Totally non-spoilery review!

[trinityvixen]

I will now attempt to manage a non-spoilery review of The Dark Knight. In which I not only spoil nothing but that I neither give my opinion on the movie or anything in the movie or the people involved with the movie. No, I absolutely promise. Even ivy03 can't fault this for spoilers. And if she can, I think I give up because in order not to spoil, I'm

Comments

[kent_allard_jr]

The Dark Knight played out more or less exactly like what I had in my head for a fanfic that I started and never finished.

OMG you mean Batman made out with Daddy Adama? No wonder it's breaking records!

BTW, any plans by anyone for a second expedition to The Dark Knight? I wanna go ;(

[trinityvixen]

I've been invited along with another group of friends, but, no, I've not made any myself. Sorry, dude.

[hslayer]

You could tell anything about Watchmen from that trailer? After seeing it I said to Wyeth, "That looked like random clips from 30 completely unrelated movies." I admit I don't know anything about the graphic novel, but I never read Hellboy, either (and hadn't seen the first movie yet) and the HB2 trailers were immediately appealing.

[trinityvixen]

It's entirely possible that the clips were supposed to be unrelated since the graphic novel tells layering stories from the two groups of superheroes as well as background stories about certain characters. Having read the graphic novel, I could make out more of the story from the images just fine, but, no, they don't necessarily "tell a story." I think they picked high-impact images which bigscary objected to based on his reading of the novel. Essentially, he believes the point of the novel is that the supers aren't really super, and making them look super in a trailer is either deceptive or else indicative of the filmmakers missing the point of the novel.

I want to see it again to see if I can really make out which it is. All that I've read about the guy directing it indicates a very strong sense of his understanding the source material very, very well. And, like I said, the trailer isn't necessarily indicative of anything. It's not even a trailer. It's a teaser trailer which isn't supposed to do much more than tantalize. (Notably, there is

[wellgull]

Yeah... I think your observation about trailers saying more about their intended audiences than about the movies is spot-on. It applies to (well, everything generally...) the way that movies are advertised generally, though -- basically you can tell exactly the age of the target audience for an ad for Mamma Mia based on whether Meryl Streep or Amanda Seyfried gets more air time. (Presumably the movie's the same regardless!)

[trinityvixen]

Trailers have evolved as films have, as information dissemination has. They have to get out earlier and earlier. (It's ridiculous: Terminator Salvation hasn't been filming more than a month, and they had a teaser trailer for it already.) So that's how we get the "teaser" before the "real" (theatrical) trailer. It's kinda like how you have to send out save-the-date cards before you send out invitations. People get booked!

And to convince people to hold a space open for you in March 2009, you put out a teaser trailer with enough to interest (or confuse, since that might make the audience look into the matter more) the newbies and the knowledgeable. It's not supposed to communicate anything. It's just supposed to generate anticipatory hunger for the final product.

When the 2-and-a-half minute "real" trailer comes out, we'll be able to tell more about the story, the direction the adaptation is going. (Using clues not unlike what you pointed out about Mamma Mia!.)

[moonlightalice]

I was so unimpressed by the Watchman trailer. It looked like the CGI had been painted in ala Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

[trinityvixen]

...really? I was really impressed with Doctor Manhattan, actually. I like that they used his vaporization and recorporealization front-and-center to present the fact that the "heroes"...weren't.

[bigscary]

For an example, compare the Spirit trailer, which is by the same crew of people; it's equally disjointed and weird, but convinces me that the creators "got" The Spirit.

[agrumer]

See, I've got the exact opposite reactions in both cases. The trailer for The Spirit could've been for Frank Miller's Daredevil or Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. There was nothing specific to The Spirit or Will Eisner in it.

The Watchmen trailer, on the other hand, consisted entirely of scenes that were identifiably from the comic. Even the shot of Silk Spectre tumbling through the burning roof, even though that exact scene isn't in the book, we know what part of the story it's from.

[trinityvixen]

Watchmen: comic to trailer comparison.

I didn't get the trailer I saw for The Spirit. I felt that if you knew the material, the Watchmen trailer made tons of sense.

[droidguy1119]

I loved The Spirit trailers, both of them. And the Watchmen trailer. Wooooooooo!