Worst Trailers

Another repost from Facebook, but since this kind of inspired the whole thing i figured it'd be very appropriate to post. Enjoy.


The last couple shifts at work, I have been working door. That means I basically just stand there, take tickets, and watch looping movie trailers on the big screen in the lobby when we're dead (which on weekday nights is often). So I've gotten the enduring pleasures of the Arcade Fire drawing me into the sublime Where the Wild Things Are trailer. The incredibly stylish and catchy Nine trailer never fails to have me singing "Be Italian" for the next 26 minutes. Toy Story 3 gets me excited for next year and even harmless fair like The Lovely Bones and A Christmas Carol can be a welcome distraction. There are some, however that are far past cringe worthy. These are the most popular ones too. The ones that customers stop in the middle of the lobby, holding up traffic to watch and say with voices full of annoying ignorance, "That looks funny! We should see that! After all I loved Wild Hogs!" And these aren't the rare gem trailers that play once or twice over the two hour trailer loop. No, these are the ones that play over and over, back to back. Like they're taunting me. I've complied a list of the worst of them. They are as follows:
(these are trailers to films that have not yet come out. I'm not counting any horrible trailers from earlier this year)

#5 2012

Trailer 1

Trailer 2

The first trailer starts out good enough with an ominous subtitle that reads "Man kinds oldest civilization warned us this day would come." Awesome. Oldest Civilization on earth. I'm hooked. Oh, wait, the Mayan's weren't the first civilization? Oh! The first civilization actually beat this one by over 1,000 years and started in this little place we call "The Cradle of Civilization" which basically means 'where civilization started'. Well awesome, so at least the guys behind 2012 know what they're talking about. Moving on. Chaos reigns! The monotone guy on the the fake newscast is skipping like a record player telling us the world is going to end this year whilst the screen flashes scenes of the world ending and people looking scared. Also birds are flying away which, if you've seen the director, Roland Emmerich's previous "The World is Going to Destroy Itself and Humans Have No Hope" film, The Day After Tomorrow, you know that's BAD! Cut to John Cusack with his voodoo hands saying "What are the odds?" while driving his (presumably) daughter and son through the country in an RV. The odds apparently are that you're about to be attacked by hundreds of giant flying meteors. You'll be ok though! There are many more disasters awaiting for you throughout the trailer. Have fun. Then subsequently California starts to be destroyed. Firemen looks scared. Rome starts to be destroyed. The Pope looks scared. A giant building collapses on a bunch of people I guess, but it looks more like a movie of a giant building is collapsing and a bunch of people are running out of the theater. Maybe because that movie is 2012 and it's just that bad. Or worse, it could be 10,000 B.C.! (also Roland Emmerich). Destruction ensues for the next several seconds. Then suddenly hope dawns on the horizon! "The government is building these ships." Woo! There's hope for humanity. Hold on a sec though, let me make sure i heard you right, SHIPS?! As in space ships? "Oh sure! We can live in space! We've seen Wall*E! Don't worry! We're packing a giraffe!" What are they going to do when they get up there?! How do they sustain food? Water? Energy? Oh well, I guess they can just figure out all that stuff later. Directly after that we have the worst line of the whole trailer given by the usually very good Chiwetel Ejiofor (yes that's his real name). "Isn't it decided that people have the right to fight for their lives?!" He delivers it all with righteous fury and indigestion or whatever. Save it for the stand Tom Jane. Ok, well they definitely don't want to let the actors talk too much because they have to make people still want to see this movie. More action and destruction ensues for the entire minute that's left of the trailer. Cusack and his on screen family consists of divorced wife, Amanda Peet, boy who plays young Shawn in Psyche, and girl who I've never seen or heard of. Together they go through so much disaster, the only logical movie response would be for it to draw them together. The trailers ends, after the white house gets destroyed (AGIAN!?!!?!), with them hugging in life jackets claiming they'll always stay together! Whatever happens! I can't wait to see them try.

I basically just posted Trailer 2 to point out the part where they out run the effing world falling apart. Good thing no one's on the streets in California ever because that would make this whole escaping natures fury thing a little more difficult.

#4 The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Ugh this trailer is so emo! Bella's famous red truck pulls up. Edward and Bella show up on screen. It's Bella's birthday and all she wants is a kiss from her prudey vampire lover. Now for the record, I think Kristen Stewart is a very good actress and could have a great career ahead of her, but when she's asks for her kiss she does this weird cocked eyebrow thing that's more off putting than anything. Is that your sexy face bella? No wonder he's prudey. Moving on. "I love you" she says. "You're my only reason to stay..." pause for a quick and abrupt camera angle change and then fade in just in time to hear him say with all the teenage angst he can manage "...alive... if that's what i am." Stop being such a depressive emo girl Edward! Gosh. Then the birthday scene. While opening presents, Bella gets a little cut on her finger. This is apparently enough to make the weakest of the Cullens run at her like Seabiscuit. To protect her, Edward throws her into a glass table ripping open her arm. None of the other Cullens react to the copious amount of blood that draws. Thank God for continuity. Also props to Edward for beating down his woman and making it look like he was protecting her. Anyway, this scenario was just too dramatic for Edward so he takes Bella into the middle of the forest alone and dumps her. "I will never put you through anything like this ever again" he whines. "This is the last time you will ever see me." Hold on a sec. I can't help the emotions. Their love is just so right. Why can't he see that through this, and even through 3 more painfully bad books, their love will still prosper! Why?! Why?! You see! He's breaking up with her and leaving her BECAUSE he loves her! It's just so beautiful. I need a moment. I'm going to read the end of Breaking Dawn again just to settle my breaking heart!

Back guys. I ended up just reading all the books all over again. Works a little pissed I missed four days, but they have a Twilight amendment in the rule book so they can do nothing if i need me some Edward action! Moving on. Uh oh. Jamaican-y vampire is back and apparently he's a bad guy this time! He's going to eat Bella! Oh no! Edward where are you?!?!?!?!?!? But wait! Who's that shirtless guy who just popped up out of no where? Jake! What's he going to do? Run the other way Jake! That's a f***ing vampire! (awed pause) ... holy crap! He's a werewolf?! A good one? Well he can't be a bad one because all the bad guys in this series have red eyes and want to eat Bella for some reason. Wow. November can't come fast enough.

#3 Planet 51

There is a much longer, much worse trailer out there now and i do have to put up with all day too, but i don't have the energy to dissect everything terrible in that one so i'm doing this one. I love that whoever made this movie think they're so clever for making a movie about aliens who live just like us in the 50s only they look different! They're green! And there are, like circles everywhere! That's unique. But they all dress in American 50s fashion, speak english with american accents, and have things like barbecues and alien dogs that pee on stuff and it melts. I get it. The dog is the alien from Alien. The alien from Alien had acid blood. But don't you think that if dog's urine melted whatever you made street lights out of, you'd stop making street lights out of that?! Do they give any thought that the history of english is complex and intricate- that it evolved over hundreds of years to get to what we now understand as english. That that evolution was entirely influenced by our individual history of the human race and what cultures and people merged with others. No. These aliens are JUST THE SAME AS US. It takes any need for any kind of thought out of the whole process really. So that's good. Then something wild happens. A space ship lands. A man gets out. He thinks he's on the moon based on how he's unnecessarily hopping. He plants the american flag and then and only then decides to open his eyes. He didn't notice the last 60 seconds that he was surrounded by an unimaginatively reinvented suburban America. He had to step on the slightly distorted rubber ducky first! I get it! Then he runs away screaming. Hilarious. The character is voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and when has he never done something bad? I know kids will love this movie. Why? Because we think kids are idiots and so we dumb down movies to the lowest common denominator so they can enjoy it. The result is that we turn them into idiots. All except Pixar who consistently creates quality and intelligent art. You know what? Kids still love it. Because despite our efforts, they are not yet dumb enough to ignore greatness. Anyway blah. This trailer really annoys me.

#2 Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

I don't know how they do it, but they manage to make this 30 second long trailer the most annoying 30 seconds of my life. I mean I could have just told you the title and left it there. I'll elaborate a little bit more though. At least it's better (slightly) than the teaser trailer for the first one where one rodent eats the other rodents poop to cover for him. Hysterical. Once again, can we stop (figuratively) feeding crap to our kids and have a little faith in their intelligence. These are the people who are going to be paying my social security out of their tax money people. If we make them too dumb to work, I'm going to be mad pissed.

#1 Old Dogs

This is by far one of the worst things I've ever seen. And it plays like every five minutes at the theater. Not exaggerating. What annoys me most is that I know, like the talentless director's terrible previous film- Wild Hogs, this will probably do really well. This is what i'm talking about people! You keep making kids dumber, they're going to turn into adults that think this chont is comedy. Lets go through this trailer one step at a time. First we get to "Meet Dan and Charlie" played by Robin Williams and John Travolta. The very next scene is Dan accidentally kicking a soccer ball into a kids face. If you're too smart to get it, that is hysterical! The kid gets mad at him and he feels awkward. I'm sure the kid could have moved, but then we wouldn't get to see Robin Williams hit a kid in the face with a soccer ball. What's a movie without that?! This is also supposed to tell us that Dan is not good with kids. Ok, i'll bite, but i have a feeling that concept is going to pop back up later on in the trailer... Charlie then hits on a waitress. This supposedly means he has other interests. Other interests than what? Oh. Sorry. I'll stop. I just got told off for using my brain. Moving on. "Vicky is back in town." We don't know who Vicky is but charlie tells us that Dan hasn't seen her in exactly seven years. Also we see a cropped black and white photo of Dan and Vicky kissing which apparently means that they were a couple seven years ago. Ok. I'm with you so far and no! I'm not using my brain yet. It's turning into jelly just like they want. Anyway Vicky "doesn't know where to start, Dan." Uh oh, that can never be good for our swinging bachelor protagonist. Sure enough not even a second later, two little goons run in yelling "daddy." Dan sputters, "I have kids?!", laughs real hard, and then promptly passes out in his food. The natural man's response. Now lets dissect this for a second. Dan was with this woman. He got her pregnant. They broke up and she left town, never telling Dan he was a daddy to be. So then she had new born twins. Never contacted Dan for child support or help with the babies. Twins can't be that expensive or hard to take care of alone right? She couldn't have told him! I mean, if she had we never would have got to see him pass out in his food! No, it was definitely better not to tell.

If you don't know exactly where this plot is going by now, you're either asleep or someone who would probably like this movie. (That's not a compliment.) Dan of course has to take the kids even though we found out by the whole kicking the soccer ball to the kid thing, 'Dan's not good with kids'. What happens next? Presumably hilarity ensues. There's some drivel about a ultimate frisbee game where Dan and Charlie get beat up by the younger stronger people on the team. Ultimate frisbee is not a full contact sport just for the record. Why is it in this movie? Because then we can see Dan and Charlie get beat up! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! So genius. Remember that time Dan hurt his arm?! I couldn't stop laughing for weeks! That Matt Dillion is one tough ultimate frisbee player. And while i'm here, let me appeal to you, Matt Dillion. Why? Was it for the money? You've obviously smart enough to know this wasn't a good career move. Aren't you? On second thought, don't answer that. You did do Herbie Fully Loaded.

Then Dan has pills where the side effect is 'sudden loss of depth perception'. Guess what happens. Dan has sudden loss of depth perception. Loss of depth perception? Really? Is that a real thing or something they just came up with so they could make the camera look funny and so Robin Williams can run into things and get too close to an asian person? I'm betting you already know the answer. Sometime during all this fun, Seth Green gets hit in the balls and makes a noise like a woman. You know, Seth Green, I didn't know how your career could possibly go up after the Austin Powers films. You sure showed me didn't you?

The rest of the trailer all consists of one sequence. Apparently Dan's kids are in the zoo. But the zoo is closed. Now the kids could have been escorted out with the rest of the civilians when the zoo closed. But probably not. They must still be in there. Locked in. With no way out. Dan must rescue them. So they break into the zoo. Where do they end up? Of course the gorilla pen when the gorilla shows up and attacks. Charlie's hit with a tire hurled by the ape, Dan and Charlie jump over the side into water, and Seth Green makes more girl sounds (keep it up man, you're a genius). Dan and Charlie find themselves in the penguin tank. This is apparently a bad thing since the penguins start attacking them. Does that make any sense to anyone with half a brain? No. Moving on. Seth green make more girl sounds. The End. I wonder if it's too early to stand in line.

The thing that annoys me most about this is that Robin Williams is in it. C'mon man! Were you drunk when you said yes to this? You're a smart guy. I've seen your stand up. You're also very funny. It doesn't make sense to me why you would read this script and think, "Yes! that's what I need! A movie with John Travolta to boost my career!" But i think just thinking about that is more thinking that you ever did about this film. You're a great actor man! How about more Good Will Hunting type projects. Stuff where you're not required to pass out like a twilight fan meeting Robert Patterson. Anyway i'll stop now. I've written way too much but hopefully it's been entertaining enough not to want to kill yourself.

Rad

P.S. A good relatively painless way to die is to watch these trailers over and over in a loop. You're brain will think you've given up on life and just shut down.

A recall to common sense...

This is an old one. I wrote it Winter 2008 and never showed anyone. I recently posted it on facebook where it started the great comment battle of the decade. I'm reposting it here so anyone who didn't read it on facebook can and it's a good introduction into what my opinions are on things. So here we go!

A recall to common sense...

A warning may be appropriate here; if you’re reading this and I start baggin’ on something you’ve come to love, you may get offended. (Step Brothers is one of the most awful, stupid, and unfunny “comedy” movies I’ve ever seen.) See what I mean? Now I realize all the ideas I spout off in this and the following entries are my opinion. But I’ve put a lot of thought into these opinions so if you blatantly disagree, you have a 95% chance of being blatantly wrong (especially about Step Brothers.) But I’d love to hear your disagreement. Just make sure that your counter argument is well thought out and supported. Otherwise you’re in danger of being called an idiot in my head. Or, if I really mean it, out loud.

But, snide condescending comments aside, lets get this show on the road shall we? I’m writing this to dispel a common misconception. That misconception stems from the largely unrealized gap between opinion and quality. Opinion does not induce quality. In other words just because you like something, doesn’t mean it’s good. It means you like it. I’ll illustrate.

It is a overwhelming (false) belief that if a movie or show evokes the emotion implied by its genre, it is automatically a good movie or show. For example, if a comedy makes you laugh, it’s a good movie. WRONG! A comedy could make you laugh approximately zero time and still be a terrific movie. Take Boys Don’t Cry, an Oscar winning movie that doesn’t make you laugh once. “But Radcliff, that movie is a drama.” Is it? Boy’s don’t cry. Use common logic. If boys aren’t crying what are they doing? Laughing. See, I knew you’d catch up. So by definition, Boy’s Don’t Cry is a comedy, yet not one laugh, and yet still Oscar winning. The conclusion: Boy’s Don’t Cry is one damn good comedy.

Now that may be ridiculous, but even if it’s completely ludicrous (it is) it, at least, goes to show you the lengths I’ll go to prove my point. In this case obvious exaggeration is implemented. Yes a comedy should be funny but the funny should just be a simple additive to the story. Conclusions shouldn’t be drawn of about the quality of the film in question based on how many times you laugh. It’s much more extensive than that. Lets supplement this with a short quiz. Choose your answer before you scroll down.

SET UP: You save up your hard earned money all week just so that you can go see the new awesome-looking horror movie (we’ll call it Boo’s Revenge 2: Boo Too) that comes out on Friday. Finally the sun rises on that blessed Friday morning. You wake up, and get in line at the movie theater. Think I skipped some morning grooming steps there? Nope. You camped at the movie theater parking lot. That’s how excited you are. You buy your ticket, and thirty minutes later sit down in the theater with your Coke, nachos, hot dog, roasted almonds, and Juji Fruits. The greasy theater cleaner who looks like Severus Snape glares at you, but you don’t care that he still hasn’t finished cleaning up that baby’s diaper yet because you know he doesn’t understand how freaking stoked you are. The movie starts and ends is a whiz of screams and blood. You sit there shocked. Not because you’re in awe, but because that movie didn’t scare you once. Not even close. Once. At all.

QUESTION: Was Boo’s Revenge 2 a good movie?

A. Yes
B. No
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No Peeking!
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Don’t be a coward. Choose an answer and stick with it!
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ANSWER: C. Not enough information!

Ten bucks said you all got it wrong. Now did you notice that throughout the entire description of your trip to Boo’s Revenge 2 I did not once mention the writing, acting, directing, editing, cinemotography or any other aspect of film making process? Now with a name like Boo’s Revenge 2: Boo Too it’s kind of a foregone conclusion that it’s going to suck the big one. However the title is about as superfluous as the genre in this instance. And you can’t always tell a movie’s quality based on the title. Slumdog Millionaire (Whatdog Whoionaire?) was a great film while the very appropriately titled Alexander was a travesty. Snakes on a Plane... you pretty much get what you’re expecting here. Anyway my point is that what makes a movie good has little or nothing at all to do with title, genre, content, message, or how many times it makes your laugh, scream, cry, fart, or toke up. It has everything to do with how well it is written, directed and acted etc.

This is why Stranger Than Fiction is THE BEST Will Farrell movie BY FAR. Most of the rest (especially Step Brothers and including Semi Pro and Blades of Glory) suck really bad. “But Radcliff! Those movies are funny!” First of all, that depends on whether you have a mongoloid sense of humor, (I don’t and they’re not) and second that doesn’t matter! (See above.) I don’t care if you “laughed harder in Step Brothers than any other movie ever” (actual quote by a friend, paraphrased and twisted so it supports my forthcoming point.) Laughing is not an indication that a movie is good. It is an indication that movie is funny. There is a large difference. The quality of a movie is contingent on many factors, number of laughs is not one of them. The quality of the movie is a result of many talented people at every level of production from the writer to the scorer doing their jobs right to tell an effective story.

That’s why The Bourne Ultimatum is a good movie, and Shooter is not. The acting, writing, and directing etc was infinitely better. Plus Shooter was horribly cliche, over the top, ridiculous and did i mention, poorly made. “But Radcliff! What if I like Shooter?” Don’t worry, that’s not wrong. I like National Treasure. A lot. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true and I can’t help it. It’s just such goofy fun. Yes, I know that the plot is ludicrous and not well thought out. Yes, I know the acting is ultra campy and most of the dialogue laughable at best. And because I know this it’s okay that I like it. You don’t have to only like oscar winning dramas about handicapped nazi serial killers with daddy issues. You can enjoy Transformers! Just don’t cajole yourself into thinking that it’s a terrific movie. It’s entertaining indeed, but not good, not well made, not quality. See the difference?

Good! Likewise movie’s quality is not based on what the movie’s saying. The whole point of the movie could be “serial killing is nobel” or “ the Nazi’s had it right” and it could still be an excellent film. (For the record the Showtime show Dexter has an active serial killer as the protagonist and it’s AWESOME. Rent it.) Million Dollar Baby is quite possibly the best movie and/or Best Picture winner of the decade thus far. The whole message of that movie is that euthanasia is okay, good even. This is in slight contradiction with my personal beliefs. But my personal beliefs have nothing to do with the quality of the movie. A movie is good whether or not I agree with its message. Period. That’s why Million Dollar Baby is one of the greatest movies of the 21st century so far while I can safely say that Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (a movie slightly more in tune with my personal beliefs) is completely awful.

And lastly, the content in the movie, whether it be violence, sex, swearing, etc, has once again absolutely no effect on the quality of the movie. (Let the uproar begin.) Let me explain. Say you’re super offended by violence and gore. Say you walk into the wildly acclaimed foreign film Pan’s Labyrinth. Within the first twenty minutes or so there is some graphic bottle-jamming-face-crushing action. Does this diminish the quality or pedigree of the film in question? NOT ONE LITTLE BIT. Does it diminish you’re enjoyment of it? Sure, because that’s your game to call. If you don’t like a movie, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. In this case it’s an brilliant, beautiful, and vibrant gothic fairy tale despite what you think of it. Is it a good movie morally? Hell no. But that doesn’t stop it from being a quality movie. Now, we live in America which means you get to decide for yourself what your opinion is. You can determine where each movie’s moral and message lines up with your beliefs and therefore conclude how you feel about it. But just because you disagree with either DOESN’T MAKE IT A BAD MOVIE.

To sum up, you’re opinion, though it matters to you, doesn’t effect the pedigree of any movie. If you’re like me, you can love terrible brain-dead movies like National Treasure and severely dislike very well made movies like American Beauty. The point is you realize the difference between your opinion and the quality of the film in question. They could differ.

Ok I think I’m done here. If i come out of this article sounding like a pompous ass, then good. That’s how I wanted to come off. It gets my point across better and it’s damn fun to write. (I’m not in real life... usually.)

Why?!

So i had been thinking about starting a movie blog for a while, but never really did it because i'm really lazy, and if i did start a blog i would have to write in it all the time to satiate my legions of avid readers and that's just too demanding for my lifestyle at the moment. Case in point, I was too lazy to use any proper capitalization or punctuation in the previous run on sentence. What made me change my mind is the massive amount of crappy movies and tv shows, and basically media of all kinds, out there going unpunished for their crimes. Now I know my voice shaltn't be heard around around the world the way it should be, but hopefully it will effect and influence my world- i.e. the readers of this blog- i.e. YOU!

For those of you who have read my angry trailer tirades on facebook, you know what to expect here. I'll add in comments about pop culture, tv shows, and brief (mostly comical) movie reviews.

What do I want from you as a reader? Easy, read these posts. Misseri Loves Company. Don't only read them once, read them numerous time. Read them aloud to your friends and book club members. If you would like to know exactly when to use the key sarcastic tone pick up your landline and call me! I will definitely be moderately helpful over 60% of the time. But don't stop there! Make recordings of you reading them to yourself and play them on repeat while you sleep. That way you're never away from my thoughts. Think about them until you think that they're yours and then you'll never be wrong about anything. In essence this blog is for you!

Also, comment and tell your friends! Lets see if we can turn this into a real life Julie and Julia. I want to some day be sitting in a theater that I no longer work at watching a better look actor portray myself writing THESE VERY WORDS. And that's on you guys. My readers. Don't. Let. Me. Down. (And yes, i know that Julie and Julia was in fact a real life Julie and Julia. Don't nit pick. You won't get far in this blog [or this world] if you do.)

I can't close off my first post without giving credit to Mr. Addisen Willett who came up with the name for this blog. Thank you sir. I'm not going to thank you in real life, or on Facebook so you have to read this blog to get your due.

Inside Joke!!?
For those of you who don't know, Misseri is my last name. It's pronounced miss-air-y but most people just say misery, or misArry. Like i'm a fucking pirate.

Future posts will follow so you should follow (this blog). I'm not really sure what following entails really since I've never followed someone else's blog but I assume that you will be notified when I write another post so you all should definitley do that. Also sign up so that you can comment on this. I don't know what signing up entails either, but hey I have a lot to offer you if you do! Remember how this is going to be a crappy movie some day? A movie about this blog that i would most likely mock ON this blog. Well if you comment and follow this blog the chances are more likely that I will fudge the story and tell the director that YOU played a huge part in all this and you should be played by Johnny Depp in the movie version (sub Cate Blanchett if you have a vagina or want one). So just by humanly responding to these words, every single one of your dreams could (will) come true.

Think about that.

And for now it's a good night from me.