Isn’t it just awful when a director and crew spend years making a film and then a snarky arsehole comes along and craps all over it after just a three minute trailer? Yeah. Awful. Well here’s me being that arsehole.
First up is The BFG. The BFG which stands for Benjamin Franklin’s Genitals or some other easy acronym joke – is a live-action adaptation of Roald Dalh’s classic book about giant, marauding child snatchers. Okay, ‘BFG’ actually stands for Big Friendly Giant, but the word ‘friendly’ should definitely be brought into question, given the content of this trailer: the giant’s enormous, gangly hand slowly reaching into the window of an orphanage to grab a terrified girl from her bed. Yeah, he’s friendly all right – sweeties in the back of the van friendly. Speaking of sweet things, there’s no sign of any Frobscottle (fizzy drink) or subsequent whizzpopping (farting) yet. Hopefully there’ll be some sort of homage to the flatulence-filled song from the 1989 animated film, because, as we all know, farts are funny. Directed by the only person with a big enough reputation to fill the boots of his fuck-off-sized characters – Steven Spielberg, The BFG looks to have an air of E.T. about it, but instead of a wrinkly little alien, there’s a massive Herbert the Pervert.
Next up is a load of Michael Bay’s satiated mess, otherwise know as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. Yeah, the colon in that title confirms that this is a shitting sequel. And its trailer has everything you’d expect to find: anonymous spaceship things falling from the sky, Will Arnett not being funny, illogical explosions, Megan Fox reminding you how ugly your wife is and, of course, lots of low-angle panning shots. Having said all of that, this is an upbeat couple of minutes that’s bound to get its target audience using words like ‘sick’. A remix of Run-DMC’s ‘It’s Tricky’ should be enough to get their blood pumping, while Fox teasingly tying a knot in her shirt will get the older viewer pumping something else. But if an IMDB synopsis of “The Turtles return to save the city from a dangerous threat” is enough to get you excited, then that’s just indicative of who you are as a person.
Then we have The Legend of Tarzan. This trailer came as a surprise to me, and for about one minute and fifty seconds it was a pleasant one. Then I saw Tarzan dressed in suit and tie, drinking a fucking cup of tea. I wrongfully assumed this was a remake of the original story; it’s actually set after that. Tarzan has migrated to London and somehow managed to find himself in a position of respectability, despite only communicating with grunts and picking out people’s head lice. Again, that’s awfully presumptuous of me; he probably has an English degree now, paid for by his rich father-in-law or the taxpayer – whatever pisses you off more. You’ll be pleased to know there are actually gorillas in this, though. Tarzan returns to the jungle and has to fight them to regain their trust by the looks of it. And when he does, he’ll have an army of frenzied silverbacks to help him stop some bad guy’s counterintuitive scheme to revisit an unforgiving environment. Oh and for anyone who cares, Samuel L Jackson is in it. And Margot Robbie. And Christoph Waltz.
Finally: X-Men Apocalypse. Now I’m not known for letting Marvel films off lightly, especially the ones with ambiguous subtitles, but this is just sad. After painstakingly meddling with time travel in the previous film – a quite obvious attempt to bin off all the older actors and a couple of the shit ones – there’s now a new cast with a whole new future to explore, or as the money people like to put it, more films to make. Naturally, that still involves villainous super mutants, the main one here being a purply blue Egyptian bloke who can control the other characters. The trailer dresses all of that up in the cheesiest way it possibly can, claiming the Bible got its idea for the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse from this film’s antagonist, and then James McAvoy practically nods at the camera when Professor X’s bald head is revealed for the first time. Utter tosh.
Suffice to say, I wasn’t blown away by any of these trailers. I do, however, suggest that you check out the one for The Nice Guys. Russell Crowe goes round punching people in the face, and Ryan Gosling tries to stomp out a fire in his pants while having a shit. There isn’t a CG giant, turtle, gorilla or mutant in sight.
Chris Edwards
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