Showing posts with label Battleship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Battleship. Show all posts
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
'Battleship' Creating Destruction Featurette
From the humble beginnings of that wretched first trailer this flick has come a long way. Comments are getting better. There's anticipation for this.
Really, 'Battleship' looks better than 'Transformers'. VFX have a sheen and depth that I don't think I've seen before. Movie looks grittier, more real, more you-are-there as opposed to 'Transformers' operatic gloss. Better on the character level as well, though that's not exactly high praise.
Featurette is pretty good. DVD extras should be worth the time. Movie looks to do well, certainly better than it did at first.
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Really, 'Battleship' looks better than 'Transformers'. VFX have a sheen and depth that I don't think I've seen before. Movie looks grittier, more real, more you-are-there as opposed to 'Transformers' operatic gloss. Better on the character level as well, though that's not exactly high praise.
Featurette is pretty good. DVD extras should be worth the time. Movie looks to do well, certainly better than it did at first.
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Tuesday, April 10, 2012
'Battleship' Aliens Featurette
Featurette has new footage that reveals plot points. This movie is looking better all the time. Campaign has come a long way since the negative buzz when the project was announced through the debut of a disastrous first trailer.
'Battleship' is starting to look smarter than the average movie blogger. Marketing 2.0
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'Battleship' is starting to look smarter than the average movie blogger. Marketing 2.0
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Monday, March 26, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
New Trailer for 'Battleship'
They'd have a lot less negative buzz to counter if this had been the first trailer. Very cool visuals. Far better sense of plot/tone/style. This makes the movie look hot -- and nobody has said that about 'Battleship'. Hell, even the infamous 'pegs' look okay here.
This resets everything. Nice.
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This resets everything. Nice.
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Thursday, March 01, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Monday, February 06, 2012
Super Bowl Trailer for 'Battleship'. Is This The Same Movie?
Is this trailer for the same movie as the first trailer was? First trailer came off stock and cartoonish. With questionable CGI and sterile action it was generally laughed at and bloggers cringed at what this flick might turn out to be.
This Super Bowl spot, though, clicks.
By the :05 mark we see the new focus -- people in harm's way. A kid, sitting in the family car stuck in traffic, calmly watches as an alien projectile heads straight for him. The projectile strikes, burrowing deep into the freeway, wreaking havoc, tossing vehicles. Luckily, our little boy survives, wide-eyed. The message is clear: The threat is to us, not to ships made of steel, and the effect is we care. All within five seconds. These people mean business.
It doesn't stop there. Next, at sea, a worried Liam Neeson watches a strange disturbance from the command center of a battleship. He comes off much better than in the first trailer, in which his barking was (in context, at least) a bit hackneyed and by-the-numbers. We only see him for a second, possibly due to overexposure of late, but Neeson looks great. You'd think the producers realized, after 'The Grey', that heartfelt portrayals work, even in genre movies. And, yes, we care.
After that, more projectiles crash into office buildings, and the message 'The Battle For Earth' makes it clear what's going on. Certainly, we knew, or had guessed as much. We get it -- the stakes are high. However at :28 comes the clarifying and central imagery -- an alien in a suit produces a mechanized knife and prepares to attack a woman who is very vulnerable indeed, bent over looking back at him. Well done, we can care about this more than metal machines shooting at each other from miles away. A good move, post-Transformers.
So, the threat is close at hand, a few feet away. It's in our faces. But, if all this is too touchy-feely, we're reminded it all 'Begins At Sea' (:31), and once again the nuts-and-bolts boilerplate imagery is about fighting machinery guided by masked, anonymous pilots. After this baseline commercial eye candy has been reiterated we get back on message at (:50) -- you can't win a war with machines, you gotta to send infantry, there has to be boots on the ground. We're engaged in a bit of mano a mano between our main man Taylor Kitsch and a Cylon-esque bad guy. It doesn't last, though -- Rihanna man-euvers a very phallic 5-inch main-gun and blows Mr. Space Invader away in a ridiculous (Sorry, you can't point a gun at your own deck [if you could it would have been done accidentally a bunch of times] because a) that would kill everyone on deck and b) would likely sink the ship, but let's not split hairs) bit that is sure to fuel rampant word-of-mouth (among both boys and girls) and float 'Battleship' for a solid second weekend. We may giggle a bit but, alas, we also care.
Overall, a much better effort than the first trailer. If everyone has forgotten that, this new ad bodes well for the movie. Still, though, you have to wonder what exactly a battleship can do to stop far superior combat hardware from a distant planet. Well. That would be the crux of the story, yes? Just how do we deal with these invaders? Give them a virus their immune systems can't fight? -- been done. That element, whatever it is, if it works, is what this movie is riding on. If that plot point snaps into place smartly we'll like the movie. If not, we'll condemn it. I'm not sure the box office take would be different either way, though.
It remains to be seen whether writers Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber conjured up a winner, but I'm far more optimistic than I was after the first trailer. I can honestly say I care. I'm not swept off my feet, mind you -- it is summer popcorn after all -- but I like 'Battleship' a lot more than before.
If you've only seen the first trailer, check the new one out.
.
This Super Bowl spot, though, clicks.
By the :05 mark we see the new focus -- people in harm's way. A kid, sitting in the family car stuck in traffic, calmly watches as an alien projectile heads straight for him. The projectile strikes, burrowing deep into the freeway, wreaking havoc, tossing vehicles. Luckily, our little boy survives, wide-eyed. The message is clear: The threat is to us, not to ships made of steel, and the effect is we care. All within five seconds. These people mean business.
It doesn't stop there. Next, at sea, a worried Liam Neeson watches a strange disturbance from the command center of a battleship. He comes off much better than in the first trailer, in which his barking was (in context, at least) a bit hackneyed and by-the-numbers. We only see him for a second, possibly due to overexposure of late, but Neeson looks great. You'd think the producers realized, after 'The Grey', that heartfelt portrayals work, even in genre movies. And, yes, we care.
After that, more projectiles crash into office buildings, and the message 'The Battle For Earth' makes it clear what's going on. Certainly, we knew, or had guessed as much. We get it -- the stakes are high. However at :28 comes the clarifying and central imagery -- an alien in a suit produces a mechanized knife and prepares to attack a woman who is very vulnerable indeed, bent over looking back at him. Well done, we can care about this more than metal machines shooting at each other from miles away. A good move, post-Transformers.
So, the threat is close at hand, a few feet away. It's in our faces. But, if all this is too touchy-feely, we're reminded it all 'Begins At Sea' (:31), and once again the nuts-and-bolts boilerplate imagery is about fighting machinery guided by masked, anonymous pilots. After this baseline commercial eye candy has been reiterated we get back on message at (:50) -- you can't win a war with machines, you gotta to send infantry, there has to be boots on the ground. We're engaged in a bit of mano a mano between our main man Taylor Kitsch and a Cylon-esque bad guy. It doesn't last, though -- Rihanna man-euvers a very phallic 5-inch main-gun and blows Mr. Space Invader away in a ridiculous (Sorry, you can't point a gun at your own deck [if you could it would have been done accidentally a bunch of times] because a) that would kill everyone on deck and b) would likely sink the ship, but let's not split hairs) bit that is sure to fuel rampant word-of-mouth (among both boys and girls) and float 'Battleship' for a solid second weekend. We may giggle a bit but, alas, we also care.
Overall, a much better effort than the first trailer. If everyone has forgotten that, this new ad bodes well for the movie. Still, though, you have to wonder what exactly a battleship can do to stop far superior combat hardware from a distant planet. Well. That would be the crux of the story, yes? Just how do we deal with these invaders? Give them a virus their immune systems can't fight? -- been done. That element, whatever it is, if it works, is what this movie is riding on. If that plot point snaps into place smartly we'll like the movie. If not, we'll condemn it. I'm not sure the box office take would be different either way, though.
It remains to be seen whether writers Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber conjured up a winner, but I'm far more optimistic than I was after the first trailer. I can honestly say I care. I'm not swept off my feet, mind you -- it is summer popcorn after all -- but I like 'Battleship' a lot more than before.
If you've only seen the first trailer, check the new one out.
.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
'Battleship' Trailer Escapes
Universal didn't take this down quite in time.
Have to say, the timing on this couldn't be worse. 'Battleship' doesn't have the weight of, say, District 9 or the visual zip of, oh, Transformers.
The zoom at 1:46 is just too cute (they still do that?). This movie should have been released 5 or 10 years ago. Pre-Transformers this could have been cool. Now, though, cheesy is the best word I can think of.
Can't see many people looking forward to this.
Have to say, the timing on this couldn't be worse. 'Battleship' doesn't have the weight of, say, District 9 or the visual zip of, oh, Transformers.
The zoom at 1:46 is just too cute (they still do that?). This movie should have been released 5 or 10 years ago. Pre-Transformers this could have been cool. Now, though, cheesy is the best word I can think of.
Can't see many people looking forward to this.
.
'Battleship' Flashes a Trailer, Takes it Down
We see trailers go up then go black after a few minutes now and then. It creates buzz. We get a quick peek at a 'leaked' trailer, everyone talks about it all day, hits Google a million times looking for more, then we celebrate when the 'legit' version finally appears.
But, initial reaction on the sites that got the 'Battleship' trailer this morning wasn't very good (both from bloggers and in the reader comments), and the trailer was taken down after a few minutes seemingly in response. Not a great start for a picture that cost $200 million just to get in the can. Marketing would add, what, 25% more? At least.
Anyway, here's the beginning of the rollout as of 8:30 am. Not very impressive.
But, initial reaction on the sites that got the 'Battleship' trailer this morning wasn't very good (both from bloggers and in the reader comments), and the trailer was taken down after a few minutes seemingly in response. Not a great start for a picture that cost $200 million just to get in the can. Marketing would add, what, 25% more? At least.
Anyway, here's the beginning of the rollout as of 8:30 am. Not very impressive.
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