Amph The Trailer Park: The Three Stooges (2012)

From G.I. Joe we go to a trailer for a movie a few people might buy a ticket for.

Starring Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Anne Hathaway, Morgan Freeman,
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy, among others.

Directed by Christopher Nolan.

The Dark Knight Rises(2012)

Win or Fail?

 

I actually saw this one in theaters and, well, it does nothing for me. I'll probably see it, but I don't particularly feel any need to.

 

For me, the most interesting thing in the trailer was the line Michael Caine had.

 

Well, I saw this on the IMAX screen when I caught Ghost Protocol over the weekend. It doesn't do a whole lot for me. I'm surprised by the whole "we are the 99%" vibe to Hathaway's speech; I doubt the movie as a whole will have a serious slant in that direction though. Bane does not look particularly great to me; I don't care for his giant coat or whatever that is. Hathaway actually looks pretty good; she appears muted, more in keeping with the tone of Nolan's films so far. I missed the glimpse of JGL on the big screen it was so fast, but I caught it this time. It doesn't blow me away or anything, but I still trust Nolan and I appreciate that he didn't really tell me much about the movie: time has passed (we know how much from other comments Nolan has made), Gotham is in a period of peace and prosperity, Gordon is on the way out, Batman is probably retired, "there's a storm coming," Bane appears to have engineered something rather like the Arkham release that he did in Knightfall, he's aiming to take Gotham down and . . . that's about all. I dig that. Not a great trailer, but I appreciate that it isn't a tell-all and I'm still going to see the movie.

 

I've got my own little theory about how the film will play out, based on the trailer, but I won't spoil anyone.

I liked it. Brought alot of spoilers that had previously led nowhere to something approaching a cohesive whole, and had some nifty scenes. Nowhere near as good as any of the trailers for the prequels, but those were a class act (and my personal bar for good trailers) and this was decent.

 

It's Tom Conti.

The trailer meanders until the "...permission to die." line leads straight into the sizzle reel with the chanting (which was hugely effective in the prologue). Which is terrific. Not as good as the first theatrical trailer for The Dark Knight, but then that was one of the all-time great modern trailers.

The great thing is that it gives you an idea of what the film will be like with no idea of what will actually happen in the film. I remember that one of the masterstrokes of The Dark Knight's marketing campaign is that next to nothing from the final act was used in any of the materials released before the film. Everything that happens after Gotham General is destroyed was completely unseen.

But even if the trailer itself isn't great, the film itself looks superb. Photographically and in terms of scale, which somehow looks larger again than The Dark Knight. Apparently two key influences on the film are A Tale of Two Cities and Prince of the City, which is very intriguing. One shot in particular is almost lifted straight out of Prince of the City.

 

I was referring to when Caine said,

"I swore to them I would protect you. And I haven't."

I thought it was powerfully delivered.

 

Not entirely. There's the final shot of the film, "And here . . . we . . . go!", the Two-Face in the car glimpse, and Gordon destroying the Batsignal. Though only the latter two have any real giveaway potential, and Two-Face shouldn't be anything surprising. But overall, yeah, you really have no idea of the narrative or glimpse into the final act of the film.

As for this trailer, I think we have even less of a glimpse into the narrative here. We can tell that Bane is out to bring Gotham to its knees, and only leaks and casting lets you put that together to know that it's probably on behalf of the League of Shadows. Batman has been out of commission a while, Catwoman appears to resent the upper crust of Gotham but we have no idea what her game is, and pretty much all the other shots raise more questions than they answer. In terms of the trailer craft, it's clunky, but it performs the real goal of getting me excited and looking forward to the film admirably. Even if I am distracted by Hines Ward's Hines Wardness.

 

Batman sitting atop his Batpod surveying the... soundscape was also in a TV spot, as well as Maroni's car flipping but yeah, you know what I mean. They were all really brief snippets. In addition to that, the whole city hunting for Reese wasn't revealed either, which was major. And even though a lot of Inception was revealed, it was how it was all pieced together that was the joy of it.

Honestly, I don't care that the trailer isn't exactly some stroke of genius, it's the questions are raised that matters. Rather than most films where you can pretty much apply genre convention and figure out precisely what will happen. To whom.

More importantly, the film looks like it will very much be continuing Nolan's thematic through line of the value and morality of lies which he's been doing since The Prestige. Characters actually being punished for their lies is disturbingly scarce in Hollywood, and that is perhaps the most tantalizing aspect of this whole piece.

That and the Batplane.

 

Agreeing with 2nd Quest that it's a coincidence: there's a lot of Year One and Long Halloween influence in Begins and TDK, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if Catwoman's angle was taking down the system that screwed her. Especially since that was her angle in those books.

 

I liked the trailer but I will admit a lot of it was underwhelming because it was so simplistic. I really disagree though about Bane being a reason for it being underwhelming. I think Hardy and his voice are awesome. I guess I think I needed to see more of what happened to Batman and Gordon to really get into it but I'm glad Nolan is being hush hush in a way.

Great trailer? I'd say very good instead.

 

I like the first teaser a lot more now that I've seen it with subtitles, it's on youtube. The second one is just okay for me, are the women in these Nolan batmans miscast? I prefer Katie Holmes in the first one to Maggie and Anne in the sequels. I'm not saying she was spectacular but I wasn't annoyed by her like I was the other ladies.

I don't see the big deal with a bunch of prisoners walking out chanting and carrying guns lol, it's nothing new. Here's hoping this movie does good though.

And I too found Alfred's line to be powerful, and the best part of the whole trailer.

 

Nolan gets full credit for staying true to the recent film history of the franchise, since miscasting Catwoman is a time-honored tradition, now stretching across at least three movies. And Anne Hathaway seems like an authentic effort to make the worst possible choice, with the possible exception of Miley Cyrus. Hathaway is such an unfortunately underwhelming bad girl. Anyone see Havoc? I think Miranda Cosgrove or maybe Jennifer Aniston could have competed as bad Catwomen. Claire Danes? I know, Katherine Heigl. No wait: Zooey Deschanel.

 

Who would you cast, Jabba?

 

Oprah Winfrey or Carrie Fisher.

 

Kind of. I'm betting we'll get a full-on replay of Batman being forced to recapture literally all of them, like in Knightfall; that happened after the fact in Begins and TBH, the Arkham breakout in Begins was kind of minor in terms of what was going on around it.

 

I think that's a Blackgate (or whatever it's called) breakout. If it was Arkham, you wouldn't have an army - there'd just be rampaging nutters, like in Begins. Bane wants an army, so he goes to the vanilla gaol.

 

Besides the Alfred line, I wasn't crazy about the trailer. I'll give Christopher Nolan the benefit of the doubt (and I don't fault him for the Hathaway casting--yet.) Should be epic.

 

Lots of great trailers are playing right now with all the big Christmas movies coming out.

Here's a compilation of five of the biggest of them:

The Alien Prequel
Ridley Scott's Prometheus(2012)

Starring Tom Hardy, Chris Pine and Reese Witherspoon
Spy vs. Spy(2012)

Liam Neeson and Taylor Kitsch star in this one
Battleship(2012)

Sacha Baron Cohen stars in this one, with a cameo by Barack Obama
The Dictator(2012)
When I saw this in the theatre, it got a lot of laughs and strong reaction

Nicholas Cage has lots of financial problems, so he did this sequel for the money
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance(2012)

Wins or fails?