Trailers of the Week: ‘Lego Movie 2,”Lion King’
Hakuna matata! This week, we finally got our first looks at the much-anticipated Lego Movie sequel and Disney’s live-action remake of The Lion King; an action-filled final trailer for Aquaman; Taraji P. Henson’s gender-flipped take on an old Mel Gibson comedy, What Men Want; a very cryptic clip for the Matthew McConaughey thriller Serenity; and some peeks at a biopic and a big-deal foreign crime drama. It’s the Thanksgiving-weekend edition of your weekly trailer round-up.
Aquaman
Ah right, there’s still one more big superhero movie left to go in 2018. What’s the final trailer give us regarding DC’s most waterlogged good guy? We get an undersea kingdom that looks like it’s in deep space; Aquaman as a teen (!) and a toddler (!!!); swimming lessons from Willem Dafoe; Nicole Kidman kicking men (no, really); Jason Momoa gruffly declaring that he’s “protector of the deep”; and those types of CGI action sequences that look like videogame cut scenes on steroids. Listen, this just has to be better than Justice League, and the new clip seems like it’s going to maybe hit that mark at least, so ok, my dudes. Opens Dec. 21st.
Birds of Passage
Just when you thought it was impossible to do a new, fresh spin on the crime-empire drama, along comes Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra’s extraordinary epic tale of thugs, drugs, bloodshed and mobsters rising and falling. The difference here: It takes place in the world of Colombia’s indigenous Wayuu. And the trailer lays out the basics: A young man (José Acosta) gets involved in the country’s late-Sixties marijuana import/export business. Some very old-world traditions butt up against the very modern machinations of capitalism, which means guns are getting drawn and bodies are hitting the ground. If you caught the duo’s 2015 drama Embrace of the Serpent (she produced it; he directed it), you know they have a unique way of portraying native culture. This trailer suggests they’ve added a serious genre element to that vision as well. Opens Feb. 13th, 2019.
Future Man, Season 2
From the Things You’ve Been Meaning to Catch Up With But Seriously Who Has the Time These Days There’s So Much TV and Streaming Services C’mon People This Is Insane dept.: If you haven’t dipped into Hulu’s original series about a janitor (Josh Hutcherson) who must join his two favorite videogame heroes (Eliza Coupe and Derek Wilson) for past and future adventures to save humanity, you have some time (jokes!) to catch up. This teaser includes Hutcherson hitting himself in the face while wearing a toga, laser-sword fights, what looks like a musical number with a horn section, taco trucks and the declaration that “we need to unfuck this timeline.” You have until Jan. 11th, 2019, to get up to speed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXGPUuwV7W0&feature=youtu.be
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
So everything is awesome once more?! (Funny how that phrase is not something you’ve heard a lot since, I dunno, November 2016?) Chris Pratt and Elizabeth Banks return as the perpetually positive Emmet and the brooding badass Wyldstyle, respectively; Pratt also plays a character named Rex Dangervest, who’s resumé (galaxy guardian, raptor wrangler, cowboy) sounds … oddly familiar. Meanwhile, Will Arnett’s Batman is back, and every comic actor in Hollywood lends their voices to what seems like another highly irreverent toy story. The trailer starts with a choice coffee joke and ends with a reference to pants of pudding. Opens Feb. 8th, 2019.
The Lion King
Hey, do you like The Lion King, but wish it had more real* animals? (*Real meaning, of course, CGI.) Disney continues its tradition of remaking its animated classics as live-action joints, and now the 1994 gem about a young cub growing into his responsibility as the chosen one is up to bat. You will either see this shot-for-shot redo of the original’s opening sequence and go, “Really?!” or gasp in awe. The Jungle Book‘s director Jon Favreau is on board, which bodes well. And the A-list talent is strong with this one: Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, James Earl Jones (of course), John Oliver, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Billy Eichner, Keegan Michael-Key and someone named Beyoncé. Mark July 19th, 2019 on your calendars.
Serenity
We’ll cop to having a weakness for those rhythmic, quick-cut trailers that just show you a lot of exciting scenes without zero context. So while the fact that this Matthew McConaughey/Anne Hathaway thriller got moved from late summer 2018 to the barren release-date wasteland that is January gives us pause, you can’t fault this teaser, which does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Apparently, McConaughey is a beachcomber who may or may not be hired to kill Hathaway’s no-good husband. We’re not sure from this clip; also TBD is whether the movie is supposed to be a noir, a Lost-style existential brainteaser, just an excuse for you to watch movie stars in a tropical locale or all three. Jason Clarke, Diane Lane, Djimon Hounsou and Succession‘s Jeremy Strong costar. January 25th, folks.
Stan & Ollie
As in Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who finally get the Oscarbait biopic they have long deserved. John C. Reilly dons the fatsuit to play Hardy; Steve Coogan does his best tucked-in-chin, spontaneously weepy take on Laurel. The clip here suggests a very tears-of-a-clown take on the silent comedians, with the chance to watch these two actors recreate some of the duo’s best-known routines. Fingers crossed that this one’s a fine mess and not just a mess. Opens in limited release on Dec. 28th.
What Men Want
Remember the 2000 movie What Women Want, forever to be commemorated as the movie in which Mel Gibson wore pantyhose? Now we get the answer track. After your run-of-the-mill hallucinogen-filled tea and a head injury, a sports agent (Taraji P. Henson) discovers she has the ability to read men’s minds. Naturally, she discovers that all they think about are sports, delicious pretzels and freezing their sperm into semen ice cubes. (That last one was courtesy of Tracy Morgan, if you couldn’t guess.) Judging from the trailer, this could go either way, but a) Henson has serious comic chops, which could be the film’s secret weapon and b) big up the Black Panther joke at the end. Opens Feb. 8th.