If Ant-Man and Terminator Genisys have taught us anything this summer, it's that there's still plenty of life left in our older generation of actors yet. And I don't mean that in the metaphorical, gee-I-never-knew-they-still-had-it-in-them sprightly performance kind of way. After all, Michael Douglas is merely a supporting player in Marvel's latest bid for superhero supremacy, and spends most of his time standing on the sidelines, spouting exposition. Schwarzenegger, too, plays more of an expository machine than killing machine this time out, trying to make sense of so many fractured timelines and cracking jokes about being "old but not obsolete" (though box office pundits might beg to differ on that last one). The problem is, most of our marquee movie stars of yesteryear simply can't compete with the Vin Diesels and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnsons of today - Douglas, for all his vim and vigor, turns 71 this September, while Schwarzenegger celebrated his 68th birthday on July 30 - so they've been "promoted" to mentor roles or crotchety figures of fun in order to stay relevant. For one brief shining moment in both Ant-Man and Terminator Genisys, however, we're reminded of their past glories (and unwithered faces) with the help of some revolutionary CG effects, and the results, for a change, are breathtaking. Never before has a digital face-lift looked so good.
Granted, CGI hasn't always had the best track record for replicating human flesh on screen. Skin tones tend to look plastic, and contrary to popular belief, human beings do not move with the dexterity of stop-motion animated figures, with rubbery, elongated limbs. And yet filmmakers insist on pushing the technology to its absolute limits, regardless of necessity or common sense. Close-ups of faces, in particular, are especially unforgiving, since we're practically invited to get a cold, hard look at the imperfections of the process. Like this computer-generated visage of actor Bruce Lee, resurrected for a Johnnie Walker whiskey commercial that aired on Chinese television in 2013:
When we last saw him in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, depending on which screening you were (un)lucky enough to attend, Mr. Wade Winston Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) - aka Deadpool, aka Weapon X - was lying amongst the rubble of Three Mile Island, having literally lost his head in a battle with a certain adamantium-clawed superhero. Of course, not even a good decapitation can keep a good Deadpool down, which is why our final fleeting glimpse of the Merc With A Mouth came as a shock to absolutely no one: As his clearly not-dead hand crawled toward his clearly not-dead severed head, his eyes fluttered open, and his lips offered a pre-emptive "Shhhh...", in a bit of fourth-wall breaking that was perfectly in keeping with the comic books. X-Men Origins didn't get a lot of things right, but that was certainly one of them, and fans have spent the last six years anxiously awaiting the promise of that shot - a Deadpool solo spin-off movie, or at the very least, a follow-up film in which Deadpool played anything other a superfluous side character. Which, come February 12, 2016, is exactly what we're gonna get. Directed by former VFX artist Tim Miller, and starring Reynolds, Ed Skrein, and Morena Baccarin, Deadpool: The Movie finally sprung to life following a two-minute sizzle reel that leaked to the Internet in July 2012. This bootleg test footage (also directed by Miller), in which a fully-costumed, heavily-CGI'd Deadpool slices, dices, and sarcasms his way through a car-load of hapless henchmen, really seemed to get the character's trademark snark down pat, and wowed 20th Century Fox executives enough to greenlight a feature film. Production then began on March 23, 2015, and ended on May 29; in between, Mr. Reynolds, always the cad, Tweeted a number of memorable reveals about the shoot (most of them NSFW), in an epic attempt to assure fans that the property was in good hands. And then, on July 11, all fears about the movie were finally laid to rest, when an exclusive trailer debuted to cheering crowds at the San Diego Comic-Con. It will be everything Deadpool devotees have come to expect from the character: quippy, profane, gratuitously violent, and a kick in the pants to all other comic book movies that came before it.
On Wednesday, CBS released the extended trailer for their
upcoming Supergirl series (set to
debut this November), to general acclaim from fanboys and network nitpickers
alike. Developed by Greg Berlanti (whose production company also oversees The Flash and Arrow for The CW) and Ali Adler (ABC'S No Ordinary Family), Supergirl
stars Melissa Benoist as Kara Zor-El, Superman's Kryptonian cousin, who,
"after 12 years of keeping her powers a secret on Earth, decides to finally embrace her superhuman abilities and be the hero she was always meant to be." In short, it's your typical superhero origin story, on a TV
budget, with all the comic book existentialism and witty romantic comedy banter we've
come to expect from our modern-day pop entertainments.
For her part, Benoist captures the cheerfulness and
naivete of the character quite well, thank you very much, especially during the
action scenes - check out her obvious glee, for example, at 4:35, when she discovers she's bulletproof. (Speaking of Glee:
Benoist and her Flash counterpart, Grant Gustin, are both veterans of Fox's musical melodrama.) The writing, too, takes obvious delight poking at gender
stereotypes ("What do you think is so bad about 'girl'? I'm a girl, and
your boss, and powerful, and rich, and hot, and smart. So if you perceive
'Supergirl' as anything less than excellent, isn't the real problem...
you?"), and, of course, includes its share of Easter Eggs.
Last week, we spoke a bit about the current state of advertising in Hollywood - specifically, how
film distributors have figured out a way to tease the trailers for upcoming
films, of all things, only to fall prey to Internet hackers and piracy. What we
didn't talk about, though the topic certainly merits some discussion, is how
these trailers seem to be advertising for films you may have already seen on
the big screen. And I'm not just talking about sequels repeating the vices and
virtues of their respective originals, as is so often the case. I'm talking
about specific shots or sequences lifted from previous blockbusters. They just
might be too subtle for anyone to notice them.
There's Marvel's Avengers: Age Of Ultron, of course,
which just opened to $191 million in the U.S. (and crossed the $631-million
mark at the box office worldwide). But while you can expect the sequel to the
Third Most Successful Film Of All Time to continue many of the MCU's
long-standing traditions - sequel baiting, mystical doodads, killing off major
characters only to bring them back in future installments - there's a moment,
approximately 1:30 into the third and final trailer for Age Of Ultron, that should be instantly familiar to fans of The Matrix Reloaded:
Could
someone please tell me when trailer-worship became an actual thing? By
"trailer," of course, I mean "a short promotional film composed
of clips showing highlights of a movie due for release in the near
future," as Dictionary.com defines it, and by "worship" I mean
"people completely losing their s#@% over two minutes of random footage
for a movie that probably hasn't even finished shooting yet." Most
unsettling is the fact that you no longer need to venture down to your local
theater to view these trailers in all their big-screen glory, as was the case
in my day. Now, you can download the latest trailers onto your computer, or
access them on YouTube or some attention-seeking celebrity's Facebook or
Twitter feed, to your heart's content.
As
if that weren't enough, we have now reached a point where studios have started
releasing trailers for their trailers - 30-60-second teasers for full-length
previews soon to debut on TV or the web. I first noticed this during the
build-up to Star Trek Into Darkness
(2013), when Paramount rolled out this minute-long teaser on December 6th,
2012:
is a devoted family man first, a devout film fan and avid movie watcher second. Everything he knows, he's learned from movies. Some find that a little sad. He's having too much fun to tell the difference.
