Just forget the words and sing along

Friday, April 15, 2011

Let's All Go to the Trailer Park!

A couple of new movie trailers have gone online in the past few days, and I feel all compelled to share my thoughts on them.

First up, time for the reboot of one of the first science-fiction franchises, Planet of the Apes.  To borrow one of Charlton Heston's lines from the original, Rise of the Planet of the Apes shows how we maniacs blew it all up.  So I guess that kind of makes it a remake of the original series film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which tackled the same material.





*sigh* I gotta tweak my blog format so I can get wider movies in here.

My first thought: this is the first time I've ever seen a special effects company get top billing. Weta Digital, of course, became the kings of motion capture technology when they gave us Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Andy Serkis, who played Gollum, dons a motion capture rig once again to play Caeser, the first ape to gain intelligence and lead the uprising. James Franco plays the scientist who starts granting the apes intelligence.

Is it just me, or does it seem to be following a zombie movie formula, with intelligent apes instead of zombies?

August 5 is when this hits theatres, and I'll probably check it out.

Next up, we have the new trailer for Cowboys & Aliens. I'll admit, the first trailer didn't quite capture my interest, but this one gets me jazzed. It's got a great pedigre behind it. Jon Favreau (the Iron Man movies) directs, with a script from Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (the Star Trek reboot and the first Transformers movie), based on the graphic novel of the same name. Daniel Craig plays a man in the old west, who wakes up in the middle of the desert with no memory of who he is and a strange device attached to his wrist. Apparently, he's a wanted man, and when he's being apprehended by a posse, aliens show up and start abducting people. Now, our hero must lead a ragtag band of western archetypes to save those who've been abducted. Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde are also in this one.





It hits theatres July 29.

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