First Annual Trailerama Wrap-up

First Annual Superbowl Trailerama Wrap Up

Superbowl XXXVII's come and gone, and the Bucs walked away with their first NFL championship. The heavily touted "best offense/best defense" match-up proved more than a little anti-climactic, with a 48-21 rout against Oakland. Over 88 million people tuned in to watch the game, and advertisers took full advantage of the visibility to trot out the trailers for this year's wanna-be blockbusters. Some films (Matrix, Hulk) offered a first glimpse of our heroes in action; others (Daredevil, The Recruit) offered a fourth or fifth, rehashing scenes from trailers already on heavy TV rotation. Every trailer, though, shared a running theme: be fast, be dumb, be loud, and if possible, show breasts and explosions. It's nice to know Hollywood thinks this highly of football fans. Well, let's get to it, shall we?

With our political climate quickly heating up, the new Matrix trailer is brave enough to pose a deeply resonant question: In a world at war, where can we place our hope in salvation? The answer is an obvious one, and I'm sure you've already guessed it: We should place our hope in an airborne Keanu Reeves wearing sunglasses. It is difficult to ignore the irony that, as just about the only summer blockbuster not based on a superhero, the Matrix sequels end up most closely resembling a comic book. With plenty of explosions, kicking, punching, swordplay, gunplay, guys kicking swords, guys punching guns, and Carrie-Anne Moss jiggling around in a hermetically sealed catsuit, it's a pretty safe bet this first peek cued the largest ever synchronized ejaculation among 18-25 year old men. The only downside I see here is the frightening possibility that Keanu Reeves might misinterpret things and assume people actually want to see him in other films.

Here, then, is our first-ever glimpse of the Hulk — an all-CGI creation that, to date, has been kept under tighter wraps than Cameron Diaz's breasts in the new Charlie's Angels trailer. Well, the wait is finally over. The new full-length Hulk trailer has at long last revealed our hero to be... green. And big. With purple pants. Leaving audiences to ponder the real issue here: what exactly were we expecting? The big green purple-panted one looks fairly convincing anyway, or at least as convincing as someone can look throwing tanks around and smashing through solid steel walls. It's still unclear whether the Hulkster will actually be able to "act"; however, the trailer at least confirms that star Eric Bana can't.

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

The conflicting messages the Charlie's Angels films put forward make for an interesting dichotomy: on one hand, the female leads kick seven distinct kinds of ass, don't need men to solve their problems, and offer three confident, empowering role models to a new generation of girls. On the other, all three are presented as complete bubbleheads, solve half their problems by accident, and parade around in outfits a Parisian streetwalker would be ashamed to wear. Both of these seemingly incompatible premises combine to offer the moral that women can be anything they want to be by putting their minds to it, acting borderline mentally handicapped when men are around, and showing off them titties whenever possible. In other words, the films are saddeningly accurate. The trailer is neat-looking but unexceptional; far more exceptional is the fact that this review managed to use the words "Charlie's Angels" and "dichotomy" in the same sentence.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

The people who brought you Terminator 2: Judgment Day are back with an all-new movie. Well, except for director/creator James Cameron, who wanted nothing to do with the sequel. Or star Linda Hamilton, who also wanted nothing to do with the sequel. Or co-star Edward Furlong, who also wanted nothing to do with the sequel. Or screenwriter William Wisher Jr., who also wanted nothing to do with the sequel. Or every single person remotely involved in the first two films, with the lone exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger — who's had a string of flops and is in desperate need of a career-revitalizing hit. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together should be able to read between these lines: This ain't no cash-in, folks! It's the real deal!

Ben Affleck stars in Daredevil, the cinematic answer to the question "Say, who's not sick of me yet?" As the trailer seems eager to put forward, Daredevil is every bit as captivating a hero as that Spider fella, whose film last year made an estimated eight hundred million gazillion dollars. Affleck looks decidedly odd as a superhero, giving the impression of someone who made a bad choice for his Halloween costume. Then again, Tobey Maguire was hardly the obvious choice as Spider-Man. Where Daredevil differs substantially from Spider-Man, though, is that Daredevil's not really a very popular superhero. Without a Spider-fanbase to rely on, Affleck and Co. have the thankless task of roping in potential ticket-buyers on the strength of the trailer alone. This goes a long way to explain why it never settles on any one image for more than a second — the hope here seems to be, the more they cram in, the higher the likelihood that someone'll see something they like.

In the trailer for this CIA thriller, Al Pacino warns the trainees under his care that "some of you will not survive the final test." This would be the precise point where I would stand up and quietly empty out my locker. I don't care how dangerous the actual life of a CIA agent might be — if their training program can't offer some assurance that the courseload won't leave me lying somewhere bleeding to death, they clearly need to be a little savvier in their recruitment blitzes. Stress the positives: "Some of you will survive the final test, and several of you might graduate completely unmaimed" says exactly the same thing, but focuses on your chances of survival in a much more positive light. Hang in there, new meat! If you study hard and do your homework, there's a very good chance you maybe won't die!

Carrey is God! Clapton Desperate to Reclaim Title! Bruce Almighty's Superbowl trailer wisely sidetracks the high-concept premise of the film and gets right to the goods: dogs a-poopin'! Also: dogs a-peein'! Some might argue that people could conceivably watch dogs poop and pee every day for free, and yes, that's a point. However, would you get to watch those dogs poop and pee with THX-quality sound on a twenty-foot screen? Get tickets now.

Multiple Oscar winner Jack Nicholson teams up with dependable Oscar-repellent Adam Sandler in a film designed to make the heads of Academy judges actually explode. Nicholson's pedigree shouldn't distract from the fact that he's very much a guest here; the trailer for Anger Management makes it clear that this one's headed right to Sandlerville. Jack tasers innocents, sleeps in the nude with his costar, breaks the windows out of cars with a baseball bat, and gets into feverish chokefights at every opportunity. In other words: no, he doesn't care, and at this point why should he? The fact that Jack Nicholson's starring in an Adam Sandler movie, and not vice versa, should speak volumes. It doesn't really have the chance to fit a word in edgewise, though, amidst the barrage of senseless violence. By the looks of things, it's either Sandler returned to peak form, or absolute trash, or probably both.

The Bad Boys II trailer is quick to emphasize the easy-going banter of its two leads, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. That they can maintain this banter while standing in the middle of enormous, trailer-long explosions and resist the urge to stop said banter and run like hell is evidence that they have nerves of steel. If logic has any say in things, it's also a good indication that both will be smoking lumps of cauterized tissue by the time the end credits roll. The film should serve as a cautionary tale to impressionable children: if someone detonates a bomb within ten feet of you, a first instinct to say "Dayum!" to a close friend rather than immediately assume a petrified fetal position will be met with painful rewards. Our nation's educators would do well to rent a copy of Bad Boys II on Fire Safety Day.