The Village
Believe it or not, there was a time when M. Night Shyamalan was a credible filmmaker. After his successful attempt to trick us into thinking that Haley Joel Osmond was a decent actor in The Sixth Sense and the unreasonably mind-blowing Unbreakable it almost seemed like he could do no wrong.
The idea of him turning his hand to a period piece with a potent cast of contemporary actors (Sigourney Weaver! Brendan Gleeson! Joaquin Phoenix! Brodyquest!) was pretty enticing.
http://youtu.be/vb0Y89m6fj0
The Trailer: We open with a series of agreeably pretty but distinctly ominous shots of colonial-era houses as William Hurt’s dulcet tones drift into audible range. He calmly explains that the residents have a kind of understanding worked out with the ‘creatures’ that live in the surrounding woods.
I’m sorry, what?
Oh yes. Hurt goes on to explain that this picturesque little slice of Grant Wood fantasizing is beset on all sides by unknown, bestial horrors.
Turns out things are taking a turn for the less-than-ideal, red marks have appeared on people’s doors and as a hooded man settles into a night shift atop a watchtower, something slams against the trap-door.
“I fear our days of peace are over.”
Warning bells ring as we see footage of people running and hiding from this unseen threat. A cloaked, ballsy Joaquin walks across the threshold into the Forest of Death and Blood, his fate unknown. As we cut to black a line of blood red paint smears across the screen as the word ‘RUN’ is spelt out across it, more letters fade in until a haunting tagline is revealed:
“THE TRUCE IS ENDING”
Gulp.
The Film: How Shyamalan managed to make such a mess of this remains a mystery. A period horror about a village surrounded by a forest full of monsters? Rob Schneider could have coaxed a decent film out of that premise!
This is of course before we knew just how low Shyamalan was going to sink, from the outright stupidity of The Happening to unforgivable atrocity that was The Last Airbender. The Village turned out to be a dull slab of one-dimensional characters, silly narrative beats and one of the most abhorrently misinformed representations of a learning disabled person I’ve seen in any film.
Worst of all though, the monsters that made the film so interesting turned out to be nothing but a hoax thought up by the village elders to keep anyone from blundering out of their borders and realizing that there was a shitty plot twist on the other side.
Sucker Punch
Yup, Zach Snyder again. Being that most of his films boast exceptional visual flair and very little else, they tend to be prime candidates for stunning trailers. Since he mostly works from adapted material, Sucker Punch was an interesting prospect from the outset, his first time penning and directing an original screenplay.
The Trailer: Anything that uses Led Zeppelin as its opening musical gambit is bound to get my attention. The first minute or so treats us an exquisitely shot prologue explaining the dreadful past of one of our protagonists and her incarceration in a gothic bedlam.
“REALITY IS A PRISON”
Suddenly we’re thrust into a crazy dream world that looks like some hellish, heavenly culmination of boyish fantasy. There are dragons, robots, zombies, volcanoes, bi-planes, samurai and just about every other awesome thing you care to mention.
Even watching this trailer now I can feel goose bumps as that one good song from The Silversun Pickups’ second album kicks in amidst a flying tour of ridiculous, beautiful action sequences coated in a sunset sepia that’s become synonymous with Snyder’s work.
This has been officially upgraded from interesting, female-lead actioner to probably the best thing ever.
The Film: Oh deary me. Despite all the promise, the end result turned out to be a muddled tangle of poorly formed ideas and contrived introspective nonsense. Even the people who defended the film did it no favors; in some cases ill advisedly asserting that those who didn’t like it were just too stupid to understand it.
This is the problem with things like this, you can throw as much cool shit at us as you like Snyder but if there isn’t a compelling story holding it up it’s just so much CGI offal. The tendency towards female protagonists didn’t help either, since they spend much of the film adorned in skimpy schoolgirl outfits which combined with the guns and swords paint a picture of something that might have been described in the ‘interests’ section of a rather tragic OK Cupid profile. Sucker Punch had all the necessary ingredients for a thrilling action movie but it became too bloated and too oversaturated.
Battle: Los Angeles
Remember Battle: Los Angeles? Didn’t think so. Well it came out, some time in early 2011. Helmed by Jonathon Liebesman, it looked to be a grittier, darker take on the Independence Day formula more concordant with current affairs. The Hurt Locker with 100% more aliens.
The Trailer: It opens with a flickering slideshow of past UFO/extra-terrestrial sightings across the world before the ominous tones of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Black (somewhere between Kid A and that really creepy song from the end of The Dahmer Files) kick in.
Over the top of this haunting music comes a series a wordless, soundless images of LA cowering in the wake of a massive, smoky alien invasion. Gradually a kind of distorted screaming noise ripples into the score as the images intensify, showing soldiers running and fighting for their lives.
What’s really compelling about this trailer is that it almost looks like footage of genuine warfare, from the handheld camerawork to the accurate costume design. You’re only offered the vaguest glimpse of the aggressors but it tells you all you need to know, they’re big, numerous and business-meaning.
The Film: An incoherent mess, sadly. Much like the more recent Transcendence it enjoyed a run of solid, capable marketing only to weather a barrage of negative reviews immediately after release.
The trailer vanished from screens shortly thereafter and we were encouraged to forget that it ever happened. Not that Liebesman had better things to look forward to, Wrath of the Titans felt a bit like watching someone play a second-rate video-game, but at least it didn’t arrive touting unrealistic expectations of grandeur.
Any films we missed? Let us know in the comments.
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