It’s no secret that Hollywood loves to sell the latest ridiculously silly summer children’s’ films by pretending, in ads, that it’s an effort of grave importance, epic in both scale and significance.
This says a lot about marketing’s ability to attract formerly clear-headed adults into these types of entertainments and eventually pilot the proud infantilisation of an audience that consists of grown men and women settling for tentpole blockbusters instead of films about and for them, leading to a basterdized marketplace that caters to the every whim of adults with severe cases of arrested development- an audience that neglects the real humanism of the great films of yesterday, the contents of our former classics now becoming ‘niche’ offerings while our former B-stories originally meant for brief indulgences now dominate the marketplace.
Enter the new trailer for “Star Trek,” the eleventh offering in the space opera franchise, and one that suggests grave importance to the story of a bunch of silly humans piloting an improbable ship in an unrecognizably distant future into the deepest regions to battle obscenely strange aliens with funny skin and phony prosthetic noses. Imagine being an average salaryman in the late sixties, casually enjoying this new, campy space television series, learning that it would result in this, a straight-faced, you-must-see-this sheen of importance cloaking the silly diversion you love for its kiddie subversion of the western and skimpy projection of good-humored kids’ adventure.
Learning that you’d be seated in a movie theater and feeling your ass shake from the subwoofers pounding out booming music as Chris Pine’s James T. Kirk commits a momentous act by, erm, sitting in a chair. Society’s come a long way.
i will say this, this looks better trailer wise than most of the nerd stuff i’ve seen so far this year, including Terminator. Definitely looks overly-serious, but looks like it has dramatic potential and something at stake which is always nice.
“From the writers of Transformers”- which translates to me as, “Fuck off, I hate you, non-moron viewer.”
ha
10 bucks says this is the “Speed Racer” of 2009. It comes out a week after the new Marvel movie. It’s going to be last year all over again.
Aside from release date, what does Star Trek have to do with Speed Racer? One is a robust ten film franchise and the other is a live action cartoon based on a semi-obscure anime.
It’s going to bomb.
The Wolverine trailer was ten times worse than Terminator, and now this is ten times worse than that. Think I’ll watch Sunshine again.
It is a bit funny that this looks way more like Star Wars than Star Trek. I’ve never been a fan but isn’t the appeal of Star Trek that it’s NOT about ships blowing up and lasers blasting, but rather that it was about a ship journeying into the unknown? To me, Star Trek never seemed to be anything more than a futuristic version of 19th century sea voyage novels…and instead of running across natives and pirates, they ran across aliens. And really, what’s wrong with just being that?
High art films will always be consumed by the informed minority, and low brow movies will always sell to people who find other ways to spend their time and energy. I don’t think that situation reflects arrested development in society’s adults. Just divergent tastes in hobbies.
Are you guys cracked? The Terminator trailer is far and away the best one so far.
I’m not sure if Star Trek will bomb, but I think there definitely is a Star Trek ceiling. There are only so many Trekies in the world fortunately.
Wolverine and GI Joe will bomb outright.
Transformers will do well, but not as well as some people think.
Terminator will over-perform IMO and surprise many people. I say Terminator is the top film of the year box office wise.
You see that lawsuit? Terminator might be in trouble. Thought it’ll prolly be PG-13 after Watchmen.
I heard about it two or three days ago. Personally I think it’s a shakedown for a bigger cut of the profits, but I don’t know.
The lawsuit is between the producers over money. The only sum that one producer says is still owed to him is $2.5 million, which is nothing. I don’t know where he gets off suing for $160 million. He accuses the two “newbies” of swindling other people, but that doesn’t mean that he is owed more money. There were a lot of red herrings in that filing that makes me wonder about the motives here.
It’s not like Watchmen which was between studios. I say the whole thing gets settled sooner rather than later. No way Warner Bros. will let this stupid thing delay what is becoming a major anticipated film (their biggest of the summer).
Terminator will still be awesome.