Thursday, December 6, 2012

'Star Trek Into Darkness' trailer offers little to set the sci-fi sequel apart

Ok, maybe I'm just jaded, but the teaser trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness was a total yawn-fest for me. A big part of the problem is the trailer itself. It uses the low horn blasts first used to such great effect in the trailer for Inception, but have since been copied in other trailers, like the one for Prometheus. In this one, the editing of the footage to the horn blasts doesn't even feel like it's timed right. Plus, where's the story? It's all just random explosions and moments of terror. Oh, and a voiceover from a villain (Benedict Cumberbatch) who vows to destroy all that is good in the world. What's new? This trailer gets a big thumbs down. The 2009 Star Trek was so great because it brought in people who weren't Trekkies. This trailer seems like it's just trying to appeal to a fanbase that will see the movie anyway. I hope the poor quality of this teaser trailer is just the marketing department or the fact that effects-laden footage just wasn't ready. Because it makes me not want to see the movie.


 



 


Compare that teaser trailer to this one for the 2009 Star Trek. By using radio-transmitted announcements and news footage, it evokes the feeling of the 1960s space race. Instead of focusing on the high-tech flight deck, they open with footage of a welder creating the Enterprise. That's the kind of trailer that made people want to see the movie. The second trailer focused on a young Kirk driving a vintage red convertible, and the third showed a grown-up Chris Pine in the desert on a motorcycle and then in a bar with a jukebox. These were images that seemed far outside of a typical sci-fi film (though the desert was a wee familiar for any Star Wars aficionados). Maybe Paramount doesn't have the luxury of including the footage of the origin story this time around, but if they plan to sell this movie on action sequences alone, they're in trouble.


 



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