. Whilst this tone was great for Lord of the Rings, which literally depicted the war to save mankind, the same tone is not really appropriate for The Hobbit, which is above all else about hunting for treasure. I hope that Jackson remembers this at the end of the day and keeps things suitably light-hearted.

Verdict based on trailer: Four stars.

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The Dark Knight Rises directed by Christopher Nolan.

Let me just put this out there right away: I think that The Dark Knight is vastly overrated, as is its auteur, Christopher Nolan. I’ve not seen a Christopher Nolan film that I’ve actually liked. Nolan is like that kid in English that was always so keen to contribute to discussion, but only ever came up with rudimentary and even dangerous interpretations of texts. He tries so hard, and his movies seem intellectual to those that aren’t very intelligent. Those last two sentences seemed especially harsh, but I’m sure Nolan isn’t going to lose any sleep about what some douche-bag with a blog that no one reads says about him. Also, someone needs to put a stop to all this Nolan romanticising: His views of criminality and the human condition, as expressed in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, are simplistic at best, and his whole political philosophy reeks of sympathy towards capitalism and American exceptionalism.

Things I liked in the trailer? The whole football stadium collapsing behind the guy with the football is visually impressive, to be sure, but the most interesting thing going on is Anne Hathaway’s dialogue as Cat-woman. She says something along the lines of “You think this can last? There’s a storm coming Mr. Wayne. When it hits you’re gonna wonder how you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” If the Joker represented a misinformed view of anarchy, then Catwoman is surely some kind of renegade socialist, who is out to teach the fat cats a lesson in wealth redistribution. It’s interesting that Nolan explores issues of class, what is less interesting is that Cat-woman will undoubtedly be depicted as mentally unstable and end up dying in the film, to signify that whilst capitalism and the American brand of globalisation has its flaws, it’s the best system to blah blah blah...

At least it looks like Batman will die in the end of this film as well, which will finally put an end to Nolan’s stint Gotham City.

Verdict based on trailer: Two stars.

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Prometheus directed by Ridley Scott.

This is probably the trailer that I’m most interested in. I’m a huge Alien nerd, and have always wondered what it would be like if either Ridley Scott or James Cameron returned to the well that helped to establish them as big names. Although Scott has said that Prometheus is not directly a prequel to Alien, a viewing of the trailer reveals that it is indeed set in the same universe and answers the most pertinent question that arose from Alien: What is the space-jockey?

Although we can’t really tell much from the trailer, which consists of a bunch of images that flash right after the other, I’m thinking (or maybe just hoping) that this movie will be a return to form for Ridley Scott. The tagline for the movie hints at an answer as to why life exists on Earth, and given Scott’s track record for deep metaphysical pondering (Why don’t I help the tortoise?), we could be in for a real treat.

Or we might not be. One thing that bugged me about the trailer is the reliance of the Inception horn-like sound effects. BAAAAHHHH!!!! BAAAHHHH!!! This could be another flash in the pan like pretty much every Ridley Scott film released after Gladiator.

But here’s to hoping.

Verdict based on trailer: Five Stars.

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The Avengers directed by Joss Whedon.

Verdict based on trailer: One Star.

'Jackass 3D' directed by Jeff Tremaine.

Produced by: Johnny Knoxville, Jeff Tremaine and Spike Jonze.

Written by: Jackass cast.

Year of release: 2010.

Run time: 94 minutes.

Studio: MTV Films.

Budget: $20 Million.

Gross Revenue: $170, 256, 125.

The last three movies that I’ve reviewed on this site have been—what I like to call at least—main-course movies. That is, they provide (or at least attempt to provide) nourishment for the wandering soul. However, as regular readers will probably know, it is a recurring trend on this site for your humble reviewer to see a whole bunch of main-course movies in a row. This leaves me feeling bloated and sometimes depressed. In this mindset, I feel it is appropriate to enjoy a few dessert or snack movies. When it comes to good snacks, you really can’t go past Jackass.

I’m sure that there are a lot of film critics out there that look down their noses at Jackass—believing it to be nothing but low brow entertainment. Its association with MTV (a corporate experiment into ‘cool’ that I think is largely obnoxious) is unfortunate, but there is a lot more going on in Jackass than I think these critics realise. Although Jackass 3D, like the films that came before it, remains plotless, there is a lot more to the franchise than many give it credit for. Indeed, I’m sure that there is a postgraduate essay to be written on the philosophy of being a jackass.

If an idea is a fossil, as Stephen King says it is, then I think the point of this review is to perhaps unearth an idea I’ve had about Jackass, pretty much since I started watching it back in my senior year of high-school. The jackasses, as I shall refer to the cast as a collective, represent perhaps the most favourable strain of nihilism that I’m willing to accept. If nihilism, is the negation of meaning from life itself, Jackass represent a playful acceptance of the doctrine. The moment Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, a lot of us were set free from the authoritarian and abusive relationship we had with him. We were also simultaneously forced to ask ‘In the absence of meaning, why should we continue to live?’

The answer according the Johnny Knoxville and co. seems to be to have as much fun as you can by risking your life in hilarious, cartoonish ways. And if you’re not doing that, you might as well laugh at someone that is. Now, I’m not sure if any of the jackasses are religious, and it’s likely that some of them probably are. If they are, they probably might read this and say that I’m over intellectualising Jackass, and that might be true. However, I think that the franchise has garnered such social popularity, amongst all kinds of people (even my mum enjoyed the first movie), purely because it taps into subconscious realisation that there is no inherent meaning to life.

Jackass strips away a lot of the pretension that comes with thinking about nihilism. Whilst the various existential philosophers (Sartre, Camus etc), who are confined to the reading lists of university courses, search for establishing meaning in a meaningless world, the Jackasses say “Fuck it, let’s launch Steve-O one-hundred feet into the air in a porter-potty.” The fact that they have been allowed to do so, well into their thirties, speaks to how funny society finds them, and how an open-market system rewards popularity above any other moral agenda.

In addition to its somewhat sophisticated philosophical commentary, or even to exemplify it, the Jackass franchise also has character development if you look hard enough for it. The best example of this that is evident in Jackass 3D is certainly Steve-O, the loveable clown who is notorious for his alcohol/drug habits and mental health problems. This time, Steve-O is sober, and you can really tell. He approaches stunts with a renewed sense of anxiety. During one stunt that involves him taking a baseball to the nuts, he actually gets so anxious that he walks away from it temporarily. He does return to complete the stunt, but says “Why do I have to be Steve-O?” into the camera. It’s a pretty existential question, but it’s not one that Steve-O dwells on with any seriousness. He asks it, and then takes a baseball to the nuts like a champ. You really get a sense that for this crew of jackasses, that the meaning they’ve carved for themselves is to find the humour in the agony of existence.

A reviewer, I forget who, commented that watching the anxiety of jackasses as they being attempting the stunts, is funnier than the stunts themselves. I don’t know if that’s true; anxiety without a pay-off just isn’t satisfying—the two come together like a burger and a bun—but there is something to be said for watching the ageing jackasses get more anxious with old age. When Steve-O refuses to run through a gauntlet of cattle-prods and electric tasers by saying “I think I’m going to have a fucking panic-attack...”, it’s funny because Steve-O is no longer invincible. However, like Sisyphus, he still manages to run the gauntlet not because the world is particularly beautiful, but because it’s just fucking funny.

Four stars:

'We Need To Talk About Kevin' directed by Lynne Ramsay.

Produced by: Jennifer Fox, Luc Roeg, and Bob Salerno.

Written by: Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear. (Based on a novel by Lionel Shriver).

Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, and Ezra Miller.

Year of release: 2011.

Country: United Kingdom and United States.

Budget: $7 Million.

Box Office: $4, 339, 547.

This was a difficult one to watch. It’s billed as a psychological thriller, but you should read that as ‘arty-movie-that-doesn’t-quite-fit-into-a-genre-so-we’ll-just-tack-on-Psychological-Thriller’. Won’t go into too much detail about the plot, you can find that on the Wikipedia entry here. To summarise it in a sentence? How about: Mother deals with life after her sociopathic son performs a massacre via bow-and-arrow at his high-school. There is another movie coming out featuring Maria Bello and Martin Sheen that deals with the same theme, but judging by that film’s trailer, it couldn’t be more different from this.

Though it’s not particularly violent (at least not until then end), it’s still a film that is unbearable to watch. This is perhaps reinforced by the recurring and uncomfortable motif of thick red liquid plaguing Tilda Swinton’s Eva Katchadourian in virtually every scene that she is in. From the beginning, Eva is covered in it in the form of crushed tomatoes when she takes place in La Tomatina, the famous festival that occurs in Spain. This first scene is a flashback that establishes Eva as a travel-hungry, adventurous, and childless woman in absolute bliss. The film quickly jumps to Eva as she is several months after the massacre that her teenage son committed. She wakes up on her couch in a faded Led Zeppellin t-shirt and hurries to go to work only to notice that her house has been vandalised by red paint, most likely by a parent of a student that Eva’s son killed. Whoever the vandals are, they manage to tag a good portion of the front of her house and the windshield of her car. Eva then has to use newspaper to remove the thick red paint from her windshield so that she can drive to work. The sight of Tilda Swinton removing viscous red substance from her property and herself is something that you’ll soon get used to. Whilst some might say that it is an obvious symbol, it’s effective nonetheless. Her constant cleaning gives us the sense that she’ll never be able mop up all the blood that her son has spilled, on a social and emotional level.

It must be said that Tilda Swinton is marvellous in this film. I’d heard a lot of buzz about her performance before I managed to see it, and it’s justified. Though a lot of this works purely because of the structure of her face. Swinton is really quite strange looking-- I mean this as the utmost compliment. I think if they were to cast someone with a more conventional appearance that the film might suffer as a result. Kevin is such an odd and hostile child, and for someone as conventionally beautiful as say...Rachel Weisz to give birth to such a sociopath would cheapen the whole event. It sounds like I’m saying that the film works because only ugly people give birth to sociopaths, but that’s not what I mean at all. Swinton is really quite striking; just in a way that is not in line with traditional Hollywood beauty. I simply think that by putting an unconventionally looking actress in the lead, Ramsay manages to highlight that each individual is utterly genetically unique, and that this could be why some babies are born sociopathic. Swinton is also a brilliant actress who takes us through such a strange range of emotions. She’ll get an Oscar nom for this, though I don’t know whether the Academy will give her another statue. Needless to say Swinton is a fucking powerhouse.

As for the central theme of the film; well it’s a complicated one that comments on the age old psychological conundrum of Nature vs. Nurture. The film presents us with the question: ‘Why is Kevin the way that he is?’ and the two answers that it seemingly hints at is that he was either born that way, or that he was made that way due to Eva’s own lack of empathy. This is one of those films that is left intentionally ambiguous. There is evidence to suggest both possibilities. When Kevin constantly mucks up as a toddler, a fed-up Eva tells him: “Mommy was happy until Kevin came along, now she wakes up every day and wishes she was in France.” Even though Kevin is only very young when she says it, it’s sort of implied that he could certainly pick up on her tone.

This film is one that will certainly inspire a lot of heated debate amongst film-goers, and I might even be tempted to write a more detailed argument about what I think the film says about the ‘Nature vs. Nurture’ issue. However, this review is already spiralling well past the five-hundred word limit. It is enough to say that it is a really riveting, though gut-wrenching film. It’s the kind that I probably won’t watch again, at least not for a while.

Four stars: