Trailers for three of next summer's biggest movies bombarded the Net this week, leaving nothing but continuous and sometimes contentious fanboy debate in their wake. Well, I've got two cent's worth of opinion too, and I'm ready to spend it, damn it.
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
Yeah, sure, this teaser is generic as hell what with its blaring Inception horns, warp-drive-quick cuts and villainous speechifying. But when that villain is played by the great Benedict Cumberbatch, WHO THE HELL CARES? Other things I don't care about: That the hull of the Enterprise can seemingly survive a dive under water, that Into Darkness takes partially takes place back on planet Earth, that J.J. Abrams' second Star Trek film looks to be a darker affair than his first go-round, and that nobody knows who the hell Cumberbatch is playing in the first place. I figure all will be revealed in good time, and I enjoyed Star Trek '09 well enough that it's going to take more than 60 seconds of fleeting images to shake my faith in his vision for this franchise. There's supposedly a longer version of this trailer coming in a few days. Bring it.
THE LONE RANGER
My biggest problem here is the music. It sucks. And it sucks all the more when you consider The Lone Ranger is already strongly associated with the William Tell Overture, one of the most trailer-ready bits of music ever recorded. What, do the studio execs worry that brass horns are going to stop mall kids from seeing this? Feh! Despite the crappy music, some of the sequences teased here, like the train crash, look like the kind of big-budget mayhem director Gore Verbinski excels at. Armie Hammer appears movie-star-ready, and I feel that Johnny Depp charm something fierce when his eyes bulge out at the 51-second mark. Still, nailing the old-west-mysticism vibe I think Verbinski is going for here could be tricky, and this trailer offers no overwhelming evidence that he's sure to pull it off. If he doesn't, The Lone Ranger could end up a hokey mess.
MAN OF STEEL
By far the best of the three trailers. From the sight of ice and show swirling around a kneeling Superman as he powers up to blast into space to Kevin Coster's warm yet conflicted parental advice as Jonathan Kent to the quick glimpses of an epic throwdown between Supes and Michael Shannon's Zod — this thing soars on all counts. Director Zack Snyder's vivid imagery promises an epic and thoughtful Superman film that erases all the damage done by Bryan Singer's ill-fated Superman Returns, and the little teensy whiff we get of Henry Cavill's performance, like the bit of dialogue at the end, has me believing the guy has a real chance to own the part. No easy feat that. Please, please, please let the whole movie be as good as this trailer.
