Trailer Tracking: ‘The Three Musketeers,’ ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,’ ‘11-11-11,’ ‘Brave’

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CHICAGO – Since the early days of cinema, trailers have always been the best part of going to the movies. Forget about the movies themselves. It doesn’t matter how good “Inception”, “Harry Potter”, or “Citizen Kane” is, no film can live up to that lovely shade of MPAA green which accompanies that breathtaking, legendary “The Following Preview Has Been Approved” title card. Why is that? Because films are finite.

Once they’re out there in the world, they can be measured, judged, and found lacking. But movie trailers – they’re delicious little bundles of unlimited potential. They exist in a world of pure sizzle, a realm where every day the filmmaking gods hand-deliver you polished packages of only the good parts in two minutes and twenty-five seconds or less. As trailer devotees, we here at HollywoodChicago.com are taking a look at some recent coming attractions and letting you know what we’re excited about, what underwhelmed us, and what we’re planning to avoid.

Trailer With the Biggest Dirty Little Secret: “The Three Musketeers”

Oh, the difference a few months can make. When director Paul W.S. Anderson – just like P.T. Anderson only with more Milla Jovovich and less taste – debuted the newest trailer for his upcoming “Three Musketeers” movie at the end of June, it was missing one major item that was a key component of the last “Musketeer” trailer from back in March. Namely, ANY mention of 3D. That’s right. “Three Musketeers” is now trying to hide its 3D shame. Back in March, the trailer goes right ahead and calls the movie “The Three Musketeers IN 3D,” and 3D was unquestionably one of the major selling points of the trailer. However, following a recent series of negative articles regarding 3D’s lackluster box office impact, “Three Musketeers” is, apparently, not going out of their way to advertise that they’re par t of the 3D pack. The 3D is gone from the title. Their ad campaign went from “all 3D, all the time” back in March to this most recent June trailer, which only mentions 3D ever so briefly in its closing seconds. (And it makes sure to specify that the movie will be shown in both 3D AND 2D.)

So, aside from de-emphasizing its third dimension, how does the new “Three Musketeers” trailer look? In a word, problematic. We didn’t expect that Anderson would deliver a staid period piece without indulging in some of his trademark fanboy excess, but “The Three Musketeers” seems to exist in this strange limbo where it’s either going to be too crazy or not crazy enough. The casting is definitely interesting, particularly the bad guys - Christoph Waltz (always solid), Milla (a given), and Orlando Bloom, who has, apparently, abandoned his salt-of-the-earth Will Turner shtick and decided to try his hand as a completely, Alan-Rickman-in-Prince-of-Thieves, over-the-top villain… which takes some guts. (He’ll either rock or look like a complete idiot.) Waltz is the only sure bet in the bunch. And the Musketeers themselves are a nice bunch of C-list character actors, but, hopefully, they’ll be able to carry the flick. But this is a Paul W.S. Anderson movie, so the actors are, of course, not the focus. He’s more interested in the weapons, the aerial warships, the “Resident Evil”-esque action scenes – which are so anachronistic and wrong for the time period that they make “Wild Wild West” look historically accurate.

But, if they’re going to play around with history, we hope they don’t half-ass it. Fine, forget about French history, but, instead, deliver us something fantastical. Maybe Anderson should’ve saved that money he spent filming “Three Musketeers” in 3D and used that cash to turn this into the world’s first steampunk Musketeer movie. If you’re already going to have flying warships and flamethrowers in an Alexandre Dumas adaptation, why not have a steam-powered Cardinal Richelieu, diesel Musketeer exo-skeletons, and a clockwork-enhanced Man in the Iron Mask? Go big or go home. If this is just supposed to be normal 17th Century France, but, this time, with rocket launchers… that’s going to be pretty dull. Our big worry with “The Three Musketeers” is that – with its 3D gimmick rendered useless by audience apathy – it will lamely tiptoe that line between period piece and crazy action spectacular, never committing to either tone and never pleasing either audience.

TRAILER OUTLOOK: RISKY – could be a fabulous mess or… just a mess

Trailer That Gave Us the Good Kind of Nostalgia: “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”

Say what you will about the “Mission: Impossible” movies, but can you think of another big-budget action franchise that has attracted such a diverse range of genuinely interesting directors? They opened the M:I franchise with Brian De Palma, a left-field choice that worked – he delivered a solid, almost great movie. For the next chapter, they went with John Woo, an action legend… who completely choked. “Mission: Impossible 2” was TERRIBLE, but Woo was still a bold choice. Then they completely reinvented the series with J.J. Abrams for the third and best M:I movie, and follow that up by hiring animation legend Brad Bird (“Iron Giant”, “The Incredibles”, “Ratatouille”) to direct “M:I 4 – Ghost Protocol” as his first live-action movie EVER. Regardless of the outcome, you have to hand it to Tom Cruise for never settling for a boring director. Kudos to him. However, with that strong directorial legacy, it’s hard to watch the trailer for “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” without comparing it to the previous M:I films.

Just to get this out of the way, the trailer looks very cool. It’s expertly cut and makes the movie look like it cost $300 million bucks. (Although we’re a little annoyed that Brad Bird’s role as the director is basically buried in the final seconds of the credits. But we get it. Drawing the parallel from Remy the Rat to Ethan Hunt is a hard sell.) BUT there are a lot of elements in the trailer that look really, really familiar. Something goes wrong in a former Iron Curtain country and suddenly Ethan Hunt and his team is disavowed and on the run? Sounds a lot like De Palma’s “M:I”. In fact, it’s hard to ever hear the word “disavowed”, which was so overused in the first “M:I”, and not think of De Palma’s film. (Jeremy Renner hanging by a wire in an air shaft doesn’t help either.) Ethan Hunt free-climbing a massive structure – hey, remember that in Woo’s “M:I 2”? And, while there aren’t as many analogs to “Mission: Impossible 3” in the trailer – although seeing the lovely Paula Patton in a cocktail dress does bring to mind Maggie Q at the Vatican - the sheer absence of certain major elements from “M:I 3”, namely Ethan Hunt’s marriage, does stand out. The best thing about “M:I 3” was that it finally made Ethan Hunt a person as opposed to a plot device. He was human, he had a wife, he was willing to die for her – that was gorgeous character motivation and gave the super-spy the personality he’d long been missing. While it doesn’t look like Michelle Monaghan appears in “Ghost Protocol”, we’re really hoping that the humanizing aspect of her character on Ethan Hunt won’t be abandoned.

The “Mission: Impossible” legacy aside, there is a lot of slick goodness in this trailer. Eminem and Pink’s “Won’t Back Down” is great accompaniment to the action, and the quick transition from that track into the subtle M:I anthem is nicely handled. The shot of “LOST”’s Josh Holloway turning and shooting mid-air while he’s falling of a building is absolutely killer – BUT we really hope that’s not Holloway’s last moment in the film. From the footage in the trailer, we have the sneaking suspicion that Holloway will start as a vital part of Cruise’s spy team, get killed early on, and will be begrudgingly replaced by antagonistic, possible Hunt-replacement Jeremy Renner. Which, OK, “Hurt Locker” was tremendous, but, if we had to pick, we’d pick “Son of a Bitch” Sawyer over The Man Who Would Be Hawkeye any day of the week. And, sure, we might debate the physics of running away from explosions or massive dust clouds, but, all in all, thanks to a solid trailer and our previous IMF nostalgia, we’re looking forward to “Ghost Protocol”.

TRAILER OUTLOOK: SOLID (if a wee bit familiar) spy spectacular. A must-see.

Trailer That Gave Us the Bad Kind of Nostalgia: “11-11-11”

It’s never a good sign when you finish watching a trailer and you immediately think, “hey, it’s just like that Jim Carrey movie ‘Number 23’!” (In fact, it’s never good when ANYBODY in the world EVER references “Number 23.”) But that’s what happens when you tap into the relatively new “paranoid –recurring-numbers” genre – there’s just not much to compare yourself to. So, is “11-11-11” another trippy, yet paranoid number thriller like Carrey’s “23”? Sort of. “11-11-11” will be director Darren Lynn Bousman’s first widely released movie since 2008’s spectacular mess “Repo! The Genetic Opera” – he did film a remake of the horror flick “Mother’s Day” in 2009, which hasn’t been widely released in the U.S. yet – but he’s best known for directing the worst of the “Saw” movies (II through IV). So, the fact that “11-11-11” isn’t a remake, another chapter in a horror franchise, or a rock opera featuring Paris Hilton is all working in Bousman’s favor. The movie is, apparently, about a famous author who goes to visit his estranged family in Barcelona, quickly finds himself noticing the number 11 all over the place, gets caught up in a series of weird occurrences, and then, to quote the official plot description, “soon realizes that this number holds a horrific meaning not only to himself but possibly to all of religion.” Dun-dun-dunnn!

And there are definitely some elements in the “11-11-11” trailer that work. It’s a nice cast of unknowns, Barcelona is a beautiful city, and, again, we appreciate the lack of bear traps and Hiltons. But the rest of the trailer is just so, so been-there, done-that. If we thought that the “M:I 4” trailer was a little too familiar, “11-11-11” takes familiar to a whole new level. It’s like two full-length movie cliché montages jammed into one movie – first, there’s the paranoid number, strange-things-are-happenin’ thriller (“Number 23”, “Jacob’s Ladder”, “Knowing”). Second, there’s the religious, horrible omens horror flick (“The Rite”, “Stigmata”, “End of Days”). And “11-11-11” looks like it simply picked the most recognizable aspects of each genre, threw them together, and BAM! Fusion cinema. Except the new hybrid horror movie creation just looks insanely predictable and, sadly, forgettable too. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Bousman can pull out an “Insidious”-esque sleeper hit. But we’re not sold on “11-11-11” yet.

Oh, and the whole “creating a movie called ‘11-11-11’ just so you can open it on November 11, 2011” thing is probably not a great idea. It sounds fun at first, but how well did that work out for Shane Acker’s “9” (which opened on 9-9-09)?

TRAILER OUTLOOK: NOTHING NEW, nothing intriguing, nothing to recommend.

Great Trailer That We’re Strangely Critical Of: “Brave”

Even though “Cars 2” was definitely underwhelming – damn you, Pixar, how hard is it to consistently deliver us excellence? – it did come with two big pre-movie highlights: a new “Toy Story” short and the trailer for “Brave.” And it looks fantastic. The rendering of the Scottish landscape is breathtaking, the design of the princess-archer Merida is uber-compelling (can’t wait to buy the Merida action figure), it teases the story without giving too much away… so, with all that said, why are we feeling strangely critical of “Brave”?

Is it just because Pixar is up on such a high pedestal that it’s almost become an international sport to try to knock them down? We hope not. If any studio deserves our benefit of the doubt, it’s Pixar. Is it the fairy tale aspect? Strangely, it might be because the Scottish brogues and fantasy medieval setting remind us a bit too much of “How to Train Your Dragon”, a fantastic film that is easily the best thing to ever come out of Dreamworks Animation. (If Merida learns to ride that bear and then finds out that her people have been wrong about bears for years… Katzenberg is going to go postal.) Or maybe it’s because Disney has been having such a hard time reigniting their own fairy tale features that we’ve become needlessly cynical about their efforts. Did “Princess & The Frog” underwhelm at the box office because it was too girly and boys didn’t want to see it? Did “Tangled” do better because it adopted co-protagonists – a girl for the girl audience and a boy for the boy audience? We hate, hate, HATE that we’re having these kinds of thoughts and discussions (particularly since some of us have daughters), but when we look at “Brave”, why is our first impression that it might be too dark for the princess crowd and too princessy for the “Train Your Dragon” crowd?

We hope, we desperately hope that we’re wrong, but you wanted our honest first impression of “Brave” trailer and now you’ve got it. Now please excuse us while we go take a shower and sob to our wives about gender politics for the rest of the night. (If they don’t make a Merida action figure because boys wouldn’t play with it, we’re renouncing our chromosomes and moving to Sweden.)

TRAILER OUTLOOK: 95% chance of brilliance, 5% chance we’re overthinking things.

By TOM BURNS
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
tom@hollywoodchicago.com