Today's News: a threesome of trailers

The first trailers for 2015 are in!:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158543/eerste_trailer_ant-man

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158536/eerste_poster_ant-man

2015's first big trailer of course had to come from Marvel Studios. The ant-icipation for Ant-Man is slowly building, now that most fanboys have had time to get over Edgar Wright's departure. Seems Ant-Man as a project is still doing alright and traces of its original director's touch remain to be felt. The trailer sure hints at Wrightian humour, quirkiness and the necessity not to take this subject too seriously, which is reflected on the rather silly but appropriate minimalist teaser poster. Other than that, it appears a fairly thirteen-a-dozen superhero flick, with distinct overtones of a heist movie. The notion of the villain being equipped with the same powers as the hero is hardly a novel approach for Marvel, when the likes of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk are taken into account. I guess any really new ideas that ought to set Ant-Man apart from his fellow superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe will have to spring from his questionable personality and his resulting status as a former delinquent. None of the other superheroes have had a criminal record thus far. Of course, we have seen flawed characters, Tony Stark's being a prime example (being an arms merchant sadly doesn't come with a criminal record). Ant-Man's strength may lie in introducing a very unheroic hero, the kind that comes home after saving the world and abuses his spouse (as per the comics). I doubt Marvel has the balls to go as far as the hilarious Irredeemable Ant-Man character on the big screen - also because that persona is a whole other character, just with the same name and powers - but there's still ample opportunity for shying away from the superhero routine here by making the titular figure a recnognizable all-too human human being. And otherwise, we'll have to make do with his talking to ants to spice things up a little.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158525/nieuwe_trailer_peanuts

This really isn't my thing. Peanuts never intrigued me much as a kid, nor does it do better in my adult years. This trailer, too, just seems to appeal too much to kids, feeling rather childish throughout, without containing any gags that would win over more mature audiences. The style of animation appears hardly enticing and not on par with contemporary animated films, though that may have something to do with the selfimposed limitations set by the producers to acknowledge the supposedly iconic style of the original comic book strips. I have to give the creators of this film credit for honoring the original work at least, rather than going all-out and making it look nothing like the Peanuts everybody knows. Maybe I'm just biased against this film because I'm a cat person.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158545/nieuwe_trailer_the_lazarus_effect

Zero fascination for this film results from watching this trailer, either. There just doesn't appear to be anything new to this premise, other than that it combines the age-old Frankenstein routine of 'don't play God and resurrect the dead just because you can' with a sort of demonic horror element where the scientists in error are picked off by some ghostly apparition one by one. The PG-13 rating also won't help, since it won't allow the movie to go for particular strong moments of scare. Heck, Frankenweenie looks more scary and original than this bloodless B-flick! You wonder why the studio thought it would be a good idea to waste a budget on this film, or why decent actors like Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde and Evan Peters would bother performing in this one. Maybe there's just more than meets the eye here, and the trailer tells us it's one thing while the actual product turns out to be quite another. I very much doubt that though. I don't think I'll wake up for this one.