Sometimes it seems like Hollywood doesn’t have its priorities straight anymore. Film studios seem to be preoccupied with nothing but superhero sequels, movies based on board games and interminable rom-coms. But thankfully, there’s one thing they’re still good at: distilling a film’s premise into a two-minute clip full of quick cuts, thumping music and dramatic voiceovers. Every week, we'll serve up Hollywood’s hottest trailers without making you pay for a movie ticket. We all know the previews are the best part anyway.
This series has the word "trash" in its title for a reason, and this week we’ve got cheap semi-sequels, annoying prequel sequels and confounding remakes that don’t look like they can measure up to their source material. First up?
I, Frankenstein
Release date: January 24, 2014
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Bill Nighy and Yvonne Strahovski
What’s it About?: Frankenstein’s monster – once described by some loser named Mary Shelley as a creature of “accursed ugliness”—is played by lantern-jawed Aaron Eckhart in this modern semi-sequel to the classic horror story. After 200 years of reclusive brooding, ADAM (Eckhart), an abomination designed by the hand of the nefarious Dr. Frankenstein and a Gap catalog, discovers his role in the "all-out war between two immortal clans" may be much larger than he could have ever imagined. In order to save both humanity and the beautiful young Terra (Yvonne Strahovski), ADAM must brandish his trusty ol’ dagger things and slay some flying gargoyles while things explode and a killer nü-metal soundtrack shreds in the background. As Aaron Eckhart’s publicist surely once said, “You either die an actor with a modicum of credibility, or you live long enough to star in total garbage like this.”
Initial Reactions?: Let’s ask the public! The top YouTube comments on the video for the trailer are currently from the lovely user lauratheodo who states, “This looks so stupid. Obviously they don’t know anything about the book,” and the more pensive Estivel Garcia, who laments, “First we had Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter fighting vampires, then we got I, Frankenstein fighting like he was Blade... what the hell is going to be next? Dora the Explorer fighting aliens in space????“ Garcia is right; this movie definitely needed more space aliens.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Release date: December 13, 2013
Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage and Bandersnatch Cummerbund
What’s it About?: This is presumably the installment in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy where something happens to further the story, but no one can be too sure. After making it only a quarter of the way to their final destination in the first film – the three-hour-long An Unexpected Journey – Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his team of burglar dwarves, who include the grumpy exile king Thoren Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), continue their perilous trek across Middle Earth to reclaim the cache of riches buried beneath the desolate Lonely Mountain. On their way, Bilbo and his squat companions will take a trip down the much more exciting sounding Splash Mountain, escape giant spiders in a haunted forest and finally – FINALLY – have their showdown with the titular dragon, Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), who greedily hordes the throne and gold Thoren Oakenshield lost some ages ago. The film is the second in a planned trilogy, with the final installment, There and Back Again, set to be released in winter 2014.
What This One’s Missing?: While this début trailer is chock-full of grim, austere voiceover and lazy cameos for nerds to drool over (Hey, look! It’s Legolas!), there’s little of the grit or novelty of Jackson’s original Lord of the Rings films on display here. The director’s growing over-reliance on CGI and motion-capture has made his rendition of Middle Earth look remarkably sterile, an aesthetic that recalls George Lucas’ own botched prequel trilogy to the Star Wars franchise, and both sets of films share a lot in common: far less interesting characters and plot lines than their predecessors, a glut of uncanny-valley visual effects and the unshakable feeling of been-there, done-that.
Metástasis
Release Date: TBA 2013
Cast: Diego Trujillo, Julian Arango and Sandra Reyes
What’s it About?: This feels a bit like cheating because Metástasis, a new television series from Colombia, isn’t technically a Hollywood release, though it is being distributed by major studio player Sony Pictures Television and will air on the UniMas network in America. The premise of the series, if you couldn’t tell from the brief teaser trailer, is literally identical to that of the acclaimed AMC show Breaking Bad, which just wrapped up its final season this fall. While this may seem like a totally bananas way to go about developing a show—essentially taking it piece by piece from another source and shooting it in a different location, in a different language—it’s something networks in the states have been up to for years, the most egregious offender actually being AMC whose hit shows The Killing (lol) and Low Winter Sun (2x lol) are both adapted from big hits from foreign countries. Instead of Walter White, in Metástasis (which means the spread of cancer) we have Walter Blanco (Blanco is Spanish for Heisenberg), an innocuous-looking middle-aged man who is riddled with terminal illness and played by Diego Trujillo. As the expense of treating his cancer threatens the financial security of his family, Mr. Blanco is pushed to the edge into a life of crime and violence, enlisting the help of the thuggish Jose (essentially Jesse Pinkman) to assist in running a start-up meth cooking lab in the back of a derelict bus. Angelica Guerra, one of the executives of Sony, told The Hollywood Reporter that the changes made to the series will be in the name of “greater regional relevancy” for Colombian audiences; Vince Gilligan, the former showrunner of Breaking Bad, has been contacted by the creators of Metástasis to ensure accuracy to Gilligan’s original story.
What This Needs To Match Breaking Bad: 1.) Have Jose yell his signature phrase of ‘Puta!’ while jumping ecstatically in the air 2.) Have Walter Blanco look grimly at Skylar Blanco and say, ‘Yo soy el que llama a la puerta!’ 3.) Include a production credit for Señor Gilligano, Vince Gilligan’s non-union, Colombian equivalent.