AMC's Preacher Premiere Trailer

Preacher was a Vertigo Comic by acclaimed author Garth Ennis and equally beloved artist Steve Dilon.  Lasting for a total 75 issues it’s considered a major hallmark for comics and is one of the universal counters to the claim that comics sucked in the ‘90s as the series lasted from 1995 to 2000.  Recently, rising star comedian Seth Rogan has set-up about bringing the show to AMC in what, I assume, was an attempt to recreate the monster success the network enjoyed with The Walking Dead.  Against pretty much everyone’s better judgment that adaptation is going forward with a confirmed 10 episodes set for a premiere next year and Dominic Cooper set to play the lead character of Jesse Custer.  Cooper is actually a bit of a get for the series as he’s most well known for playing Howard Stark in Captain America: The First Avenger and Agent Carter making him one of the many Marvel actors crossing the floor to a DC project.  Now, the first full trailer has premiered for the show and surprise; it’s garbage. 

I understand there will be people who disagree with me on this and if you think the trailer is awesome more power to you but I really don’t see the appeal of this trailer so far.  Firstly, there’s basically nothing in this trailer to suggest it even is an adaptation of the comics.  Preacher the comics was all about Dominic Cooper’s Jesse Custer character as a small town preacher who gains amazing power referred to as “the voice of God.”  This power is basically the ability to issue divine commands that people have to follow.  If that power is still going to factor into the show there’s exactly 0 reference to it here as now Custer seems to be some kind of criminal turned preacher to escape his past who ends up roped into some kind of crime/cult/conspiracy shenanigans. 

Most of the supporting cast seem to have been either excised or altered beyond belief.  Unless I miss my guess I’m fairly certain the ugly bellhop with the bad hair is meant to be a radical re-invention of the character Arseface while the cartoonish Irish character in the final shot is probably meant to be Cassidy, the series Irish vampire.  There’s so far no sign of some of the more memorable and blasphemous villains of the comic like the Saint of Killers or the Grail and the setting seems to have been completely stranded in the boondocks.

To be clear, the fact that this isn’t exactly the same as the comics isn’t an inherently bad thing.  This is an adaptation and any adaptation, no matter how faithful, will have to make changes to facilitate a change of mediums.  The problem is that this goes beyond just making the comics more acceptable for a TV format to the point of not even being Preacher anymore.  The core premise of the entire series seems to have been dropped completely, you can’t do that and still call it an adaptation anymore than you’d try to make a Harry Potter film without wizards or a Superman movie where he has no powers. 

Even putting aside how much this adaptation seems to be throwing the source material to the wind this trailer just isn’t very good on its own merits.  Dominic Cooper may be solid as Howard Stark but his attempts to play tough here fall woefully short.  Additionally the intercutting as the trailer “accelerates” near the end is just too fast to make out anything worth getting excited over.  All the early pastoral imagery and twangy guitar just feels wasted overall, I get the distinct sense it’s meant to feel creepy or unnerving, sort of the standard trick of pushing the setting to the edge of civilized society to indicate both a lack of order and to evoke America’s shameful past on the wild frontier but none of that ties intot he show being pitched by the actual content of the trailer.  They might as well have had soft classical music playing over the opening and the soothing vistas of the New York skyline and it would’ve had the same thematic cohesion as the country guitar and dust bowl imagery. 

I don’t really know what I was expecting from Preacher given that it’s a pretty R-rated comic being adapted by a comedian for cable channel whose current biggest hit is a massively overrated zombie show but I’m pretty sure I was hoping for something a little better than this.  I don’t think it’s that high a bar to set for an adaptation to keep the fundamental idea of the source material but I get the sense that even expecting quality is going to be too high a bar to set for AMC’s Preacher.  Maybe things will start to look up as more trailers and scenes start to filter through and we approach the actual show premiere but from here this is looking like all my worst nightmares about the show come to terrifying life.  Preacher basically just went from “hopefully that’ll be good” to “hopefully that won’t be as awful as Green Hornet.” 


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