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

Men In Black 3

Much like the first trailer, this trailer provides exactly what you would expect from Men In Black. Will Smith starts with an amusing quip about goldfish as we see the massive fight he just had with a fish. This is followed by some comparably amusing physical comedy involving a tongue that is way too long – nothing too serious here. We already know the film’s premise – some sort of dimensional change has placed Will Smith in a position wherein Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent K has not been alive for forty years. Smith’s Agent J decides to go back in time to rectify this situation somehow (time travel paradoxes surely abound regardless of his plan). There, he finds a young K, played by Josh Brolin, who mimics Jones’ cadence almost flawlessly. Great casting there. Little is achieved in the past, although there is another humorous interaction with Bill Hader as Andy Warhol, who is surprisingly not an alien.

Side note: Lady Gaga is rumored to be in this film. What are the chances that they make a joke about her being an alien at the end of the movie, a la Dennis Rodman in the first film?

The Hunger Games

We have another Hunger Games clip, and you better believe that I’m going to keep talking about this movie until it comes out in two weeks! It’s not a great clip though. Whereas the clip we saw last week represented an important point of the plot’s progression, this clip focuses on some of the minutiae of the story. It also features our first real glimpse at Lenny Kravitz, actor. Ya, he did Precious, but I’ve not seen Precious. Anyway, this clip is the first time Katniss and Cinna meet, which is both notable and forgettable. Every time Jennifer Lawrence speaks in this clip, I think, “Katniss is so angry and guarded right now.” Every time Lenny Kravitz speaks, I think, “Lenny Kravitz is trying to act. Lenny Kravitz is trying to act.” Once again, he appears to be too forthright with his rebellious tendencies, but that’s something I’ve resigned myself to.

21 Jump Street

A red band trailer? Oh dear. I continue to be annoyed by websites that ask you to enter your birthday to make sure you’re old enough to view whatever media they are in charge of. Who are they fooling? Do they think people will be too surprised by the sudden appearance of an internet form that they won’t be able to come up with a fake birth date. Despite being of age, I always put the wrong date, on principle. It is for this reason that I learned this week that February 29, 1983 is a date they accept, despite the fact that that date never happened.

The trailer itself is solid, even though it pretty much just expands on what we’ve seen in the other trailers. The opening sequence has an amusing conversation in which Channing Tatum tells a biker he’ll beat his dick off. A fun turn of a phrase, it culminates with Jonah Hill getting absolutely trucked by a massive biker. An arrest ensues, and Hill celebrates by shooting his gun in the air. Four times. All of this is amusing, but the whole incompetent cop shtick can wear off pretty quickly. Thankfully, the trailer veers away from that and instead comes back with a few more mind-twisting dialogues. Funny, but not hysterical. The way they see Rob Riggle while using the drug is also moderately funny, but not original.

There are, however, a few legitimately entertaining moments towards the end. In what appears to be a typical, “savant writing on a blackboard” scene, Channing Tatum explains a complex science/math problem (what he says doesn’t make any sense), but when we see the board he’s only written “4’ a few hundred times in various sizes and colors. The two best lines go to Ice Cube though. When hearing that Tatum and Hill are throwing a party, he cautions, “If any of my officers are caught giving alcohol to minors, they’ll find themselves with a snorkel duct-taped to their mouth, and me shitting down that snorkel.” Guess that’s why this is a red band trailer. Finally, “So let me get this straight, you [Hill] fell in with the cool kids, and yo ass [Tatum] fell in with the smart kids? Those drugs are fucking up these kids more than I thought.”

Side note: Dave Franco was playing a med student on Scrubs three years ago. We’re supposed to believe him as a high school student now? Come on.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

The Avengers

Starting with an Inception boom and what sounds like a warning from Mace Windu about the Sith menace, this trailer is about as straightforward as they come. It introduces us to the four Avengers who had their own movies (yes, 2008’s Ruffalo-less The Incredible Hulk counts). Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow needs no recruiting, so she is tasked with bringing the Hulk on board. She finds a way to persuade him (not with sex, with guns you guys). Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury goes to recruit Chris Evan’s Captain America, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, and Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man. All four show a degree of wariness, while the Hulk doesn’t even want to go. Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, meanwhile, doesn’t even get to speak. I assume this has something to do with him being a sharpshooter, and the fact that they’re loners. Or something. Loki also gets some play, talking down to Nick Fury because he has to enlist the help of … a god, a billionaire, a monster, a Captain America, the world’s best shooter, and… whatever Black Widow’s skills are. He is a wonderfully despicable villain.

The Hunger Games

This is just a short clip, so I’ll go through it quickly. It plays about the same way it does in the book, with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) initially focusing on the target before focusing on the pig. Even in this short sample, it is evident that the movie will have good pacing. The buildup to Katniss’ first shot is perfectly replaced by the uninterrupted conversation of the Gamemakers. Her irritation and disgust with them translates exceptionally well, and pinning the apple to the wall achieves just the right mix of shock and amazement among the Gamemakers.

That’s My Boy

Movie opens with Adam Sandler in a Jacuzzi with a bunch of model types: Oh, looks like Adam is playing a rich guy again because he can only relate to rich people now

Rex Ryan inexplicably shows up as his tax advisor to tell him he needs to pay $43,000 or go to jail for three years: looks like he’s not rich, he’s a schmuck

Sandler (naturally) goes to a strip club to try to figure out what to do, stripper Ciara explains to him that his son is a hedge fund manager: oh, he’s a deadbeat schmuck?

This movie is coming out on Father’s Day: go fuck yourselves Columbia Pictures

Sandler enters with, “Wazzup!”: does this movie take place in the past?

Andy Samberg spits on a lady: classy

Classic sequence where we hear how abysmal a father Sandler was, combined with the first real emergence of his horrible Boston accent: as a Bostonian, the all-around laziness here actually hurts my heart. That kind of fumbled accent makes people violent.

A second spitting joke: if the best jokes are in trailers, and they had to rely on this terrible gag twice, what could possibly be left?

Vanilla Ice with a bong/a stripper CALLING Sandler to remind him he could go to jail/a girl catch a fly ball with her cleavage: WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Brief sequence where Sandler teaches Samberg to stick up for himself: someone who became a hedge fund manager that young is obviously capable of sticking up for himself

Ear-piercing scene: Please, stop this

The Leighton Meester wedding dress joke: this actually titillated me. It makes up for 11% of the horrible stuff in this trailer. Adam, please go do something else.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

American Reunion

As sequel ideas go, few are more fitting than having the entire cast of American Pie come back for a high school reunion. Enough time has passed that everyone was available, while the American Pie audience would still be interested in seeing another sequel. They’re going to get one too, because this trailer hints at a movie that portrays superficial maturity while presenting all the same sophomoric hijinks.

The first such gag is a joke about the pages of a pornographic magazine being stuck together. It takes Jim (Jason Biggs) and his dad (Eugene Levy) a full second to realize what this means – no subtlety here! Next up, we have the hot neighbor Jim used to babysit, because obviously that needed to happen. Predictably, Stifler (Seann William Scott) encourages him to take advantage of this situation. There’s a decent sight gag about married people having sex, and that’s about it. No one seems to have changed, but now they are looking down on the behavior that was so popular in the first film.

A couple notes:

• Who would’ve guessed after the first film that Alyson Hannigan would wind up having the strongest career?
• How long must it have taken to reanimate Tara Reid?

Brave

There is no good way for me to segue into this trailer, which is a clip of a single scene. What I can do is comment on it. The three men arching for Merida’s heart (that’s what’s happening, right?) fit nicely into cartoon stereotypes of that situation – a massive, uncoordinated brute, an athletic and cocky skinny person, and an incompetent weakling. The fact that the incompetent weakling lucks into having the best shot is another cliché, and that is not encouraging. Pixar usually has more originality than that. What really bothers me, though, is why is something as arbitrary as archery used to determine who will marry the princess? Moreover, why is each archer only allowed a single shot? If I determined that archery skill was the most important attribute for a suitable husband for my daughter, wouldn’t I want there to be an elaborate archery competition to determine, without a doubt, who the best archer is?

Wrath of The Titans

So … the Titans are breaking out, even though Zeus had thought they were imprisoned forever? They were gods after all, shouldn’t someone have been keeping an eye on them? Whatever. This trailer is another orgy of action scenes. There certainly seems to be a lot going on, but without any real context, all I can say is, “Oooh, look at that monster. Ooh, that monster has two heads. That guy is made of lava, and he looks angry.” I mean, the first trailer got that point across well enough, what’s the point of this one?

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Dark Tide

I saw Catwoman for the first time last week, and it is so horribly abysmal that Halle Berry’s performance hung over this trailer for me. Everything Halle said sounded bad to me, but that also might be because this trailer’s terrible. Is this whole movie about people going down in cages to observe sharks? How could that possibly be a compelling wide release? As best I can tell, Halle plays a famed sharkologist who is not making enough to keep her boat. Doesn’t that sort of research depend on grant money? Is she a private shark researcher, or is she actually just giving tours in shark-infested waters? Whatever the ridiculous reason, she doesn’t have enough money. Enter a wealthy crazy person who wants to swim with sharks outside the cage. Halle (and co-star and real life boyfriend Olivier Martinez, to a lesser degree) are wary of the situation but realize they need the money. This leads to everyone going out on the water in the middle of a horrible storm. Why would they lower the cage in such choppy water? None of this makes sense to me.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Holy fuck. The only thing this trailer need to be effective is confirmation that Abraham Lincoln does indeed hunt vampires. It does so much more though. Along with a truly intense score and a handful of fantastic, period-specific fighting sequences, there are flaming train tracks WITH A TRAIN ON THEM. It doesn’t look like this movie is holding anything back. Oh, there is also a man who makes a tree explode with a single ax swing.

A couples notes:

• Mary Elizabeth Winstead is playing Mary Todd Lincoln. This may be the only instance in which there is a sexy Mrs. Lincoln.
• As a history major, I hope more than anything else that Stephen Douglass is the leader of the vampires.
• Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln will feed my superego, but this movie is going to feed my id.
• Nancy Hanks Lincoln was Abraham Lincoln’s mother, and the presence of her gravestone (er, gravewood?) suggests that she was either killed by vampires or has herself become a vampire.
• According to Wikipedia, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of milk sickness. She is also, apparently, the third cousin four times removed of Tom Hanks. That’s enough irreverence even before the inclusion of vampires.

Intruders

Leading a trailer by highlighting that the movie was directed by the director of 28 Weeks Later is a bad start. That movie had so many irrational decisions I don’t even know where to start. Every component of the premise was flawed. That’s neither here nor there though. This trailer appears to have a girl writing a scary story that happens to be happening to her. Is she writing it as it happens? Is it happening because she’s writing it? Are we supposed to believe it’s a coincidence? Whatever the deal is, she gets scared that Hollowface is in the house and informs her father, Clive Owen. He sees this monstrosity, but for some reason no one believes him. The natural progression would be to then ask the girl what happened, but since no one does that, it’s fair to assume something happened to her. What could have happened to her to keep her from responding but to not arouse suspicion from anyone else? I am genuinely intrigued, but if the conclusion winds up being some bullshit like, “We just changed the ending to the story in her diary,” I am going to be very upset.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Amazing Spider-Man

Let’s take a look at some of the characters we have in this trailer:

• Andrew Garfield as the witty but vulnerable Peter Parker, who makes criminals look foolish both physically and verbally.
• Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, doing all sorts of Emma Stone things.
• Denis Leary as her father, a dickish New York cop with an unflexible view of what’s right and wrong.
• Martin Sheen as Parker’s well-meaning, if distant, uncle Ben.
• Rhys Ifans as the slippery Dr. Curt Connors.

All of these characters are good roles for the actors playing them, and that is promising. While the trailer doesn’t appear to sway much from the formula in the previous three films, Garfield seems like a better fit as Spider-Man. Instead of Tobey Maguire’s nerdy awkwardness, Garfield looks comfortable in the role. He’s just as adept making fun of criminals as he is feeling insecure about his parents.

The Bourne Legacy

The first half of this trailer gives a mostly-obscured view of the transformation Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross goes through to become the agent he is. It’s very propaganda/brain wash-y, which fits for this series. Once we arrive at full screen, the transition from Matt Damon is completed with the quick line, “Jason Bourne was just the tip of the iceberg.” Oh, good. I’m glad you guys are so on top of this.

It turns out Aaron is far and away the best they’ve ever seen. Wasn’t Jason Bourne the best? Why do they keep losing track of their best agents? More importantly, why are they so unprepared when they lose them? This is the CIA, shouldn’t there be some protocol for handling … whatever it is that keeps happening? This is especially surprising because so many characters return for this movie, including David Strathairn’s Noah Vosen and Joan Allen’s Pam Landy. Still, rogue agent stories can only go on for so long, right?

Seeking a Friend at the End of the World

As odd a pair as Steve Carell and Keira Knightley look initially, they appear to have great chemistry in this trailer. Set against a world that will end in three weeks, they are both people looking for the ones they love to spend time with. Despite the heavy material, it is almost entirely a humorous trailer.

Not only does Carell’s character go into his (almost deserted) office, he still has to deal with office nonsense. Knightley’s character is introduced to us with the line, “Maybe I’ll run into you at an orgy or something.” Carell struggles with the language barrier and eventually gives up when attempting to tell his maid she doesn’t need to come any more. Along with some end-of-the-world hijinks plus a smattering of Patton Oswalt, Connie Britton, T.J. Miller, and Rob Huebel, makes it look like an exceptionally funny film.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Hunger Games

This is the first of two Super Bowl movie trailers (along with an Avengers trailers that shows us carnage and the faces of all of the protagonists) that came out this week. This trailer amplifies the emotion of the first theatrical trailer. Instead of showing us Effie’s (Elizabeth Banks) bubbly personality, we see her and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) expressing excitement and glee about the approach of the Games. Instead of showing Gale (Liam Hemsworth) carrying Prim (Willow Shields) away, we see her face as she screams. Instead of a brief shot of training, we see just how intensely Cato (Alexander Ludwig) maims a dummy. Instead of seeing Katniss’ (Jennifer Lawrence) fears about her own death we see just how worried she is about her family’s survival. The Capitol even looks more grandiose.

All of these components have developed nicely, but the biggest part of this trailer is the Mockingjay pin. In the book, Katniss did not give it to Prim. Madge Undersee gave it to Katniss after she volunteered to go into the games. Since no one is listed on IMDB as playing Madge Undersee, it appears that that plot has been changed for the sake of efficiency. It doesn’t make much difference in this movie, but there are a few references down the line that will have to be changed.

More worrisome though, right at the end Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) affixes the pin to Katniss’ clothing and makes it seem like she should keep quiet about it. In the book, she is freely allowed to wear it. If she weren’t, it would be removed immediately, because the Gamemakers have that power. The fact that it is made to seem like an illicit object hints towards revolution way too early in the trilogy’s arc.

A couple other exciting notes:

• We see a brief shot of Katniss, arrow taut on her bow, in the Hunger Games. That’s about as close as we’ve gotten to fighting footage from this film.
• We also hear the first reference to her as, “The Girl on Fire.” With that on the table, I’d like to mention something. I’ve been saying for months that Adele’s Set Fire to The Rain should be involved with this movie somehow, surely we can get that ball moving forward now? (I also apparently need to tweet about this connection again on February 12).

Lockout

Last week made it two weeks in a row that a major trailer came out after I finished this article. Damn you arbitrary (and self-imposed) deadlines! This trailer was worth it though. Why? Because Lockout appears to be the rare movie that is both ultra-clichéd and batshit insane.

To start, we have the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace) visiting a prison in space that is home to the world’s most criminally insane individuals. Now, women are often asked to wear loose clothing in low-security prisons to as not to rile up the inmates. With that in mind, sending someone as attractive as Maggie to a normal prison would require a certain deal of preparation and baggy clothing. In this prison, there probably shouldn’t ever be any women, let alone Maggie. The fact that she is the president’s daughter should also merit a flurry of security precautions. No one seems to think of any of this though. Not only is she dressed to the nines, SHE’S WEARING FUCKING JEWELRY.

Setting aside this horribly improbably beginning, the prison has become overrun by its inmates because a single inmate gets a single gun in an interrogation room. His possession of a gun inexplicably causes an explosion. I cannot fathom a reason for why security standards would be so lax or explosive materials would be so readily available. We don’t have time to ponder that question though, there’s too much to cover.

Apparently only one man capable of rescuing such a situation and saving the president’s daughter, Guy Pearce’s “Snow.” Naturally, “He’s the best there is, but he’s a loose cannon.” Great writing! Now, if I may ask a question, why is only one man permitted to save the president’s daughter and restore order to the most dangerous prison to ever exist? Aren’t there always “extraction teams” for situations like this? What are the various branches of the military doing about the situation? How about the guards in the prison? Have they all been killed? How did that happen? Also, the man who is apparently the best there is for a mission in space is afraid of heights.

Not crazy enough for you? How about the fact that, again, this orbiting jail (I love the idea, by the way. 22^nd century Alcatraz?) is home to the world’s most criminally insane individuals? Wait, if that’s not enough, the space station is apparently going to crash into the eastern seaboard as well.

I think I’m going to have to suspend my disbelief for this one.

G.I. Joe.

Here’s our other Super Bowl trailer. The majority of the trailer is The Rock quoting Jay-Z and then mindless action scenes flashing across the screen as we hear the portion of the song that The Rock just quoted. Make no mistake, this movie is the definition of mindless drivel. Instead of going down that road though, I would like to focus on the cliff scene once again. I just stopped having nightmares about why no one involved uses the weapon most perfectly suited to cut rope TO CUT THE ROPES THAT KEEP THEIR ENEMIES ALIVE, and now I see that no one is even trying to use their swords. “Hey look, I have this super sharp sword, why don’t I kick that guy in the head?” Also, Bruce Willis is now demanding that we call him Joe. This movie is too much for me. I need it to stop.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz