Topic: The Movie Thread

I'm a big Will Smith fan and I also love buddy cop movies/tv shows. After watching the trailer, I'm really looking forward to Bad Boys For Life. The directors for this movie are also directing Beverly Hills Cop 4.

Four months to go. Woosah.....

@RogerRoger
They are fun films, 3 really suffers from obviously not being written as a Die Hard film though. I think some bought in scripts weren't eventually used because one was set on a train and really similar to Under Siege 2, and another set on a boat, like Under Siege!
The first two Die Hards work because of the confined quarters. Towering Inferno with guns and Airport 1975 with guns are great. 'Not Die Hard' with a major secondary character and lots of city-wide traversal doesn't really work all that well.

Interestingly, Die Hard was initially intended to be a sequel to Commando if I remember correctly. Schwarzenegger apparently got bored in pre-production and backed out, so it was reworked as a stand-alone film with different characters.

@WanderingBullet Really can't stand Martin Lawrence. First Bad Boys was a great film though.

The trailer for '...For Life' looks pretty, well - boring. I like the attempt, but it just doesn't feel like a film that'll fly all that well these days.

@LN78 That's it! Simon Says!

There are plenty of good bits, and if it had stayed a stand alone film with another lead, I certainly would've liked it more.

@KALofKRYPTON From what I gather, all of the Die Hard films are either adaptations of novels or re-worked scripts originally planned as standalone thrillers or sequels in other franchises... with the exception of A Good Day to Die Hard which, given its critical mauling, says it all, really.

@RogerRoger Still not seen that one. Live Free... was more than enough.

@KALofKRYPTON I liked Live Free or Die Hard. Saw it at the cinema with my Dad, who then got me the unrated DVD with all the blood and swearing put back in. It's the only one I've seen several times before, but I'm still looking forward to a re-watch because it's been a while.

@KALofKRYPTON I thought he was pretty funny the previous movies. He actually had some of the funniest lines. As for Bad Boys: For Life, my expectations aren't super high but I'll be satisfied if it's anything like 1 or 2.

@Frigate That's a shame! I saw it in a preview screening, and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was honestly a step above most of the superhero movie fare I'd seen, and most certainly Wonder Woman if we're talking DC. I thought Shazam was really well done both in the way he was translated to the big screen as the performances of each of the actors, and I did think he and the characters around him were amusing. I felt it was a movie very confident in it's oddball nature, and justifiably so. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly a fun time.

@Frigate The secret is not watch any trailers lol. I used to watch a lot more than I do now, and these days they either spoil large parts of the story or misrepresent what the film is actually like.

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah, it’s amazing how a trailer can be produced, edited, and constructed so well and in such an entertaining way, and then the actual movie itself can be poorly produced, edited, and paced. It’s like — hey, the crew that made this trailer should have made the whole movie! They knew what they were doing and the main movie’s director and producer were garbage.

@LN78 Ha, ha! Really? I didn’t realize that. I liked Suicide Squad more than most, but I’ll admit that it wasn’t Citizen Kane by any stretch.
I only know just a little bit about film and cinema production, but it does seem clear from the discrepancy between the typical trailers and the actual movie that there is a whole different art and technique to making a trailer. I haven’t any idea, but I wonder how often the director and editors of the movie do actually make the trailer. I’ve always suspected that it’s like lower level intern-type personnel that make these trailers and spots.

Trailers are often used to mis-sell a film. Drive, as @LN78 points out was very different from the sexy, action-packed Ryan Gosling romp that the trailer put out.

Modern horror tends to suffer from this too, with almost every jump-scare manageable chucked in to the trailer because that's all that is in the film.

Lucy is a pretty similar example to Drive; the trailer really is an advert of the last 10 minutes of the film.

Sometimes it does lead to a nice surprise, like Drive and Lucy; and which Heredetary turned out to be a fun watch, it really wasn't what I was wanting to see.

@Th3solution Most, if not all, trailers nowadays are created by marketing companies hired in by the film's studio. They simply hand over all the rushes that have been approved up to a point (which is why you'll sometimes see deleted scenes in trailers) and say "make this look good" and so I'm not surprised that there's frequently a disconnect between the filmmaker's intent and a trailer's tone.

This also happens with games, which is why you'll sometimes see things like a trailer for Shadow of the Tomb Raider using music from the Uncharted franchise, because the marketing company was generic and didn't realise that the "cool jungle action music" they'd chosen was from a rival product.

In the case of Suicide Squad, the company that produced the trailer was actually hired by WB to re-edit the final film, because the public loved the trailer so much. The results are... debatable but hey, I'm glad you enjoyed the film! Somebody had to!

Rarely, often when you're dealing with a huge franchise or a big enough directorial personality, a film's director will get involved with a trailer. One of the last examples I can think of is Rogue One, where many of the trailer's shots were filmed specifically for marketing (Krennic walking along the Scarif beach, a close-up of Jyn in uniform, etc.) and appeared nowhere in the final film, nor in deleted scenes. There was even some expensive ILM visual effects work done specifically for the trailer, as the shot of Jyn walking out along the transmission dish catwalk had a TIE Fighter inserted, looming up ominously to cut her off; again, no such sequence ever existed in the script.

@RogerRoger Very interesting. It sounds similar to what my suspicions were. Do you know if the industry now has a “trailer team” type of career path, or do these marketing companies comprise of a lot of “wanna be” filmmakers who are getting experience and building a resume’? Not sure why I’m curious but I am. I would think it similar to how writers often first publish short stories in periodicals and anthologies before they get the attention of publishers to get their full length novel out there on the shelves. Or kind of like a developmental or minor league in professional sports. In NASCAR, called the “Busch league”, for example. (Which in common slang of course connotes a lesser or inferior product). I’m not sure why I’m interested in this but I’d hate to refer to trailer makers as Busch league filmmakers when in fact sometimes their work is of higher quality than the film itself 😜

@Th3solution Er... pass.

I'd imagine so, though. Marketing teams responsible for trailers would have to put out job adverts for "experienced editors" and so I can totally picture prospective editors using such positions as a leg-up to the industry. Of course, nowadays you have kids with a YouTube account and some free editing software creating beautiful tribute trailers, montages and whatnot, so there's probably a little of that angle involved, too.

You're absolutely right, though; some of the best trailers are works of art in and of themselves. I frequently re-watch some of my favourites just to appreciate them for what they are.

PS: As a Brit, I'd heard the term "Busch League" before and knew what it meant, but had never seen it written; you therefore have my thanks for preventing me from inadvertently misspelling it as "Bush League" someday and getting laughed at by a bunch of NASCAR fans!

The trailer for Us was a good un, and the director and writer Jordan Peele had a hand in putting it together, as he didn't wanna give too much away and get the tone of the film right.

The trailer and marketing for It Comes at Night painted it as horror film... which it wasn't really.

@LN78 I swear that we'll never quite know the blow-by-blow facts behind some of these production stories. As a fan, I find that equal parts infuriating and actually kinda proper.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but director Gareth Edwards admitted in an interview that shots like Jyn in the corridor, and Krennic on the beach, were things that he just thought "looked really cool" and "did between takes" to make the most of the sets and costumes (of course, this could be post-release bluster to cover the behind-the-scenes turmoil... it could also be part of the reason why Disney wanted reshoots, similar to how they reacted against Phil Lord and Chris Miller for taking a haphazard, "find it in the edit" approach to directing Solo). You can also tell that the TIE Fighter shot is an afterthought because Jyn doesn't stop walking or react to it at all, and the same shot (sans TIE) is used in the final film.

@RogerRoger Haha, thanks for the effort. It sounded like maybe you had some inside information. Maybe there are some Film School people out here that can give us a solid answer, but I think it is probably a combination of things going on: new creators getting their feet wet with these smaller trailer projects until they hit the big time, and also a collection of people who simply just enjoy and thrive at making trailers and just are happy to do it as a career.

And on that note of speaking on things of which I only have partial knowledge, I had to do a quick search to make sure I didn’t lead you astray on the “Busch League.” So apparently both spellings are used (‘Bush’ and ‘Busch’). The former referring to old novice baseball teams that were relegated to “playing in the bushes” and the latter being the lesser NASCAR league that I referred to earlier. The implication of the slang term is the same either way. The internet seems to debate which spelling is the “right” one.
Alas, much like the pronunciation of “Gif” and what the blue button on the Dual Shock controller is called, we may never put such a critical and polarizing debate to rest.

@LN78 Agreed on Edwards. There is apparently one shot from his original ending, namely Jyn and Cassian, flanked by Rebel troops, running across a beach towards an AT-ACT with the Project Stardust plans in-hand. If it did really culminate in a battlefield slaughter, rather than the victorious final embrace that we got, I can see why Disney were a little nervous. But yeah, as it stands, Rogue One is the best post-buyout Star Wars movie to date. I also like Solo as a throwaway "it is what it is" popcorn flick although I, like you, wouldn't mind seeing where it was originally headed.

Of course, I think the best Disney product has been Star Wars: Rebels, but then I get that the animated shows aren't for everybody. Fingers crossed for The Rise of Skywalker managing to salvage some worth from its previous two episodes; regardless of how it turns out, I think that the planned three-year break for the cinematic franchise is a good idea.

@Th3solution Oh, heck no. I just type things.

When you look at some of the clever work done on YouTube (like re-editing the SPECTRE trailer to make it look like a Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton or Pierce Brosnan film) and realise it's been shared X-number of times (or should that be "cross-number"...?) you've gotta guess that a marketing executive somewhere would've seen it and admired the talent.

Thanks for the additional research on "Busch League", by the way! That's an interesting etymology. I wonder if NASCAR named its Busch League knowing about the old baseball term, as I'm guessing it came long before the popularisation of vehicle racing, or whether it's just a happy coincidence.