Movie Trailers #6: Double Feature

Just two trailers today, but I'm VERY excited about both.  If you haven't been watching the trailers I usually embed here, I recommend you actually watch these two.

Inception



Weird looking, I know.  But dark, noir-esque sci-fi is so good.  All I know about this movie beyond the style is that it starts DiCaprio and is directed by Christopher Nolan, but really.  Why would I need more than that?  This looks fantastic.  It looks very much in the style of The Matrix, while possibly being less action packed and more with its roots in Chinatown and Bladerunner.  That's some big expectations, I know.  I have big expectations for this movie.

Let's pick this trailer apart, starting simple.  Awesome lead?  Check.  Awesome director?  Check.  Cool looking cinematography?  Check.  Foreboding music?  Check.  What else we got?

The tagline:  "your mind is the scene of the crime".  That inspires so many cool ideas.  It means this is probably a movie that starts with a crime, then follows DiCaprio around while he tries to solve it.  It's a detective movie in other words.  It also suggests some sort of telepathic thing going on.  Mental shenanigans are involved.  I don't know about you, but I'm a man who loves telepathic shenanigans, dark settings, good actors, and detective movies.  Rolling them all together sounds like Christmas morning.

The other thing going on in the trailer is this gravity manipulation business.

The shot of this glass of water is super cool.  Something is making gravity shift around, and it's creepy.  Apparently it's killing people, too, given that scene on that hotel floor.  It doesn't seem like this gravity manipulation would be a world wide thing, or society would crumble.  No, my guess is that someone has figured out how to make someone's personal gravity change or just make them think their personal gravity has changed.  This would fit with the "your mind" part of the tagline.  Someone is screwing with the way people's minds work or perceive the world, and it's throwing gravity all over the place.

Or maybe the whole movie takes place in DiCaprio's head, and it's just about him going nuts.  You heard it here first, kids.  If I'm right, I totally called that 9 months before the movie came out.

The name Inception is one last bit of info.  Something is beginning, this title says.  Something new has been created, and it's going to change the way the world works.  Looks like it's going to change the way gravity works.  Maybe it's a gravity gun.  Or maybe it's the emergence of telepaths.  Whatever it is, I can't wait for it to get here.

What a crazy idea.  This is so sci-fi it hurts.  It's so cool.  Man, everything about this trailer just leaves me wanting more.  That's how a trailer should be.

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I hope it doesn't suck.

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It'll probably suck.


The Men Who Stare At Goats



Speaking of movie persons who I like, check out that cast!  Holy shit!  Ewan McGregor is one of my favorite actors, now that I think about it.  I can't remember seeing him not do well in a role.  Then George Clooney on top of that... More like that on top of George Clooney!  He's a good actor, he's smooth, he's funny, and he's got all the ladies in love with him.  I don't think I've seen him play a bat-shit insane character before (Burn After Reading comes close), so this should be good.  Uniquely crazy characters are great; I hope he can be memorable rather than just nuts.  Plus the two leads have The Dude and Kevin Spacey backing them up.  Sweet.

I guess we've got a telepath theme today.  I like the plot sketched out in the preview a lot.  Comedy about the U.S. government training psychic super soldiers that also happen to be nuts... Sounds fun.  It could easily turn into Clooney stealing the show and making us forget about any importance the plot may have had to begin with, but I don't see that with Ewan backing him up.  I believe he's capable of grounding us.

What I don't like is all the "based on a true story" BS.  Movies love to say they're based on an incredible true story, but the truth is that they're not.  Every writer gets inspiration from somewhere; every story is based on something that actually happened.  They're based on ideas their writer had, which come from that person's experiences.  They're all based on real life.  Even Donnie Darko.  Just because this one lines up more with real events doesn't make it less fictitious.  Trust me; The Men Who Stare At Goats will leave up for debate whether Clooney is really psychic.  Judging by the cloud thing in the preview, they may even come out and say he is psychic.  That, my friends, means that this is not a true story.  Psychic people don't exist.

Aside from that sad necessity of marketing, I love everything about this movie.  I'll be the first to admit that I'm obsessed with goats,

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so it makes sense that I'd want to see this movie no matter what it's about.  That shot of Clooney staring down the line of goats and then one falls over... that's just so funny.  It's hilarious.  I love it.  Everyone looks so crazy, which is awesome.  There's goats.  There's psychic super soldiers.  There's guys running into walls.  There's George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.  What could possibly be better than this?  When's it coming out?