With the May 3 launch of Iron Man 3 signaling the official start of the Summer of 2013 movie season, let’s take a look at the preview trailers for it and for some other high-profile geek fodder rolling out over the next few months.
Titles are presented in order of release date.
Iron Man 3 (May 3)
The filmmakers have some apologizing to do for the less-than-stellar Iron Man 2, and from the looks of it, they’ve succeeded at fulfilling the promise of the terrific first installment and last year’s The Avengers. Robert Downey Jr. looks to be in fine comedic and heroic form for this, his fourth turn as billionaire-inventor/crimestopper Tony Stark/Iron Man. Ben Kingsley looks fierce as the bad guy (dubbed the Mandarin) and all of the key supporting players are back (Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Jon Favreau, the voice of Paul Bettany). With Shane Black (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) joining the production team as co-writer and director, expect something crackling, cool and snarky.
Trailer Rating: A
The Great Gatsby (May 10)
Director Baz Luhrmann’s corny, sappy historical epic Australia wasn’t even in the same league as his audacious Moulin Rouge or William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, but the visionary filmmaker looks to be back in shape for this retelling of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan, the cast is to die for. If the trailer is accurate, this one will be dazzling to look at and, with a score by none other than music producer/rap artist Jay-Z, it ought to SOUND like nothing we’ve ever heard before in a period drama.
Trailer Rating; B+
Star Trek Into Darkness (May 17)
Is he Khan? Is he not Khan? For months, the makers of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek 2 (or Star Trek 12, if we’re counting from the original 1979 film) have been pretty cagey about the identity of the film’s central antagonist. At this point, after multiple trailers, it looks like the villain (Benedict Cumberbatch) is NOT Khan Noonien Singh but John Harrison, a Starfleet chap with a vendetta and, apparently, a vague supernatural ability to heal people (this from the IMAX prologue shown before The Hobbit last December). The trailers are full of fisticuffs, gravity-defying chases, eye-popping futuristic cityscapes, colorful alien worlds and sleek visual effects, all bedazzled by J.J.’s signature use of artificial lens flares. From the looks of it, this one seems to be a bit less philosophical and more action-oriented than a typical Star Trek movie—is it me, or does this latest trailer play like a tease of a Star Wars sequel?—but what I’m seeing so far looks quite thrilling.
Trailer Rating: A-
What if M. Night Shyamalan made a sci-fi father/son survival adventure with Will Smith and his real-life kid Jaden, but nobody gave enough of a whit to mention the director’s name in the trailers? After four stunningly bad features—The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening and The Last Airbender—Shyamalan has long-since squandered the audience goodwill he once earned with The Sixth Sense and Signs (and, to a lesser extent, Unbreakable). He’s pretty much box office poison nowadays, so it’s understandable why the studio would want to keep his name off the early promos. The trailer is pretentious hogwash, with elder Smith rambling on to his boy about survival in a strange and hostile environment as scary looking creatures stalk the terrain, chase our heroes and gnash their teeth. If the so-called “big-twist” is that the “alien world” the Smiths crash-land on is in fact Earth of the future (or the past), perhaps the marketing guys who put together the trailer should’ve kept that potentially major spoiler hush-hush. Actually, considering the movie’s title, it’s probably not too big a spoiler after all. Nevermind.
Trailer Rating: D
Man of Steel (June 14)
With the debut of a third teaser trailer, expectations for Zack Snyder’s long-gestating “Superman” reboot have officially escalated exponentially: the film looks to be epic and sumptuous, and though the tone of the three trailers is mostly solemn, it feels like the movie will be a bit more fun than was the self-righteous Superman Returns seven years ago. The latest trailer, clocking in at a sturdy three minutes, offers plenty of touching pathos, soaring action and some playful repartee between Supes and Lois Lane (in one bit, we witness more tension and chemistry between the two than we’ve seen since the early days of Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder). Plus, we get longer glimpses of Krypton and Smallville, a tease of some super heroic feats, and quick but stunning peeks at a slam-bang aerial fight over Metropolis that, in but a few mere seconds, makes the destructive mid-city showdown of Superman II look like a slapping contest. And there’s a frightening and enraged General Zod (Michael Shannon) making insidious threats. Please, oh, pretty please, do not suck! We already know that composer Hans Zimmer won’t recycle John Williams’ classic music and has written an entirely new Superman theme. If this music is in fact what we’re hearing in the latest trailer, I really like the sound of it!
Trailer Rating: A+
Monsters University (June 21)
Pixar’s third film to be franchised, this prequel to 1998’s Monsters, Inc. is set in college and details the early relationship between Mike & Sully (Billy Crystal and John Goodman, both reprising their roles) long before they became best buddies. Will this turn out to be another classic like Toy Story 3 or will it crash and burn like Cars 2? I’m hoping for the former.
Trailer Rating: A
World War Z (June 21)
Long in the making, and the recipient of eleventh-hour reshoots, Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) directs Brad Pitt in a large-scale zombie apocalypse thriller, adapted from a novel many have dubbed “unfilmmable.” We’ll see if those naysayers were correct. Based only on the money shot of a mountainous pile of writhing undead—and its mirror image on the one-sheet—I’m totally in!
Trailer Rating B+
The Lone Ranger (July 5)
Can the creators of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise bring some of that Disneyland magic to the Old West? They certainly spent a pretty penny to try, and from the bombastic preview trailer, it looks like every penny is up there on the screen in the form of sprawling sets, stylish costumes, fiery explosions and speeding derailed locomotives. Johnny Depp as a slightly off-kilter Tonto? Okay, I’ll buy that. Armie Hammer as the masked man? Again, I’m sold (Hollywood has been trying to make him a leading man ever since he portrayed the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network). Looks very Pirates, but with deserts and tumbleweeds substituting for seas and sails. Could be brainless; could be fun.
Trailer Rating: B
Pacific Rim (July 12)
I’m a big fan of Guillermo del Toro. To rattle off the names of his films is to cite some of the most intriguing and visually wondrous fantasy/horror movies of our time: Chronos; the two Hellboy flicks; The Devil’s Backbone; Pan’s Labyrinth. So why do I get a sinking Transformers/Rockem Sockem Robots vibe from this one? Perhaps because that’s what the trailers make it out to be. Awesome visual effects are guaranteed, but if the plentiful giant-robot-versus-alien-monster smack-downs don’t give you a heavy sense of déjà-vu, the blaring horn musical motif stolen from Inception surely will.
Trailer Rating: C
The Wolverine (July 26)
In the X-Men mythos, the graphic novel this movie is adapted from is a fan favorite, so Hugh Jackman and director James Mangold will hopefully make us forget that X-Men Origins: Wolverine ever existed. If too much is given away in the trailer, at least it looks WAY better than any of the other X-Men movies so far. Consider me officially pumped.
Trailer Rating: B+
Elysium (August 9)
Neill Blomkamp’s highly anticipated follow-up to District 9 has been shrouded in so much secrecy that very little is known about it, other than it’s a sci-fi adventure set in the year 2154 and that it stars Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. The trailer doesn’t give too much away—unspecified mission by a scrappy underdog to infiltrate an off-world colony—but it looks huge and riveting.
Trailer Rating: A
Kick-Ass 2 (August 16)
It’s unclear if the studio is keeping the touted subtitle “Balls to the Wall,” but that term definitely suits the action and comedy crammed into the brisk trailer for this R-rated sequel. Looks like bargain basement vigilante Kick-Ass is facing an identity crisis, pal Hit-Girl is growing up in direct proportion to her ever increasing arsenal of vulgar insults, and other pretenders and supporters have suited up and jumped into the fray. The city is now teeming with costumed crime-fighters, including a freakish turn by Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes. Together, they face the returning villain from the first movie, Red Mist, who now goes by the name of The Mother Fucker. So cannot wait!
Trailer Rating: A
