There were several major trailers released this week, but I’ll start with “Invictus,” Clint Eastwood’s film about Nelson Mandela’s effort to help unify South Africa via rugby. With an inspirational message, Morgan Freeman as Mandela, and Dec. 11 release date, “Invictus” is clearly Oscar-bait, but it still looks good. Eastwood’s films tend to bypass the overly sappy, sentimental takes on subjects and instead present things in a more gritty fashion, so here’s to hoping he doesn’t just make “Remember the Titans: South Africa.” Matt Damon co-stars as the South African rugby team captain. Check out the trailer below.
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The second big release is the new full trailer for “Avatar,” the highly anticipated sci-fi film from James Cameron. The movie chronicles the attempt of one soldier to infiltrate the planet of an alien people known as the Na’vi, so that Earth’s military can move them off of their land and harvest their mineral resources. The trailer has been getting huge buzz and lots of views, but I’m left pretty underwhelmed. The CGI looks far too much like a video game, and it probably doesn’t help that a game version of the movie is already deep in development and set to release around the same time as the film. The plot is cliché too: evil humans unjustly persecute the peaceful aliens and the tough soldier gradually learns to love their culture and people. By the end of the trailer I felt like I’d seen the whole movie already.
In addition to “Invictus,” Matt Damon has another movie coming out called “Green Zone.” Based on the book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” Damon stars as a soldier who helps the CIA search for terrorists and WMDs in pre-surge Iraq, with supporting roles played by Greg Kinnear and Brendan Gleeson. The best news here is that Damon is teaming back up with Paul Greengrass, who directed the excellent second and third installments of the “Bourne” films. Anyhow, watch Damon shoot his way to victory in Iraq below.
With three high-quality trailers this week, I feel obligated to finish with a phenomenally shitty one: “Old Dogs,” the latest Disney travesty starring Robin Williams and John Travolta. Williams and Travolta star as co-workers and friends who will no doubt learn the importance of family and the meaning of life via a series of plausibility-straining events. The first trailer made the movie look pretty much like the schlocky garbage that it is, but the new trailer consists entirely of the main characters being trapped in a zoo. Literally, there is nothing else. No shots of kids and happy families etc., just a bunch of angry penguins. Either the plot of the film has suddenly become a savage tale of survival in the faux-wilderness, or the marketing team for the movie decided to half-ass things. Regardless, I’m excited about the possibility of Seth Green being ripped apart by a gorilla.
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