The festive season has come and passed, leaving us with a myriad of things; me beginning blog posts with adjusted Green Day lyrics; socks from our uncle who we are now starting to believe truly does not like us; socks from our mum who we believe still loves us, but just can’t be bothered to try anymore; and trailers for the two biggest films to come in 2012. Both got fan boys dribbling onto their home made costumes made of moms old cereal boxes; both look like they could redefine cinema; both have got me using too many semi-colons; both have got me comparing them to see which looks better. The lucky devils.

The timing of this blog may seem suspect, however luckily for me people are so desperate to avoid the predictable Awards season and Leonardo DiCaprio not winning an Oscar for the billionth time that they will rejoice in discussing two of the finest made trailers in recent memory. Or criticising me in the comments section; whichever way you want to take it.

Although these films are an embodiment of what people say is wrong with cinema (A prequel and a sequel) the quality of what came before has amped these films to the status of potential era defining movies; no pressure then…

The Dark Knight Rises

This trailer has everything that a good trailer needs; enigma, action set pieces and a degree of epicness so large that you can’t help but feel how you did when you were 13 years old and you saw Kylie Minogue’s video for ‘I Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’. (For those unfamiliar, please view it here; before SOPA stops you from doing so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18441Eh_WE&ob=av2e )

The uprising scenes are chilling, the implications of social commentary (“There’s a storm coming Mr. Wayne, and when it does you will wonder how it is you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” AND The destruction of an American tradition, Football, shown whilst a child is singing the national anthem, the metaphor is clear) Are current, impacting and will bring out the idealist communist in all of us come viewing time.

Then there’s the action, expertly cut with every action films favourite method (2 second image, cut to black, 2 second image, dramatic music, blah blah blah) and the destruction of the stadium. An image so cool it made me want to take up American Football and explosive experimentation, just so I could go to heaven and say ‘Yeah. I died like that.’

However, there are a few issues…

First being that the trailer is deliriously messy, with a middle sequence that just flashes from character to character without highlighting their relevance. The inclusions of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard are enigmatic and interesting, but in this trailer it just seems selfish, like Christopher Nolan is saying to Hollywood ‘NO! You can’t have them! They are mine! They were in Inception! I OWN them! Look, they are in MY trailer! Ha!’ and don’t give them any purpose.

The attempts of emotional impact by getting every ones favourite character, Alfred, to talk about how precious Bruce is to him is touching, if a bit heavy handed and sudden, doing little but highlighting that Bruce has had little to no emotional development since 30 minutes in to Batman Begins whilst Nolan spent The Dark Knight making a laboured point.

And finally, it has to be mentioned, Bane’s voice. Despite rumours that Warner Bros. Are going to have it cleaned up in post-prod, it doesn’t change the fact that for now: it’s difficult to understand. I got what he was saying on the second watch, which is fine for a trailer, but for a 2 ½ hour film it will get difficult, unless this is actually a marketing scheme and making Tom Hardy do his ‘intense preparation’ of pouring gravel down his throat and gargling with it for 8 hours a day so that no audience member can understand him is just a trick to get us to pay to see the film a second time when we will actually be able to follow what is going on.

If you are the one person on the planet who has not yet seen The Dark Knight Rises trailer, you can do so below;

Trailer rating: 4/5

Verdict: Enigmatic, big, powerful, borderline self important and a potential for ‘too many characters, too much of a mess.’ But an excellent trailer for what could be the defining film of our generation.

 

The Hobbit

So, it’s back, the series that set the standard for what The Dark Knight Rises is trying to achieve (i.e Not make a threequel that makes us want to cry and hold a copy of the first two), with a predictable prequel. It was naive of people who loved the original trilogy to not expect The Hobbit to one day grace our screens eventually and here it is. All pristine, shiny and, by the looks of the trailer, has the same colourful whimsy that the first three had.

Nostalgic shots of The Shire and the originals terrific score makes for delightful viewing with Peter Jackson not changing his style of film making for anyone (50% of this films budget was spent on helicopter fuel. I’m telling you.) which would do the predecessors a discredit, this trailer oozes Lord of the Rings, and it looks beautiful because of it.

The beginning of the trailer is a little slow but when it gets to about 30 seconds in and the dwarfs start singing in a sequence which resembles what the most disturbing of Little People of America meetings would be like the trailer kicks into its groove, giving delicate hints to the story and amping up the tension.

If anything this trailer is good at getting you in to the Lord of the Rings mood, the music, the setting, Martin Freeman as a (perfect) Bilbo Baggins, if not doing what TDKR does and wowing us into submission which is both brilliant and bad. This clearly redirects us from the first three which were huge action and story epics involving all the races of middle earth it clearly shifts the focus to that of The Hobbits, and matches the tone of the calm beginning to The Fellowship of the Ring, it’s nice, but not stunning.

The beginning of this trailer shares the same difficulty as the middle section of TDKR, it’s a bit messy and plays out like a ‘Who’s who of the dwarfing world’, where you would like a focus on the narrative for those of us who haven’t read the book, not keep the same feeling of nostalgia and introduction for parts we aren’t that familiar with.

However, my biggest issue with the trailer is the ominous way they treat Bilbo ‘Can you promise I will come back?’ ‘…No.’ It’s dramatic…It’s intense…It’s full of us not knowing what will happen…Oh wait. Bilbo is in The Fellowship and Return of the King. What’s all the fuss about silly dwarves? He will be fine! Oh my how you will laugh when you get to the end and everything is ok. Silly Hobbitsis.
All in all you can’t feel that this film is going to be a little hollow if the main threat throughout is whether Bilbo might die. We KNOW he doesn’t. Of course we can’t blame the film for the fact that it is being given to us in the wrong order, but we can bitterly resent Hollywood politics which means this film is being made after the more financially viable others. Despite the order in which they were written.

The Hobbit trailer…

Rating: 3/5

Verdict: Packed with nostalgia and a terrific ode to the beautiful Hobbiton, but a little messy with (so far) a narrative that doesn’t promise an ending we already know. Oh, Gandalf and Galadriel, what on earth is that about?

 

What’s Your Verdict?

The Dark Knight Rises or The Hobbit trailer? Which one worked its magic more on you?

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