Anchorman 2

On the surface, this trailer is actually a little disappointing. It feels like a parody of the first movie, and none of the jokes are particularly funny. Brick being an idiot who’s incapable of his own thoughts is a good one-off joke, but they stay with it too long. Having said that, they barely had any time to write this teaser. Ferrell and McKay don’t know what the movie is going to look like yet, and the only reason they wrote this trailer was to sate the public’s desire for something to with this movie. It’s awesome to see all of the characters again, and I’m excited to see where they will go from here. So, enjoy this trailer, and know that whatever they come up with when there is time to write the movie will be much better. That’s enough to tease me.

The We And The I

This is a movie about the longest bus ride ever. It’s the last day of school, and everyone who has taken this bus all year suddenly has to face some sort of reckoning. Instead of being excited about summer beginning, everyone is freaking out because their relationships haven’t gone the way they’d like. No one is happy with their friends or their romantic interests. Luckily, they have a five-hour bus ride to work through all of these problems. Seriously, they got on the bus right after school, and some of them don’t get off until sunset. What massive fictional Bronx do they live in? This is a Michel Gondry film, and despite the setting it seems like a fairly standard day-in-the-life coming of age story. Also, there’s a stereotypical racist lady. Pass on this one.

The Words

This is a movie where Bradley Cooper is a struggling writer. Sadly, he can’t get over his lack of talent by taking NZT-48. Instead, he gets over his lack of talent by plagiarizing the work Ben Barnes did in a post-war Paris. Barnes’ magical manuscript gets him past his crisis of confidence and turns him into a very successful writer. BUT AT WHAT COST!?!

Probably not that much cost. He lied, but how much is that going to bother him? I understand plagiarism is bad, but he’ll still keep the money and the notoriety, and that will give him the freedom to do the kind of writing he wants to. At worst, he can write under a pseudonym. I don’t see this as a terrible conflict.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Gangster Squad

Intrigue! Hollywoodland! Noir! Dirty cops! Gosling! This trailer talks around what this movie is about without really saying anything. As best I can tell, Sean Penn plays a crime lord who has sway over a number of dirty cops. Josh Brolin is tasked with bringing him in, while Ryan Gosling is somewhere in the middle romancing Emma Stone. While the trailer doesn’t give much away plotwise, it does an excellent job of conveying the tone of the movie and the world it will exist in. The movie feels substantial, which is more than I can say for most films. I don’t have any reason to expect more than that, but it’s a good start.

Argo

Going in, I was hoping this movie was about the CFL. Instead, it’s about important things. After my initial disappointment subsided and the trailer moved past showing how depressing the Iran Hostage Crisis was, it quickly became apparent that this could be an exceedingly interesting movie. With an eclectic cast (Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman) and a premise packed with potential, I have high hopes for the film. The contrast between Hollywood and revolutionary Tehran will be stark and I am curious to see how the rescue strategy will be implemented. This is a very meaty idea, and so far the trailer has done a great job teasing it.

The Watch

It is rare for a trailer to be allowed to breathe as much as this trailer does. Even though it clocks in at the normal two and a half minutes, much of the trailer lingers on three scenes. It immediately revels that there are aliens among us before allowing the four leads (Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn, and… Richard Ayoade?) to have fun with that idea while people watching. That’s really the only scene this trailer needs to show. People watching with smart friends is a timeless pastime, and it wonderful watching these four comedy pros (well, Ayoade certainly seems funny) comment on how normal behavior can very easily look alien. I don’t think this movie is going to be a commentary on human nature, but based on that clip it could be. The scene with R. Lee Ermey is great too, and the extended discussion of alien blood as green cum is fantastic. If that’s not enough, this movie will be a union of three comedy dynasties. Along with the Vaughn-Stiller backbone that represents that older generation, this movie is directed by the Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer (Jorma Taccone is in it as well, while Andy Samberg surprisingly is not), and written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad, etc…) It’s like having Daenerys dragon’s and the Kingslayer fight for Robb Stark’s army (I just started watching Game of Thrones. Ignore me.)

The Campaign

Structurally, this trailer makes a lot of sense. It’s about a campaign and shows one campaign ad from each candidate. It doesn’t work though, because both Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis play politicians who are too aggressively buffoonish. Even though Ferrell has experience lampooning President Bush, that worked because it was based on actual events and was thus believable. Even though the stupid comments in this trailer could have been uttered by politicians, they sound more like an attempt to sound stupid than like a believable political satire. It’s a fine line to walk, obviously, but so far I don’t have much confidence in their ability to pull it off. As it is, both candidates appear to be too ridiculous to satirize anyone but Rick Santorum. I’m fine with that, but it’s not a particularly difficult feat to make him look like a fool. I’m willing to wait and see on this movie because the two leads have such great comedic chops, but I’m not optimistic.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

The Dark Knight Rises

This is the final trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, and it is more subdued than the previous two. It favors crippling citywide depression to action, even though two bridges blow up and a football field implodes. It is dark, and drives home how much danger Bruce Wayne is actually in while focusing on Anne Hathaway and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s characters. He appears to be an everyman member of Gotham PD, and she appears to be a sumptuous member of the Gotham elite. While previous trailers have painted her as being in favor of Gotham’s populist uprising, her fear of Bane hints at something else. Speaking of Bane, he’s seen a voice coach! (Or a sound mixer). He claims to be, “Gotham’s Reckoning,” and feels Bruce Wayne deserves a punishment more severe than death. He is also involved in some sort of insane mid-air hijacking of one plane by another. Even that awesome action sequence is downplayed considerably. In all, it perfectly sets up a world that falling apart and has no hope.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

I know nothing about this movie. I’ve watched the trailer twice and I don’t even have a passing understanding of what the movie is about. Here’s the list of things I think this movie focuses on:

• The interconnectedness of everything in the world.
• The fragility of that interconnectedness.
• A special boy
• Fatherhood
• Community
• An Orox, whatever that is
• An Orox’s escape from under the ice
• A flood
• Crabs
• Past, present, & future
• More Oroxes
• Wonderment

The Expendables 2

This trailer is exactly what you would imagine it would be. It’s basically a parody trailer, except it’s real. Sylvester Stallone introduces it in his characteristically hard to understand tone. He makes a point of enunciating here, but imagine if he played Bane. Moving forward, there are absurd explosions, absurd fight sequences, absurd set pieces, and a couple absurd lines. The plot doesn’t matter, but it revolves around the wrong people acquiring some absurd amount of plutonium. Liam Hemsworth gives the cast some youth, and he does not appear to be hungry . Also, Chuck Norris is back, apparently. I didn’t realize he had been gone. You’ll know if you’ll like this trailer before you watch it.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Lawless

It’s refreshing to see a Prohibition-era film. There aren’t enough of those. More importantly, it looks excellent. It has a stellar cast (Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Guy Pearce, and Gary Oldman) and does a masterful job of spacing out when they are revealed. Without really giving anything away, this trailer sets the stage wonderfully while introducing elements of all the characters. They all appear to have depth, while being perfectly cast. Even more, there’s action! Action helps mediocre trailers, and boosts the profile of a trailer as strong as this one. There’s nothing specific to focus on, because everything that happens feels substantial. There’s a certain weight to it, I’m excited for more.

Brave

Every trailer for Brave trailer delights me, regardless of what it depicts, because I love the accents so much. This guy should be incorporated into their marketing strategy, but that’s just me. As it stands though, this trailer mostly rehashes portions of the previous three trailers. What we do learn is that the spell that could destroy everything was unleashed by Merida’s desire to change her fate. How reasonable of her. There’s also the king imitating her (cute), some bears (cute/terrifying), along with a song that appears to be in Scottish Gaelic (odd). It ends with Merida asking, “If you had the chance to change your fate, would you?” So … Brave is Pixar’s 8 Mile?

Hope Springs

Centering a trailer around Meryl Streep is always a good decision. She doesn’t get enough credit for her comedic acting because she’s so good in dramatic roles, but she can be really funny. The banana scene is what’s going to get the attention, but her discomfort throughout the trailer plays well. Moreover, she is playing off of Steve Carell as a therapist and Tommy Lee Jones as her grumpy husband. While casting Jones in this role is obviously a no-brainer, Carell could truly shine in this film. He has the perfect amount of sensitivity, plus he’ll definitely get some jokes in as well. What shocks me is that this couple isn’t having sex at all. Obviously they’ve been together for a while and things change, but this issue isn’t addressed beyond Jones’ character being glum. Since the lack of sex is the film’s central conceit, the first question is obviously about why that is the case. The trailer should at least address it. Points off for that, but all else is good.

This Is 40

From Judd Apatow, the executive producer of Girls, comes This Is 40, the spinoff of Knocked Up. (Am I the first person to make that joke? Please tell me I am.) While this film is ostensibly a comedy, the trailer isn’t particularly funny. Sure, the joke about vagina rings indicating a woman’s age is funny, but the lead-up to it is not original. Beyond that, it’s cute that they are marketing this as the sort-of-sequel to Knocked Up and it is amusing to see Paul Rudd struggling on the treadmill. Melissa McCarthy’s presence is welcome, and apparently Chris O’Dowd, Charlyne Yi, Lena Dunham (!!!), and Megan Fox (???) will be present as well. As encouraging as those names are, right now it feels like a more mature movie about growing into parenthood. It looks good, but it doesn’t look fun. The trailer ends with Rudd imploring Leslie Mann to inspect his taint for … something. This could be an uproarious scene in the movie, but this trailer just paints it as an example of the sacrifices people make in relationships. Compassion is important, yet not really funny. It could lead to a strong movie, but what kind of movie remains to be seen.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Ruby Sparks

This could be an interesting movie, although it is very possible that I’ve seen everything I’ll need to see from the trailer. Paul Dano plays a writer who is falling in love with the girl he’s writing into his novel. This situation poses a logistical problem, because that girl doesn’t exist. It would be a bold and fascinating choice if the film decided to focus on the slow erosion of Dano’s character as he falls more and more in love with a product of his imagination, but this film has no interest in doing that. Instead, it decides to make her a real person named Ruby Sparks. She is a perfectly believable Manic Pixie Dream Girl, because she is actually the girl of Dano’s dreams. This would create a number of problems, but not really the ones the trailer covers. Obviously, because Ruby is whatever Dano writes her to be, some weird sexual stuff is bound to happen, and that would inevitably strain an already strange relationship. On top of that, the trailer presents Dano as both a fairly unaccomplished writer and a man, so he’s not going to be good at writing women. Ruby Sparks should be woefully thin, if not completely lacking major characteristics. I don’t even know if Matthew Weiner could write a compelling woman in real life. This could create another fascinating opportunity wherein Dano grows as a writer because he sees all of the small details that he would not otherwise think of. Again, nothing in the trailer even hints at that though. In addition, this movie’s conclusion is visible from miles away: either he’ll have to write her out of his life or he’ll have to write her death at the end of the story.

Your Sister’s Sister

This trailer traffics in the classic indie plot of opposite sex platonic best friends who suddenly realize their feelings for each other after some sort of major event. This predictably raises issues that could have been easily avoided with better communication. How could Rosemarie Dewitt’s character have known not to sleep with Mark Duplass’ character?  It’s an unfortunate situation, but given the fact the characters in this trailer all love at least one other character, there’s no doubt that they’ll work though it, no matter the end result. What bothers me more is the accents. If Dewitt and Emily Blunt are sisters, why does only one of them have an English accent? Answer that and I might try and care about these characters.

Witness Protection

This is a thankfully short trailer that revolves around Madea getting drunk in first class. There’s nothing clever about the writing, and nothing about this trailer would make me want to see the movie. The only element worth noting is that Eugene Levy plays a character who is made to look French but has some sort of terrible Jewish/Russian accent. There could be a legitimate backstory for this, or it could just be laziness.

The Amazing Spider-Man

This week brought a new Japanese trailer that is not that different from previous trailers. So why highlight it this week? The scant additions are perfect examples that this movie will be the clichéd “dark re-imagining” of the Spiderman story. The most notable example is Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield) anxiety that he may have been responsible for turning Curt Connors into The Lizard. That’s some serious mental anguish, but it’s not the only pain he has to deal with. Between May Parker’s (Sally Field) fears about who is hurting Peter and that terrible gash on his chest, it becomes very clear that even though he’s a superhero, he’s still human, and can still feel pain. Hopefully, this will create a deeper story than the other Spiderman films. If nothing else, Garfield is already far more charismatic than Tobey Maguire.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Looper

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is really making a name for himself in widely released mindfucks. When he employed that paradox in Inception, director Rian Johnson must have just lost his shit. It does look like a good film in its own right, with JGL playing a futuristic assassin who kills people in the past. That is, until he is tasked with killing himself. While it is an intriguing idea, the amount of paradoxes in this film would have to be staggering. If they’re taking people into the past when time travel hasn’t been invented yet, won’t people in the past figure out soon enough? Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of the whole system? In addition, are the targets being killed in the past or sent into the past to be killed? The latter would not create paradoxes, but the former would create a multitude of problems. Oh, old Joseph Gordon-Levitt is played by Bruce Willis, because that’s obviously where he’s going.

The Avengers

This clip contextualizes the trailer we looked at two weeks ago. Instead of supplementing the conversation with flashy clips, Loki and Tony Stark just talk. In many ways, this is stronger than that trailer. There is room for the conversation to breathe, and for Robert Downey Jr.’s humor to actually come through. His casual description of The Avengers is fantastic. Equally fantastic? That apartment. The only new information this clip provides us is that Tony Stark needs to wear metal bracelets for some reason. Perhaps they serve the same purpose as the palladium core in Iron Man 2, but the way they’re presented in this clip would hint more at their ability to deter Loki from doing … something. I don’t know what, especially given how amorphous Loki’s powers are. Still, look out for those bracelets. They’re important or something.

Brave

More Pixar! This clip treats us to more of the great Scottish brogues and introduces our protagonist in a more thorough manner. It begins with the whole “perfect family to the world, screwed up in reality” cliché, but I suppose that’s fine. Princess Merida feels that her parents are too restrictive, from the way she keeps her hair to the clothes she wears. Again, there’s nothing new with the themes here. Unfortunately, her attempt at change unleashed a curse that could destroy everything (naturally), and the only way to avoid that fate is for her to be brave. It’s not the most inventive trailer, but it’ll do for now.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Total Recall

The week’s marquee trailer, and it’s a strong one. It sets up the confusion and excitement of the movie without really giving anything away. I can’t comment on its relationship to the original, having not seen it, but this certainly looks good. I, too, am wondering what is real. Between good Kate Beckinsale and bad Beckinsale, who do you trust? I’ll take either over Jessica Biel, who only needs two seconds of a movie trailer to prove she isn’t believable in whatever role she’s in. Meanwhile, this should be a solid role for Colin Farrell. He gets to be the action guy, and confusion suits him. Just watch it, it’s fun.

Savages

BLAKE LIVELY IS DOING AN ACCENT EVERYONE. That’s the part of the trailer that makes sense at least. After that, everything is unclear. As best I can tell, she is in a relationship with both of the men (Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch) who run a marijuana dispensary. It’s totally on the up-and-up (except for the 1% Kitsch apparently needs to handle with violence), so naturally a Mexican cartel needs to come in and screw it up. Our entrepreneurs politely decline a proposed business arrangement, which enrages the cartel to unfathomable levels. Because both men are in a relationship with the same girl, kidnapping her would give the cartel total leverage. They do just that, which prompts the hippies (I mean, look at that hair) to take down an entire cartel. This is unbelievable on about eight different levels.

There’s also some salty dialogue between Lively and apparent cartel boss Salma Hayek, who appears to only be in this movie for the money.

You’ve probably heard about this trailer for the threesome, but if that’s the reason you’re going to watch it, don’t even bother. There’s a little skin, but it’s impossible to determine if a threesome is even going on.

To Rome With Love

This trailer is all over the place, and no storyline is covered enough to really get a sense of it from this trailer. What I can say, however, is that having Jesse Eisenberg in a Woody Allen movie might deliver more combined neuroticism and angst than anyone can handle.

Ted

A movie set in my hometown! This trailer goes from clichéd to amusingly weird very quickly. The Thunder Song immediately proves that Seth MacFarlane’s comedy can translate to live-action. “Guess the white trash name” is an example of MacFarlane staying with a joke a little too long, but once again it paid off. It’s also another trope he’s carried over from Family Guy. In all, it’s quite funny, but it leaves a major question. While it’s great that Ted drinks, smokes, and is a womanizer, the trailer doesn’t really explain what he is. Is he reanimated? Is he a person Mark Wahlberg sees as a stuffed animal? How are they so attached if he shows such an ability to exist on his own?

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

The Dictator

Wait … this is a fish out of water movie? Anna Faris is in it too? Did she get cast last week? What’s going on? I was getting excited for an hour and a half of possibly racist caricatures of various Middle Eastern dictators. This trailer frames that as just being the prologue to General Aladeen’s (Sacha Baron Cohen) trip to speak at the UN. Once there, he’s taken captive by … Homeland Security? Instead of interrogating him, they cut off his beard and release him back into the city. Besides the multitude of issues that must pose in relation to the Geneva Convention, how could that possible make sense as a counter-terrorism strategy? I am befuddled, and we’re only halfway through the trailer. Instead of finding his way back to his hotel, Aladeen gets a job at a store, and hilarity allegedly ensues. This is a very strange turn, and is only saved by the repartee in the helicopter at the end.

House At The End Of The Street

I’ve been all in on Jennifer Lawrence for some time, so I would’ve been excited for this trailer even if it didn’t arrive amidst The Hunger Games supernova. So, by releasing this trailer this week it’ll get picked apart far more than is normal. While there isn’t a lot to pick apart, there’s also not a lot to highlight. It seems to be a fairly straightforward plot, “there was a double murder in this house, now the inhabitants of that house are haunted.” While the presence of chloroform at the beginning hints that there is something more nefarious than ghosts going on, that could just be because the ghosts are demanding payment or something. I don’t know. Not helping the trailer’s cause is that it goes backwards chronologically as it progresses. That’s some Memento shit there! But not really. Going backwards just makes the trailer more confusing, and that’s not a good thing for a trailer to be.

People Like Us

Look at that, another Hunger Games person had a trailer come out this week. I can’t imagine the chances of that, although I’m excited for the trailer for Wes Bentley’s one-man show to come out next week. This is a weird one, insomuch as it plays up the potential incest angle far more than is socially acceptable. Chris Pine is some sort of high-powered whatever, but he’s also mired in some sort of intractable debt. Student loans? Poor investments? Drug connections? Whatever it is, he apparently needs to pay it off immediately. Enter the deus ex machina that is his father’s death. Pine is bequeathed $150,000, which is apparently enough to cover his debt. Instead of immediately covering said debt though, he waits long enough that he learns he has a half-sister, played by Elizabeth Banks. They interact for a while, and he assures her that he will never hit on her. This is reasonable because they’re half-siblings, except at that point she doesn’t know that they’re half-siblings. He doesn’t want to tell her, because he wants to keep the money. Instead, they become engaged in some sort of pseudo-romance, despite the fact that he is going out with Olivia Wilde (criminally underused in this trailer). Now, the issue is that he finds out he has a half-sister who needs money at the precise moment he gets enough money to pay off all of his own debt. Why does he need to pay it off immediately? He makes almost $90,000 a year, can’t he spread his debt out over a few years? Also, if the money came from his father’s estate, why wasn’t it given to him at the will reading where he learned of Banks’ existence? Furthermore, how did being at that reading not clue her in to his existence? His money HAD to have been mentioned, right? Isn’t that what wills are for? Was it some sort of secret stash of money? What possible reason could there be for that to exist?

Rise of The Guardians

Jesus fucking holy hell, what is this? First of all, it has nothing to do with the owls of Ga’Hoole. Instead, it seems to indicate that the Easter Bunny, Sandman, Santa Claus, and Tooth Fairy are fighting the Boogeyman and are somehow benevolent overseers of the world’s children? Why are we deputizing these holiday barons? Even more, how is this a children’s movie if it features a bunch of characters kids think are real doing patently not-real things? I can’t even handle this. Let’s move on.

The Avengers

Teaser trailers don’t get much better than this. Focused primarily on a conversation between Loki and Tony Stark, it lays out everything there is to expect, highlights all of the film’s principles, and alludes to the film’s plot without really giving anything away. Tom Hiddleston is deliciously evil while Robert Downey Jr. is as charismatic as usual. On top of that, we get to see what Loki’s army looks like. Apparently, the enemies in The Avengers will be the prawns from District 9 once they’ve returned to their home world to hit the gym for a while. Also, they have gold crowns for some reason. All around, this is a great trailer. Watch it on loop.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Snow White and The Huntsman

My gosh is this a good trailer. It opens with Charlize Theron’s Queen Ravenna taking a bath in milk while another kingdom falls to her glory. This is all presumably a precursor to her calling that kingdom’s own queen to her and killing her by absorbing her life force/beauty. Obviously, she needs to keep doing this, or else they wouldn’t need to keep conquering kingdoms. It also means this trailer has the stage for this film’s conflict in twenty-five seconds. That’s really impressive.

Moving on, we see that the mirror on her wall takes the shape of a bronze oracle, which shows just how much this movie is its own story, as opposed to a faithful adaptation. That’s awesome. Bronze Oracle Mirror then informs Ravenna that if she eats Snow White’s heart, she’ll live forever. Not pulling any punches, are they?

While I have some issues with the idea that Kristen Stewart could be the fairest lady in an entire enchanted world, she is rough enough around the edges that she is a fit for this movie. Lily Collins could not play this role.

Chris Hemsworth’s (It’s a good week for Hemsworths) Huntsman is then enlisted (under pain of death?) to search the Dark Forest for Snow White. He does, and almost immediately switches allegiances. Hey Queen Ravenna – honey over vinegar. Then, it becomes apparent that Snow White will be the one to end the darkness. Well, obviously.

Then, we hear the line from Ravenna that encompasses this trailer perfectly, “I should have killed her when she was a child. I need her heart beating with blood.” Dark re-imagining, indeed. It takes a lovely fairy tale and energetically fills it with evil. Fantastic.

The Host

This is how you make a teaser trailer! I have next to no idea what’s going on and yet I am ready to see this movie. It builds tension and highlights the gravitas of the situation by slowly moving the Earth in front of the Sun while the narrator gives a creepy, extra-breathy explanation of how the world has become a utopia. This is a strong opening, and becomes many degrees better when it becomes apparent that we may not be responsible for this perfection and that we need to fight for our survival as a species. This is reflected in the ubiquitous rings in the eyes of people all over the world, rings that mimic the Earth eclipsing the Sun. It’s a nice, tight trailer that gives nothing away. Are we the hosts? Did the parasites we’re hosting cause the world’s perfection? Are they opportunists who waited until we did it ourselves? Is the Earth the host? Has everyone been infected? Moreover, it gives me joy to learn that Stephenie Meyer spells her name like a crazy person.

Breaking Dawn, Part 2

Looks like she’s getting the last laugh this week though. I honestly thought we were done with these. As a person who’s not seen any of the movies or read any of the books, it has everything I’ve come to expect from these films: beautiful landscapes, people moving swiftly through forests, Taylor Lautner’s stilted reading of mediocre lines, and … commentary on the pleasure of being the same temperature? It kills me to know that this is because Edward had to vampirize Bella her to save her life. I CANNOT ESCAPE YOU, POPULAR CULTURE.

Prometheus

Meanwhile, the Prometheus people tried to oversaturate the market by releasing to trailers this week. Supply and demand people. I’m not going to give them the satisfaction though, and am going to treat the UK and Wondercon trailers as if they were a single cut. Thankfully, they cover much of the same material.

This trailer provides us with the film’s back story – many of our ancient civilizations had art that pointed to the same constellation, so we need to investigate that part of the galaxy. Obviously. A team is commissioned to go to space, and when they arrive wherever it is they’ve arrived, they find some all sorts of evidence to indicate that going there was the right idea. They also get attacked by what is, based on this trailer, a sentient cloud of organisms capable of burrowing into the skin, causing madness, hemorrhaging, and piloting a ship to Earth. Basically, going to this planet is like opening Pandora’s Box.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Prometheus

A trailer for a trailer? What the hell is this? There was already a theatrical trailer, and this teaser barely builds off it. It fails at effectively teasing the movie, and isn’t the point of a teaser to build anticipation? You can’t go back and forth on something like this. The order is all wrong. With all of that in mind, what is this video really teasing? There’s a ship flying to planet. That ship lands on the planet, and a few vehicles leave it to explore the surface. Then, we see individuals exploring, some strange energy orbs flying down a tunnel, and general chaos. This chaos takes us through to the end of the teaser, but consists almost entirely of footage or events we’ve already seen. The only new element is the red orbs. Is that what I’m supposed to be excited about? “Ooh, I can’t wait to see two more seconds of a thing that won’t make sense out of context anyway!”

The Avengers

This is the Japanese trailer, so you’ll have to wade through a little Japanese voice-over. Amusingly, there is no word in Japanese for Avengers. The trailer itself rehashes many of the beats of previous trailers (The Avengers don’t like each other, etc.), but throws in a few carrots. The most notable of these is the realization that Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts will be in this film. To me though, the most important part of the trailer is that Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye is finally allowed to speak. He’s only an Avenger, for goodness sakes. A couple other nuggets: Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury shoots a bazooka and Cobie Smulders also gets to speak for the first time. It’s definitely a trailer worth seeing, if for nothing else than to hear the Japanese VO guy say, “Avengers.”

Battleship

I bet they released this trailer this week to capitalize on John Carter (zing!). Since this was my lasting impression of the previous trailer, I didn’t have any idea what to expect from this trailer. It begins with a scene reminiscent of (but ¼ as interesting as) the operation scene in Independence Day. Some random violence ensues, along with the revelation that Hong Kong is the city that is being destroyed. I suppose a person with knowledge of international skylines would already know that, but I am not that person. After causing me to worry about the effect Hong Kong’s destruction will have on the world’s economy, this trailer of course culminates with an exchange between both of Friday Night Lights’ representatives in this film.

Landry: ”What are your orders?”

Riggins: “We’re not going down without a fight.”

Oh, I thought you would sit there placidly as you were exterminated. My bad. On the bright side, Rihanna is able to show off her acting chops with the fantastically-written, “Boom!” I’m pretty sure her songs have more depth than this movie.

Quick recap: an unconscionable number of explosions combined with Taylor Kitsch’s lackadaisical charisma. It’ll probably be a serviceable action movie, but I’m not expecting anything special.

(That’s right, I just did a recap in a recap. Take that, teaser for a trailer people!)

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz