Good trailers are becoming a lost art. There's a certain poetry to it; they have to sell you something without telling you about it and get you excited about things you already know.

Studios prefer to skip art and focus group shit which is why so many trailers spoiler the whole damn movie.

Chuckman wrote:Good trailers are becoming a lost art. There's a certain poetry to it; they have to sell you something without telling you about it and get you excited about things you already know.

Studios prefer to skip art and focus group shit which is why so many trailers spoiler the whole damn movie.

I agree with that plus I miss the days when you watched a trailer and you kind of had no idea, yeah you'd get bits but no spoilers and you got excited, studios though should stop skipping the focus group but maybe there doing that because the focus group will be like twitter and tell them there movie is utter shit or looks stupid or has bad gender dynamics ect and the studio won't be able to hack it and will go but this sold a decade ago...because they just can't see that the old methods are failing now and are in total denial.

I actually enjoyed Ready Player One for what it was. It's certainly the best adaptation that could be made from such a messy book & the Shining setpiece was an inspired bit of filmmaking. It's a movie that I don't begrudge anyone for not liking but I also think calling it a failure is a bit much.

Either way, feels weird to talk about the dangers of focus grouping while praising a trailer for what is probably the most focus grouped movie in the last five years. If this was an authentic Pokemon movie it would basically be the small story of a young boy creating a bond with his first pet. Instead it's a movie set in a gritty dangerous looking city, stars the son of police officer looking for his lost father, will most likely involve some evil scheme to destroy the world & the personality of the cute animal has instead been replaced by Ryan Reynolds doing three days of snarky voice work. Aside from essentially not changing the physical appearance of the creatures - just that decision alone has made the film a financial hit - everything else remotely Pokemon has been focus grouped out to appeal to whoever.

I mean basically Rob Letterman is repeating what he did with Goosebumps. You don't have to make a great film but as long as you make one that is passably entertaining and you load it with fan-favorite characters from a pre-existing universe that a certain generation will have a pavlovian nostalgic response towards you're gonna make mad bank. This will be Goosebumps to a factor of 100.

Either way, LAIKA's trailer for The Missing Link also came out this past week but it got buried by Cute Cage Fighting: The Movie & Toy Story ReBooted. It's gonna be a far superior film to all the other family friendly animated films released in 2019. Practically no one will see it in theaters... though a year or two later audiences will "discover it" on streaming & home video. Just like all previous LAIKA films to date... but I'll be there for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM5VC7nCv_Y

Chuckman wrote:When I heard about this project and the upcoming Sonic... thing, I knew they had to be either great or terrible. It's just a trailer but this honestly looks like it could be what Ready Player One tried and failed to be.

That would be nice, considering Ready Player One? was a big lost opportunity in terms of faithfully applying the world built in the book to film, and from the trailer, Pokemon looks like it should be able to do that.

And they're doing a Sonic film as well? I'm... well that doesn't sound interesting, and that trailer is just... ugh.

Ready Player One stands in a weird place as an adaptation.

The plot of the movie is better than the book, and the set pieces are better than the book. The Shining sequence is a much better idea than a guy woodenly reciting the entirety of War Games.

And yet, it sanitized the plot to a great degree and left out some interesting (if undeveloped) ideas from Cline's novel.

It eliminated a lot of cringey shit from the book, but the kept the love interest's idiotic "deformity" for some reason.

The script is all over the place. A big plot point is concern that the evil IOI is going to microtransaction the shit out of games but we see earlier in the movie that Wade's aunt's boyfriend has blown all of their savings on microtransactions in the game.

RP1 wants to be a celebration of the power of imagination driven by the visual stylings of Spielberg, but he's lost his touch for action movies and the poorly written, unfocused script leads to a movie that is less about the power of imagination and more about "wasn't it great when the companies that commoditized storytelling sold us their products for a one time price instead of milking us for $1.99 gem packs?" It celebrates the lack of imagination and boils down to "this type of corporate supremacy over media is better than that kind of corporate supremacy over media".

It's like if you took the Marvel vs. DC argument and made a movie out of people arguing which comic book series is better.

Also given recent events, it's fucking hilarious on a meta level that Blizzard has so much of their shit in the virtual world.

It reminds of the criticism of Men in Black that it's a movie about how executives see themselves.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:I actually enjoyed Ready Player One for what it was. It's certainly the best adaptation that could be made from such a messy book & the Shining setpiece was an inspired bit of filmmaking. It's a movie that I don't begrudge anyone for not liking but I also think calling it a failure is a bit much.

My problem with Player One is it sounds like fun but on paper its not its embraces all of the worst aspects of geek cultuer, the negativity the only guys have the control and say over the virtual world, staking online, not taking no for an answer and the cool gamer girl stereotype as well as misunderstanding what having real scars means for real people and how it can really effect you in the real world.

Granted Spielberg cut out a lot off this negativity in the movie version but he sadly filled it with nothing of note and it becomes one set piece after another yes its good pop corn fun but that's it and this could have been so much more as the book was written in 2011 yet so much has changed in gaming and geek cultuer in the present yet the movie does not reflect any off it in my view and it really hurts it.

https://filmschoolrejects.com/whats-ins ... ighthouse/

Now this sounds interesting. I loved The Witch.

Yeah, I can’t argue against RP1 not being an honest representation of what pop culture/fandom is nowadays - that would be an unbearably toxic NC-17 rated horror thriller - but I feel Spielberg made the best film possible out of the mess of the book. The movie really is just Spielberg and his team trying their hand at a real technical challenge - it’s half animated film, half live-action - and I feel it succeeds in that regard. Certainly in the lower end of Spielberg’s body of work but I also enjoyed it more than most of the blockbusters I saw in 2018.

Anywho, here’s the trailer for another one of Disney’s gonna-make-a-billion-dollars remakes from 2019. From the tired mind of Tim Burton and the genius screenwriter behind Scream 3, Reindeer Games, The Brothers Grimm, Transformers 2, Transformers 3, Transformers 4 & Ghost in the Shell 2017 is Dumbo 2019.


https://youtu.be/McsWXoXg6Xk

That’s one hell of a resume.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:Anywho, here’s the trailer for another one of Disney’s gonna-make-a-billion-dollars remakes from 2019. From the tired mind of Tim Burton and the genius screenwriter behind Scream 3, Reindeer Games, The Brothers Grimm, Transformers 2, Transformers 3, Transformers 4 & Ghost in the Shell 2017 is Dumbo 2019.


https://youtu.be/McsWXoXg6Xk

I don't like this one, yeah I know its proberbly gonna make billions but I like the original because Dumbo has it really tragic for being different...this feels like its softening the blow some what and its really bothers me because when your an outcast in sociality you don't get some nice family who like you regardless, you get everyone going your weird and don't belong. Also that outcast feel for me was what made Dumbo turning it around at the end all the more sweeter, even if it is a play on the Rudolf idea of people only liking you if your difference is useful or makes money.

I think the Disney movie is magical in the sense that it has this weird feeling of paranoia and disorientation which I really enjoy.
There's none of that in this adaption... It honestly baffled me how toned down the Burtonesque visual elements are... He had a time in his career in which he leaned into this aesthetic much harder. I have to say tho, they really managed to portray Dumbo as super adorable in this trailer.

The crows, man. . . what are they gonna do about the crows?

If the studio is smart, Tim Burton will have had much of his artistic freedom stripped in favor of him collaborating with others so that the finished product falls in line with the other recent live action Disney adaptations, which may be why this trailer doesn't reek of his "aesthetic". We've all seen how Burton gets when he's allowed to go full Burton, and we need to never let it happen again.

^ You never go full Burton...

Once upon a time it was a joy to go "Full Burton" but the days of Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns & Big Fish have long past.

Besides a failure of imagination - I haven't checked but I think he's the reigning king of adapting/remaking already famous works, i.e. Here's Tim Burton's version of Planet of the Apes, here's Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland, etc - the worst thing that happened to Burton was CGI. Even his early lesser films are visually great because they had to build the worlds the stories took place but now they can just greenscreen everything in.

You're absolutely right. Batman and Batman Returns were great films because of the use of practical effects and real set locations. They were also great films because of Michael Keaton, because we can't forget that.

But CGI allows for so much more to be done outside a studio it can let the imagination run wild rather than be kept in check by what's realistically possible.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:Once upon a time it was a joy to go "Full Burton" but the days of Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns & Big Fish have long past.

Besides a failure of imagination - I haven't checked but I think he's the reigning king of adapting/remaking already famous works, i.e. Here's Tim Burton's version of Planet of the Apes, here's Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland, etc - the worst thing that happened to Burton was CGI. Even his early lesser films are visually great because they had to build the worlds the stories took place but now they can just greenscreen everything in.

I agree with that 100 percent his older works had such charm where as his new stuff looks just like everybody else's you really don't feel the creative flair at all that made his works so dark, creepy and special along with the black comedy humour.

Batman Returns is the best superhero movie ever made.

Also now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that Big Fish was the last thing he made that was actually good.

My personal favorite of his is Sleepy Hollow.

Chuckman wrote:My personal favorite of his is Sleepy Hollow.

Same, I was just about to ask it anyone here was a fan if it.

Batman Returns I've only watched once I think, really need to give it a fresh viewing. Both it & 89 I remember being just meh about.

Chuckman wrote:My personal favorite of his is Sleepy Hollow.

Well, I always loved the Sherlockian angle he took with the story, and the change in profession for Crane from school teacher to police constable. It made the story far more enjoyable, and the movie really benefitted from that change.