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LOST: Avengers Doomsday Trailer: I recently re-watched Marvel’s terrific core string of superhero team-up movies (my ranking: InfinityWar>Endgame>Avengers>Civil War>Thunderbolts>Age of Ultron). But as plenty of fans have pointed out, this week’s highly anticipated Doomsday teaser (below) felt like a muddled step down from previous trailers in Marvel’s Avengers franchise. It shows clusters of random characters standing around looking like confused holograms trying to figure out their eye-lines in round rooms (one baffled trailer viewer wrote: “Every room IS round! WTF?!”). It’s like they’re stuck in that classic Twilight Zone episode, “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” where the twist reveals the characters are all stuck in a trash can, except Doomsday is more like 60 actors enduring a headache-inducing exercise in stage blocking.
Doomsday production designer Gavin Bocquethas has said the film actually uses 80 percent practical sets. But a wildly off-script Gold Derby interview with Alan Cumming (who reprises his X-Men role of Nightcrawler) might haunt the film since the movie looks like an expression of fans’ CG slop gripes (“I did the entire film in isolation. Lots of green screen, face replacement. They even gave characters fake names. I don’t know who I was acting with half the time.”). Cumming added that he thought Nightcrawler fought Pedro Pascal’s Mister Fantastic, but in retrospect wasn’t sure.
Part of this is simply unfortunate timing for Marvel, which had to launch its trailer in the wake of Christopher Nolan’sThe Odyssey and its cast—including Avengers regular Tom Holland—being evangelical about practical effects and on-location filming
The larger problem is that Marvel masterfully constructed the MCU’s storylines over a decade to deftly lead into its previous Avengers films while Doomsday feels like a character dump that’s happening only because the studio desperately needs this to happen. Will any such criticisms matter? Probably not. Doomsday already racked up $16.5 million in domestic advance sales during its first 24 hours
Two trailers that were really well received this week were DC’s hey-this-keeps-looking-better horror film Clayface (watch it here) and Universal’s Rob Savage horror film Other Mommy, which stars Jessica Chastain in a dual role. The Mommy trailer will give unsuspecting audiences one heckuva jump-scare when it plays before other films. Bonus: The rooms in the trailers are not all round
WON:Ed Harris. You gotta love a wonderful actor who saunters onto a red carpet and opens fire on his own hit show without a care in the world. Harris wasn’t very pleased with his “inconsequential” first-season arc on Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch — which is a TV show and not a steakhouse or Doritos flavor. “Midway through the first season, I was ready to say, ‘get me the fuck out of here,’” he growled, adding that he felt “misled” about the size of his part. Harris’ role was still bigger than Demi Moore’s, which consisted of swimming laps in a pool for the entire first season of Landman.
Harris will be back for his second (and likely final) season on the show next year. One can imagine creator Taylor Sheridan reacting in one of three ways to his actor’s comments: “I got that sort of whining from Kevin Costner, I’m not going to take it from Harris, let’s grant his wish to get him off the show in the season two premiere.” Or: “He had a point and I can’t exactly fault somebody for being blunt when I’m the exact same way.” Or, most likely: “I’m too busy writing that entire Call of Duty movie script this week to care.”
LOST: The Television Academy. The Academy caused quite a stir by deciding to cut five categories from this year’s primetime Emmy telecast. I would list the cut categories, but it would mean writing the phrase “in a limited or anthology series or movie” four times in a row, which, as everybody knows, is a powerful spell that sends you into an enchanted slumber. The unions are mad about this change. Nominees, agents and managers are mad. Studios and awards strategists are mad. You know who won’t be mad? Viewers.
Unfortunately, the idea doesn’t seem to be “let’s make the Emmys telecast shorter.” TV Academy chair Cris Abrego told Variety, “We’re really excited to flex more creativity into the show” and “we really want to find time to create an incredible night of entertainment.” Except that’s precisely what awards shows are terrible at — those hammy yuk-yuk sketches, or weepy maudlin moments, that struggle to celebrate the industry by interlacing the show with a theatrical insert
Here’s a question: What do you actually remember from any awards show? A few speeches and, sometimes, the host’s monologue. The rest? Weak and unmemorable. Not because the people involved aren’t talented. But because non-awards segments during an awards show are inherently a little weird, awkward and frustrating because the awards presentation is The Thing you’re trying to watch and any brief, non-sequitur piece of entertainment the producers throw on stage isn’t The Thing
The comparison that comes to mind is the Super Bowl Halftime Show, which actually works as an interruption of The Thing you want to watch because it’s a real break point in the game and an impressive, star-filled, cohesive half-hour production (except when FIFA does it). But what if, after a random play, the NFL shoved Jason Bateman and Will Arnett onto the 50-yard line to exchange some stilted banter and introduce a clip about the history of the penalty kick while you wait for the game to resume? Fans would hate that. Which is why the TV Academy should either stick those five awards back into the show or keep them out and shorten the show.
WON: Sony/Alamo Drafthouse: Resurrecting the Cinerama Dome is a heroic move everybody can feel good about, and plays into the whole “cinema is back!” narrative that we’re all happily enjoying right now. It also gives Alamo some desperately needed positive press amid the ongoing drumbeat of “QR code ordering has ruined the user experience” backlash headlines (“From Big Show to S**tshow” read the latest, from D Magazine). Ironically, the chain recently named a theater in San Francisco after Christopher Nolan and a month later the director praised Quentin Tarantino’stheater instead for having a “wonderful” no phones rule. Not sure I’ve ever seen a company so stubbornly keep doubling down on a customer-experience decision that’s received such a universally negative reaction.
The bummer part of the Dome news is the Alamo-ification of the Arclight theaters (not the Dome itself), which will be remodeled to have in-theater food service. What was cool about ArcLight was that its theaters were perfect black boxes with ideal projection and sound, where you could focus on the movie without distractions. Likewise, what was cool about Alamo was its cinephile-geek personality and strict no-talking/no-texting policy. It’s wonderful that Sony is investing in theaters. Maybe they should also keep an eye on what people like about going to the theater.
