Welcome to the Weekly Movie Thread! Let’s talk about films we’ve seen, classic movie recommendations, and other film discussions. We’re coming on the tail end of what would have been the summer blockbuster season where bold experiments and attempts at franchises sometimes pay off… but if they didn’t, hey… they were released in August. This is where you get Guardians of the Galaxy and GI Joe: the Rise of Cobra on one end… and on the other, The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure.
Today’s bonus prompt: What trailer ended up being better than the movie? (h/t AlanWilder)
Trailers are lovely things that have gone through many iterations. There’s the bombastic ones of yesteryear that threw up giant titles to brag about the bigness of films like Cleopatra. “The most highly acclaimed, highly discussed entertainment of the year!” declares this trailer of a film that Time Magazine called “lacking in image and in action.”
Then you had the days of voiceover artists like Don LaFontaine. His distinct “In a World” timbre could make movies like The Lawnmower Man sound epic. Critics gave the movie a 34% Rotten Tomatoes score, with audiences going even lower at 31%.
Those days of voiceovers are over (though I have heard a few on YouTube ads lately). These days, it’s more likely that trailers are miniature music videos.
When the Watchmen trailer came out, I remember everyone talking how it was scored to the Smashing Pumpkins’ “The Beginning of the End is the Beginning”. This was a bit of a cheeky choice. The song had previously been on the soundtrack for Batman & Robin… a film that at the time had very few defenders.
The movie….
well….
It’s not the worst, but it feels like it lost stream about halfway in. That Zach Snyder style, while often perfect for Frank Miller films, seems to lose its way about halfway into an Alan Moore adaptation (which calls for a more grounded touch).
Eventually some people in the higher-ups caught on that people who cut trailers were actually quite good at their jobs. Warner Brothers sought out Trailer Park, the guys who cut the Suicide Squad trailer, to help out in finishing the film thanks to its rushed production schedule. Director David Ayers’ somber version was test marketed against the lighter, Trailer Park cut version… and the lighter version won. It still seems to have won, since like zero people are demanding that we release the David Ayers cut.
Of course, Suicide Squad is easily another film where the trailer, scored to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, is much better than the film itself.
Next week: streaming movies