Tomb Raider Trailer Breakdown

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I think it’s fair to say video game movies are at a crossroads.  Video game films have had a weird, long, unrewarding history despite coming from a medium that’s in its relative infancy.  After making a big splash in the ‘90s with the likes of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter the genre was more or less banished to the realm of direct-to-DVD for the majority of the 2000s and even the early 2010s.  Basically, we spent the decade in which games became a snowballing phenomenon slogging through flicks like Blood Rayne, DOOM, and Hit Man. 

Lately, though, the video game film has come cautiously crawling back to the mainstream blockbuster scene, most pertinently with last years Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed films.  Neither of those were a big successes stateside but the ongoing Hollywood scramble for viable IP and the growing global market seems to have translated to renewed interest in this moribund genre, with a new standard bearer emerging for this new age of video games and women-oriented genre flicks- Tomb Raider, now finally coronated with a shiny new trailer for next year’s film. 

Film Land - Has Marvel Lost Faith in Dr. Strange?

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Edited by Robert Beach

At the time of writing, we are about three months out of from Marvel’s next film entry and possible first major failure Dr. Strange. I don’t make that failure claim lightly either. Despite being three months from release, this film has gotten shockingly little fanfare or production push, especially in comparison to other Marvel releases. This might be a response to the relative dead zone Marvel is releasing the movie in. 

Their previous November release was Thor: The Dark World, which was released against Hunger Games: Catching Fire and got completely crushed by it. With Dr. Strange, Marvel has set it up with no competition in a time of the year notoriously free of blockbusters, to the point where even bad movies like Spectre can make a killing. Even still, there’s a "specter" of doubt that hangs over Dr. Strange. I’m starting to wonder whether or not Marvel expects the film to be bad. 

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword 1st Trailer

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I’ve been saying for a couple years now that the fantasy genre is unmoored.  It’s basically a slogan of these articles because it lets me talk about form and style and genre history, the stuff I know the most about.  However, I’m starting to wonder how true that actually is anymore.  After a decade at the top of the blockbuster fantasy has definitely receded in the 2010s, producing fewer Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings level sagas in comparison to the success of superheroes and sci-fi properties. 

That translated to a thoroughly unsure nature for the first few years of the decade, especially when it turned out The Hobbit wasn’t as successful as everyone was gearing up for it to be.  However, as we pass the midpoint of the decade and begin the slow trickle towards its twilight years it’s starting to seem more and more like the new defining affect of fantasy is what I call Number Zero stories.  I’ll get into what that means in a little bit but there’s no greater example of it than the fact WB is giving Guy Ritchie the reigns of a new big budget King Arthur movie.

Warcraft Movie Trailer

If ever there was a studio that embodied the difference between winning and leading it’d be Universal.  They basically struck gold with the Fast & Furious movies and have been letting that box office money pit accumulate while floundering about in search of fellow hit makers and it’s served them well with equally successful hits like Pitch Perfect, Despicable Me, 50 Shades of Grey, and this year’s mega box office smash Jurassic World.  The thing is that “experimentation” really is the Universal approach as none of their efforts have been in order to define trends or lead the pop cultural scene, simply attempts to get money making films. 

That’s why, even though Jurassic World made unfathomable amounts of cash and Fast & Furious is on its 8^th film I’d never call Universal trend riders or taste makers.  So their latest venture, a collaboration with Blizzard Studios to bring the massively successful Warcraft franchise to life on the big screen is throwing me for a bit of a loop as it actually seems like the most financially successful yet culturally irrelevant studio in Hollywood has finally decided to step up to the plate and lead the way for a change. 

Jungle Book Teaser Trailer

Edited by Robert Beach 

Just when you thought the up-jumped fairy tale trend was dead and buried, it’s back from the grave and honestly looking better than ever. I’m honestly not that surprised that it took the involvement of Disney to finally get something good out of this over-used genre. Back in the days before Star Wars made fantasy a viable blockbuster option, Disney was one of the only names in the game alongside Ray Haryhausen, and a lot of their live-action fantasy adventure films were incredibly well received. 

They’re forgotten nowadays, but films like Swiss Family Robinson and Bed Knobs and Broomsticks were major hits in their day. Additionally, Disney was pretty much the only company not to copy the Lord of the Rings approach to fantasy in the 2000s, blazing their own path with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.  Even though Disney didn’t kick-off the fairy tale fantasy craze of the 2010s, they’ve thoroughly capitalized on it. And now they’re at it again with this first trailer for next year’s Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau.

Dungeons & Dragons Reboot is Happening

Edited by Robert Beach

WB has announced that they are planning a remake/reboot (/whatever your preferred nomenclature is) of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. While not a total sideways move, this does indicate a few major red flags as far as studio thinking goes. My biggest take away form this is that somebody at Warner Brothers thinks that either the Warcraft movie or that Magic: The Gathering movie Fox is making have the potential to be major hits and take a chunk out of the fantasy market.