My Wife Is Pretty Pissed About This JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS Trailer

I have only vague recollections of the original Jem And The Holograms cartoon.  My sister was just this side of too young for the show's prime demographic, but I remember some of my female childhood friends who loved that shit.

In retrospect, the actual premise sounds pretty cool!  Jerrica Benton is a badass record company exec by day and pink-haired rocker Jem by night, performing with her band The Holograms with the aid of Synergy, a special talking holographic computer that her father built for her before his death.  Synergy literally projects a hologram over Jerrica and her friends thanks to projectors in her earrings, allowing their alter egos to battle it out with rival band The Misfits and getting Jerrica/Jem entangled in a Clark Kent/Superman-esque love triangle with her purple-haired boyfriend Rio.  I make the superhero comparison because the premise so easily lends itself to a Marvel-style, globe-trotting girl power adventure.  Awesome!

So of course this live action adaptation is about a shy teenager who becomes a YouTube star.  Ugh.

Look, I have no real dog in this fight other than a general annoyance at cashing in on long dormant and slightly familiar intellectual property in the simplest and laziest way imaginable.  This movie clearly caters to the worst instincts of teenage America, the self-entitled desire for 15 minutes of Kardashian-level notoriety without having to actually work for it.  Animated Jerrica Benton is a savvy business woman and talented musician who cares for orphans and gets shit done.  Live action Jerrica Benton is all about shrugging off her "unremarkable life" in favor of fashion makeovers and signing autographs on Ryan Hanson's limbs.

My wife Jamie probably put it best: "This movie bears no resemblance to the source material.  It seem slapdash and unfatihful.  It's just no fun!  If we can have a Norse god with a magic hammer and an AI hero dude, why can't we have actual holograms?  The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie might have sucked but at least it wasn't a story about four pet turtles and their owner who all go to school and run a pizza shop."

Not even the presence of a One Direction song was enough for this trailer to win her over.  That's saying something.

Johnny Depp Wears No Stupid Hats In This BLACK MASS Trailer

Twice this week I've found myself involved in conversations about Black Mass, the Whitey Bulger biopic starring Johnny Depp as the infamous Boston mobster and FBI informant.  It's remarkable considering that, before a few days ago, I kind of forgot that the movie even existed.  You can hardly blame me - Johnny Depp hasn't given us serious reason to get excited about one of his movies in quite some time.  I've been curious, as I am with just about any movie set and shot in my home town, but it's fair to say that my expectations have been pretty low up until now.

Today we got our first look at the film courtesy of this trailer and I must admit, I'm more than a little impressed.

First things first: unless you count his hairpiece, Johnny Depp makes it through all two minutes of this trailer with nary a silly hat in sight.  Huzzah!  And those blue contact lenses give him a serious case of Crazy Eyes.  It's also worth noting that Depp manages to pull off one of the more convincing Boston accents in recent memory.  It's one of those very particular vocal traits that's easy to exaggerate in a comedic context but harder to portray naturally, let alone utilize with genuine menace.  The Departed (whose Frank Costello was based largely on Bulger) is one of the high watermarks in this regard.  Mystic River is like nails on a chalkboard to my ears.

I hadn't realized that the cast was so stacked either!  Joel Edgerton is always a welcome addition to any movie, and I'm a big fan of Dakota Johnson, 50 Shades notwithstanding.  Plus Lance/Landry!  And might we be treated to the dulcet tones of Benedict Cumberbatch's version of a Southie drawl?  I live to dream.

UPDATED: I Feel Bad For That Leaked BATMAN v. SUPERMAN Trailer

Warner Bros has a big IMAX event scheduled for Monday night where they planned to unleash the first official teaser for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.  Then the internet went and ruined everything.  That's kind of how the internet rolls.

Even if the footage hadn't been taken down, I wouldn't run it here because I have a long-standing hatred of leaked trailers, especially ones that consist of shaky phone camera footage with muffled audio that occasionally drifts out of focus.  This is a bad way for any movie to be introduced to the public, let alone something as grandiose as Batman v. Superman.  The fact that the entire trailer is made up of nighttime combat footage and overlapping voiceovers only exacerbates things.  To be honest, there isn't really a whole lot to see here, but it's a teaser trailer so that's fine.  This should really be about tone more than anything else.  And, unsurprisingly, that tone can be most accurately described here as "dour as shit."

What's worse, the trailer was leaked just hours after the official release of that newfangled Star Wars trailer, which was met with such overwhelming enthusiasm by the nerd community at large that anything released in its wake could only be considered a disappointment.  Even if this BvS trailer had been more remarkable, between the poor quality footage and the shadow of Skywalker looming large, the deck was simply stacked against it.  What's worse, because of their big IMAX event, Warners can't even utilize Marvel's clever strategy of countering the leak by immediately releasing a high quality official version.

UPDATED: Well I called that one wrong.  Warner's did end up releasing the official version online in advance of their IMAX event, which certainly makes sense.  Once it's out there, it's out there. You might as well make it look as good as possible.  See it embedded below.

Make no mistake about it.  This is a very big deal.  In a few weeks Marvel will release the money printing machine that is Age Of Ultron and before rounding the corner into the truly epic weirdness of Phase 3.  Meanwhile, DC is just starting to roll out their cinematic universe with nothing but the promising-yet-problematic Man Of Steel as a foundation.  Frankly, audiences have no idea what to expect going forward and Warners has a long road ahead of them convincing the world that they've got something that's both compelling as/uniquely different from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Right now their strongest indicator is probably Suicide Squad, which will certainly feel nothing like any other comic book movie to date, for better or for worse.

I'm probably a little more optimistic than most (I quite liked Man Of Steel!) but there's no way to overstate the value of a first impression and blurry iPhone footage is the polar opposite of what Warners was shooting for here.  The DCU is already on shaky ground when it comes to public opinion.  Here's hoping they can turn it all around.



Photo credit to Redditor Thomassaurus

Gaze Upon The Second STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS Trailer!

Star Wars: Celebration is happening right now in Anaheim.  I am in my cubicle in Boston.  This makes me sad.  You know what doesn't make me sad?

THIS FUCKING TRAILER.

HO.  LEE.  SHIT.

I literally love everything about this.  Standouts include:

Derelict Star Destroyer.
Luke Skywalker's familiar voiceover.
BB-8 peeking around a corner.
Vader's melted helmet
Every shot of John Boyega.
Robot hand!
That chrome stormtrooper.
Old school lightsaber being handed down
Cool masked villain.
And of course, THAT FINAL SHOT!

Seriously, that final shot put the biggest, stupidest grin on my face and made me instantly pump my fist in the air, perfectly in time with the music sting I might add.

Suffice it to say, my excitement over this movie just became legit.


PS - J.J. Abrams announced on stage today that the desert planet we've been seeing is not, in fact, Tattoine, but a new world named Jakku, which hilariously set off a 20 minute Twitter firestorm among bloggers about how to properly spell it.

Spoiler Fans Will Love This TERMINATOR: GENISYS Trailer

So there's a new trailer out for this summer's upcoming and unfortunately titled Terminator: Genisys and it is apparently EXTREMELY spoilery in terms of this movie's particular timeline-related twists.
I have, therefore, not watched it.  But you might want to.  So it's embedded below.

Look, I've long held that studios give away far too much information about a movie in their attempts to sell it to audiences.  With a known quantity like Terminator, this habit is all the more baffling. However history judges this particular installment, we all know what we're getting when it comes to the franchise as a whole.  If killer robots and time travel isn't your bag, then these aren't the movies for you.  Otherwise, you're probably already on board, or at least morbidly curious.  That's sort of where I fall at this point - skeptical but intrigued.  So I guess this means I'm officially into my traditional marketing blackout mode now that summer is almost upon us.

For all you Terminator fans out there, we're planning on doing a full franchise rewatch on the podcast in the weeks leading up to the release of Genisys, so dust off your DVDs and get psyched!  For what it's worth, there's a $50 box set available on Amazon, or you can do what I did and buy each movie individually and save yourself $16.

Jake Gyllenhaal Does His Best Junkie Balboa In The SOUTHPAW Trailer

I love boxing movies.  I love Jake Gyllenhaal.  And after Olympus Has Fallen (I still haven't gotten around to The Equalizer) I'm even warming up to director Antoine Fuqua.  So I'm pretty excited about Southpaw, better known as That Boxing Movie Where Bubble Boy Got Totally Jacked.  Now we've got our first look at the film via the trailer below, courtesy of Eminem's YouTube channel.  Thanks, Slim Shady.

This has all the hallmarks of a classic boxing movie, including a down-on-his-luck ex-champ with an awesome name (Billy Hope!) who trains in a dingy old gym with an irascible trainer to take on an eminently hateable opponent.  It's basically the exact plot of Rocky III (which might be my sneaky favorite one) in which Burgess Meredith is played by Rachel McAdams.  I'm also already kind of in love with Billy Hope, as he appears to possess some sort of goofy pugilistic superpower in which he can absorb the power of all the punches to his face and then unleash them on his opponent in the final round.  (Which, for what it's worth, is basically how Rocky beat Clubber Lang.)

Gyllenhaal's impressive musculature has been getting plenty of attention so far, but how about those teeth!  Good god.  Paired along with that mad dog stare and it looks like we're in store for a healthy dose of Flirting With The Edge Of Psychosis Gyllenhaal, which is easily my favorite of all the Gyllenhaals.  The guy is on a crazy hot streak right now and Southpaw looks like a worthy successor to Prisoners, Enemy and the criminally under-appreciated Nightcrawler.

That said, I kind of can't wait to see what kind of weird left turn his career takes next.  I wouldn't mind a resurgence of Goofball Gyllenhaal, to be honest.

This MAGGIE Trailer Is Surprisingly Affecting

When it was first announced that Arnold Schwarzenegger would star in Maggie, a film about a father who's forced to protect his daughter as she slowly turns into a zombie, I was hardly alone in the assumption that the former Governator would spend a fair amount of screen time fighting off swarms of the undead.  But now we've got our first real look at the film courtesy of the trailer below and it is surprisingly...emotional.

That is not at all what I was expecting.

People don't give Arnold enough credit as an actor.  His post-political performances in stuff like The Last Stand and Escape Plan have been shockingly on point.  Like a potent and smokey bourbon, the man has only gotten better with age, to the point where I'm getting more and more excited about the promise of the long-threatened Legend Of Conan sequel.  Maggie is the feature debut of director Henry Hobson, a man who's mostly known for crafting title sequences in movies like Rango, The Lone Ranger and Snow White and the Huntsman.  But this thing looks somber and moody and heart-wrenching in all the best ways.

Do I want to watch Arnold shotgunning a horde of zombie faces?  Of course.  This is America.  But I'll happily fork over my hard earned cash to watch bearded, grieving farmer Poppa Arnold care for a disintegrating Abigail Breslin anytime.

This POLTERGEIST Trailer Wants You To Fear Your Flatscreen

I caught up with the original Poltergeist for the first time this past Halloween.  It played as part of an all day marathon in a huge old local theater and I totally flipped for it.  My only wish is that it had played as the last film instead of right before the midday break.  That movie fucking plays, with scares and humor and and awesome mix of practical and old school optical effects.  Seriously, you could put that movie in theaters every Halloween and I'm convinced it would simply never go out of style.

Instead, we're getting a remake with Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt and Irish Lane Pryce.  I mean, I guess.  Rockwell's great, but I doubt this movie will give him the chance to do any of the things that make me love him so.  Then again, the director is Gil Kenan and he's responsible for the seriously underrated Monster House.  So maybe there's hope!

What annoys me the most about this trailer is that, while it does look to stick pretty close to the original, it also looks fairly indistinguishable from a dozen other haunted house/ghost movies from the last few years.  It seems like they're compensating for a lack of originality with TONS MORE GHOSTS!  While that fucking clown doll is appropriately creepy, there's certainly nothing here as uniquely peculiar as the original's Zelda Rubenstein character.  I'll see it for sure, but the chances that it can hold a candle to Joe Dante's version seem pretty slim.

I Dare You Not To Love This MAGIC MIKE XXL Teaser

No one was more surprised than me at how much I enjoyed Magic Mike.  My dude-crush on Channing Tatum is now undeniable, as is the majesty of this teaser for the unlikely-yet-impeccably-titled sequel, Magic Mike XXL.

Seriously, this thing is perfect in every way.  From Tatum's bench spasms turned gravity-defying dance moves, to Joe Manganiello opening beverages through sheer cock strength, to the sassy "You're Welcome" title card, to the fact that this will seemingly be a film which attempts to glamorize Myrtle fucking Beach.  But most of all I adore when Tatum tells Amber Heard his name, does a little spin move, doesn't quite stick the landing but MAINTAINS EYE CONTACT and then saunters off like a boss.  You just can't teach that stuff.

Am I a little worried that Soderbergh and McConaughey are both AWOL?  Sure.  But I'm excited at the addition of Heard, Elizabeth Banks, Donald Glover and even Jada Pinkett Smith.  If she does her weird Eartha Kitt voice from Gotham, I'll be over the moon.

Magic Mike XXL will make 50 Shades Of Gray look like a punk ass bitch on July 1st.

The FURIOUS 7 Super Bowl Spot Is Preposterously Awesome

It's been two days since the Super Bowl and I'm still having some trouble believing that the Football Gods actually allowed my Patriots to win that game.  Whether you believe in all that Deflategate nonsense or not, I think we can all agree that the ratio of game-based excitement to ad-based entertainment was incredibly lopsided this year.  I think the best ad I saw the whole game was for avocados.

But we also got a crop of mini-trailers for big upcoming features, including Terminator, Pitch Perfect 2, Tomorrowland and Jurassic World.  But the only one of these worth really talking about is the spot for Furious 7.

What unholy deal did Vin Diesel make with Beelzebub which allows each of these movies to be better than the last one?    How is this possible?  Was Paul Walker collateral damage?  Somebody get the Vatican on this, STAT.

I don't even know where to begin.  The importance of family has become the prevailing theme of these movies, so I love seeing that same theme play out on the villain's side as well.  The Toretto house explosion is pretty baller, and I would have expected this to be the kind of thing used to write Walker out of the series but it looks like it happens right up front and sets the rest of the movie in motion.  The Rock saying "Daddy's gotta go to work" makes me happier than decorum should permit.  But that car jumping from building to building though...holy fuck.  That absolutely silenced my Super Bowl party.

My only disappointment with this (and all) trailers is not enough Kurt Russell.  Here's hoping I don't walk out of the movie with the same complaint.

On a related note, Amazon currently has EVERY Fast & Furious movie available for $10 or less per Blu-ray.  You can also get the whole thing as a box set for $50.  Happy early birthday to me!

The First Trailer For TED 2 Is Sperm-tastic!

I find it difficult to be impartial about Seth MacFarlane's Ted, not because I'm a huge fan of the Family Guy creator (although I kind of am) but because it's a movie that's meticulously constructed to appeal to my baser, Masshole instincts.  Ted's girlfriend, Tami-Lynn?  Every word that comes out of her mouth likely falls flat to most of the country.  But to an audience of South Shore townies?  That shit KILLS.

Now we've got a sequel coming our way, and while I wouldn't exactly say I'm excited for it, this trailer is funny enough to ensure my future ticket purchase.

I like seeing Flash Gordon right up front and that Sam Jackson line is pretty good.  It seems like they've given Tami-Lynn a lot more to do this time around and that makes me a little nervous, as does the lack of Mila Kunis.  But Amanda Seyfried can more than hold her own.  And what can I say, I just unabashedly love goofy Mark Wahlberg.  I've watched him say "fish nuggets" five times now and I've laughed every time.

I also appreciate the tasteful cutaway to the outside hallway when Wahlberg knocks over the baker's rack full of sperm cups.  This way it'll be even funnier when the movie actually shows him dripping with semen.  This is Trailer-Cutting 101, folks.

Better Late Than Never: The FASTASTIC FOUR Trailer

Just last week there were rumors that Josh Trank's upcoming Fantastic Four was such an unmitigated disaster that Fox was considering burning the whole thing down, scrapping the release and starting over from scratch.  I never put much stock in those rumors, although the complete lack of ANY marketing materials for a major tentpole feature less than eight months away was more than a bit suspect.

Yesterday, Fox attempted to quiet the naysayers by releasing the first teaser for the film, conveniently while most of the east coast was trapped in their homes by a mountain of snow.  Why they didn't save this reveal five more days and air it during the Super Bowl is beyond me.

Well it hardly looks like an unsalvageable mess, but that's mostly because it doesn't really look like much of anything at the moment.  There's a lot of vague voiceover about discovery and risk, some moody shots of our four leads not doing much in the way of superheroics, and...that's about it.  They certainly want us to know that this is a SERIOUS MOVIE, which might be a bit of an over-correction from the previous attempt at the franchise.  Still, a lot remains to be seen.

What do I like?  The homegrown version of Miles Teller's contraption looks cool.  For some reason I was under the impression that they weren't going to space this time around, but that last image certainly looks like another planet to me.  Perhaps it's a different dimension?  I dig that our brief glimpse of Michael B. Jordan flaming on appears to just be a guy covered in flames, as opposed to when Chris Evans turned into a molten human.  It's a nice and simple differentiation, and it looks classier.  I also like the design of The Thing (at least from behind), although I wish he was a bit bigger, more Hulk like.

What do I not like?  I realize that all the humor in the old Fantastic Four fell horribly flat, but I wish this movie didn't look so damn dour.  Also, I assume that we're getting a version of Reed Richards as a child prodigy, but for a guy named Mr. Fantastic he looks awfully young.  They all do, which isn't helped by a shot of Jamie Bell playing Little League.  Also, more Kate Mara please!

Oh, and fuck you SO HARD for replacing the "A" in Fantastic with the number four.  Seriously.  Can we officially call a moritorium on this shit?  For a movie that so desperately wants to be taken seriously, that title treatment is beyond childish.  From now on, if you're gonna start shoving numbers into your titles, I'm gonna start pronouncing those titles as written.

Fantfourstic hits theaters this August.

The Human-Sized ANT-MAN Trailer Has Arrived

I host pub trivia on Tuesday nights, which means I usually don't catch up with Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. until Wednesdays.  Normally this does not present a huge problem, but now that the show has been temporarily supplanted by Agent Carter, well, I'm just itching to get home and catch up with my DVR.  Last night's two hour premiere also featured our first look at the teaser for Ant-Man, Marvel's first post-Ultron movie, (which is technically going to be the last film of Phase 2).

I like it!  It's a bit more serious than I was expecting, but I don't expect that's super-representative of the final film's overall tone.  Perhaps Disney's marketing department feels they really need to sell us on the concept of Paul Rudd: Hunky Super Hero?  I dunno.  But the suit looks good and the few shots of him riding insects are kind of great.  Not too silly but not grotesque either.  I'm glad the ants don't look like monsters.

What I really love is the suggestion that Hank Pym has become an old man puttering around in a private, underground lab while his company is seemingly run by his daughter and an unsavory successor.  It feels like a nice spin on the Tony Stark model, like what Howard Stark might have become had he not been killed by the Winter Soldier.  I also like the emotional subtext here: a possibly disgraced Pym trying to win back the respect of his adult daughter and while Scott Lang does the same with his younger one.  Sounds meaty and dramatic to me.

Do I miss the presence of Edgar Wright?  Sure.  But I have a lot of faith in Peyton Reed and from what I can see here, he's made the best of a very bad situation.  Still, isn't this supposed to be a funny heist movie?  Why so serious?

JURASSIC WORLD Can Never Live Up To The Legacy Of JURASSIC PARKS AND RECREATION

At this point I shouldn't have to extol the virtues of NBC's Parks and Recreation.  Sure it had a rocky first season, but once Paul Schneider exited to make room for Adam Scott and Rob Lowe, it was pretty much comic gold from that point on.  But the most miraculous recovery comes in the form of Chris Pratt.  When I watched the pilot I thought that Andy Dwyer was perhaps the most irritating and unfunny character imaginable.  Now he is quite simply THE BEST.

The show is about to kick off it's final season and I'm both happy and depressed that NBC is airing the last run of episodes two and a time (Hurrah!) in order to burn off the show as quickly as possible. (Boo!)  But when it's all said and done, at least I can live secure in the knowledge that Chris Pratt has a very healthy movie career ahead of him.  Next up on the docket is Jurrasic World, the fourth sequel to Jurassic Park, and hey, "park" is also in the title of his TV show, so of course an intrepid YouTube user has utilized this clever bit of wordplay to generate an alternate trailer in which Pratt's dino-wrangler is actually Andy Dwyer the whole time!

I'm sorry, but that last bit with the Parks and Rec theme song playing over the raptors just downright tickles me.  Also, Pratt's actual Jurassic World dialogue, which feels so stiff and awkward in the real trailer, works like gangbusters when intercut with the Burt Macklin shtick.  I will now choose to believe that Pratt actually shot this whole movie in character as Andy Dwyer playing Burt Macklin.  This can only enhance my enjoyment of the final film.

This BIG GAME Trailer Will Rock Your Monday

It's the first Monday of the new year, and like many of you that means it's back to the salt mines after a lengthy holiday break.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to turn around and go home within minutes of first setting foot in my cube.

Thankfully, I've got this Big Game trailer to get me through till 5:00.

I first heard about Big Game after it screened at the Toronto Film Festival this year and my excitement was already fairly high, even before I got an actual look at the thing: Oskari, a young Finnish boy, is in the midst of a rite of passage in which he must survive alone in the forest with little more than a bow and arrow in order to achieve manhood.  His wilderness ritual is suddenly interrupted when Air Force One crashes in a terrorist attack and Oskari is forced to protect President Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson.  That premise alone is enough to make me twitch with joy, but this trailer also reveals the likes of Ted Levine (!) Felicity Huffman, Victor Garber and Jim Broadbent's American Accent as the White House staffers hunkered down in the Situation Room, plus Ray Stevenson as the Secret Service agent who I assume will later turn out to be a traitorous bastard.

Big Game is directed by Jalmari Helander, who was previously responsible for a fun little flick called Rare Exports, a Christmas movie featuring an evil demon Santa Claus.  Both movies star young Onni Tommila.

I can't goddamn wait.

This New MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Trailer Is Everything

The following is the newest trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road.  Watching it practically brought tears to my eyes.  I had one of those slow, inadvertent smiles a mile wide.  At one point, I literally had to remind myself to breathe.

Holyfuckingshit.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Is Not Committing Suicide In This Teaser For THE WALK

First and foremost, you should really see Man On Wire.  The documentary depicts Frenchman Philippe Petit's 1974 attempt to covertly rig a high wire between the two World Trade Center towers and then go for a little stroll in the sky.  I tackled the film early on in my movie-a-day project and quite liked it.  But the masses don't really go in for documentaries, even ones that are staged like a heist movie.  So of course that means we're getting a narrative version starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which now comes complete with a vertigo-inducing teaser.

Without any preface, you'd be forgiven for watching this trailer and thinking it's a movie about Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Hairpiece struggling to decide whether or not to jump off that building.

Look, I like JGL and all, but this whole endeavor feels somewhat unnecessary.  Then again, I'm more than a little curious to see if Robert Zemeckis has got any gas left in the tank, if only from a technical standpoint.  I remember reading that he was really blown away with Gravity and that he saw The Walk as his chance to really push the boundaries of IMAX and 3D in the same sort of way.  I'm all for that, but I still suspect that "it's got cool visuals" will be a best case scenario here.

Man On Wire is currently streaming on Netflix.  For what it's worth, so is The Man With One Red Shoe.  Go nuts.

The KINGSMAN Trailer: You Had Me At Lisping Sam Jackson

I love (and own) each and every one of Matthew Vaughn's films.  The guy has a great eye for staging action sequences as well as a sharp ear for humor.  He usually maintains a great balance between "cool" and "fun", a feat that is far more difficult than it sounds.  I was therefore confused by the first few trailers for Kingsman: The Secret Service, which stars Colin Firth as a British superspy with all kinds of crazy gadgets.  It's hard not to feel like this is a movie which revels in all that which has been summarily discarded by Daniel Craig's incarnation of Bond.  That could be fun, but something about those early looks felt fairly by-the-numbers.  Maybe it was the whole tutoring-a-streetwise-young-protege storyline that just did nothing for me.  I'm not sure.

But then I saw this new trailer.

Samuel L. Jackson as a lisping supervillain?  I think I'm in love.  I'm also tickled by his henchwoman, who appears to be a literal blade runner.  According to IMDb, her character's name is Gazelle.  That's so incredibly dumb that I can't help but adore it.  I also spotted a rocket pack in there as well as a terrified and professorial Mark Hamill.  But who cares.  I could spend two hours just watching Nick Fury's speech impediment wax on about blood on his carpets.

I am now officially excited about this movie.

The STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS Trailer Is Here!

The first teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens now officially exists!  It's currently located exclusively over here at the Apple Trailer site, which means I can't embed it here.  It also means you can't currently watch it in full screen, which kind of blows.  I remember back when Apple was the best place to watch trailers in high definition and all YouTube videos looked like garbage.  Oh how the times have changed.

UPDATE:  Well that didn't take long.  Here's a spiffy new embedded version.

Anyway, there's not a whole lot to see here, as it's just a first teaser.  Particularly, there are no classic Star Wars characters to see.  No Han, no Leia, no Luke.  That's a little disappointing, but not altogether surprising.  I imagine they're gonna draw that reveal out as long as possible.

How do we feel about that new school lightsaber?  I don't understand the need to re-invent the wheel with with one of the most iconic weapons in all of cinema, especially in a way that seems so impractical.  Seriously, a hand guard made out of lasers?  How has that guy not sliced off all his fingers already?  Also, the evil voiceover (which sounds SO MUCH like Benedict Cumberbatch's Smaug as to be distracting) is a little on the fucking nose and belongs in one of those montages of people awkwardly saying the title of the movie they're in.

But that little soccer ball droid is adorable.

Welcome To The JURASSIC WORLD Trailer

When I first heard that Jurassic World would be set in an actual, functioning dinosaur theme park, it was as if a light went on in my brain.  I never realized just how much I wanted to see that movie until someone actually said it out loud, and I instantly felt stupid for never having thought of it earlier.  Now we've got our first real look at Colin Trevorrow's version of Isla Nublar in the first trailer for the movie, which I thought was supposed to premiere during Thanksgiving football.  I'm happy to get it two days early, as now I can spend Thursday focused on my 12 pound ham.

I really love the world building here.  The lazy river, the water show, those crazy bubble cars...I am all about it.  I remain a little skeptical about that kid from i, but I dig that Bryce Dallas Howard is actually running around the park, striking Goldblum-esque poses with road flares.  I'll reserve judgement on the actual dinos, as we're way too far out for any of the effects work to be completely finished.  I do really, REALLY love that haunting arrangement of John Williams' original score.

Astoundingly enough, what I'm most concerned about right now is Chris Pratt.  Dude is trying real hard to put on his Serious Face for this movie, which is the opposite of what I was expecting.  Not that I thought this was necessarily gonna be Star Lord Plays With Dinosaurs, but he just looks so stiff and uncomfortable.  Pratt delivers his lines here with all the charm of a doorknob, something I never thought I'd hear myself saying.  Maybe he's playing some kind of total burnout, which could be totally great, but the way his scenes are cut together here, largely with no one to bounce off of, feels a bit clunky.

Then again, we've got that amazing shot of him riding a motorcycle alongside a pack of trained velociraptors.  The only way that could get any better is if Pratt was riding an actual dinosaur that had lasers strapped to its head.  I can still dream.