Trailer Truth: 'The Amazing Spider-Man,' 'The Dark Knight Rises,' 'Total Recall,' and 'The Bourne Legacy'
I write an article at movies.com called Trailer Truth. Here are the three latest I’ve written. Give it some love, comments, tweets, Facebook affection. I never watch a trailer until after I’ve seen the movie, and I also attempt to avoid as much news as possible. Then I compare what I knew, to what you knew. Let’s find out if what we see in the trailer is what we get, and if there is any advantage to going in fresh. (There will be spoilers.)
The Amazing Spider-Man
What I Knew Before: Look, I've heard of Peter Parker before. Though I was never fully obsessed, I probably owned close to fifty Spider-Man comics. I consider Spider-Man 2 one of the three best superhero films (along with The Incredibles and The Dark Knight). I was also ready for a tonal shift after the messy and overblown Spider-Man 3. So, was I excited for the reboot? Nope. It had nothing to do with Andrew Garfield, or Emma Stone. From my limited research, the reason this movie exists is that Sony would have lost the rights to Spider-Man back to Marvel. Plus, they decided Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire would be too expensive. Exciting, huh? There were links to 25 minutes of footage. I am actually here to judge, and I hope you avoided this. Unless of course your plan was to just watch these 25 minutes and then wait to watch the rest when it's "free" on Netflix Instant.
The Dark Knight Rises
What I Knew Before: This is the end of director Christopher Nolan's planned trilogy. He brought along Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, and half the Inception cast for all the other new juicy roles (Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard). I have avoided every trailer, and this one was difficult. I had to get up and leave the theater six different times to avoid the trailer. Any time that dark Warner Bros. logo flashed on the screen, I'd dash away. I also took it to a new level with my Entertainment Weekly subscription. Twice in the last few months, Batman donned the cover. Twice, I have had my wife tear out any Batman-related photos/articles inside the magazine. I didn't know what Hardy's Bane sounds like (though I knew Twitter had been talking about it forever). I didn't know what new toys Batman would be playing with, and I definitely didn't know any of the plot twists. I managed to go in fresh to the film I was anticipating the most this summer.
Total Recall
What I Knew Before: "It's not a tumor." Wait, that doesn't sound right. "If I am not me, then who the hell am I?" That's the line most of us remember Arnold Schwarzenegger chewing up and spitting out in 1990's Total Recall. Twitter told me a rumor that was probably true, but I'll save that for the "What I Knew After" section below. Colin Farrell took over the lead role, and I actually believe he hasn't had a bad performance since 2006's Miami Vice. I knew there were two incredibly hot women in supporting roles, but decided to not rack my brain trying to see if I remembered who they were.
The Bourne Legacy
What I Knew Before: You think Bourne was the only one? Think again. He was just the tip of the iceberg. Those lines, or something like that seemed almost unavoidable for me. I know, most of the time I'm able to duck and dodge the trailers and TV spots. I'm holding the remote in my hand, ready to fast forward through the ads, and bam! Just like a Jason Bourne right hook, I'm smacked with dialogue from the film. I knew Jeremy Renner was taking over for Matt Damon in the lead role and the iceberg in question. I kept forgetting, then pleasantly remembering Edward Norton would be after Renner on some level. Would this play out like a Bourne or a Fugitive ? Would this feel like a carbon copy of The Bourne Identity? Who would be the lead actress? Let's find out.