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Trailer Thread VI


Nictarion

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Interview:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/movies/spike-lee-da-5-bloods.html?

Quote

The four veterans of the film — played by Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Norm Lewis — affectionately refer to one another as “bloods,” a term used by their real-life counterparts in the war. In a story that pays homage to “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948), “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957) and “Apocalypse Now” (1979), the bloods are on a mission to recover the body of their former squad leader, Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), which is not incidentally buried near a secret treasure.

 

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I did like Inception a lot, and I enjoyed rewatching it about a year ago. And Dunkirk was amazing. Something about the Tenet trailers just doesn't sit right with me though. I'm not sure what it is, maybe I just wish Nolan would deal with something other than time for once.

I did notice that the trailer just ended with "Coming to Cinemas" rather than still saying it would be out July 17 like the first trailer did. I haven't seen anything official about Tenet being delayed, but it makes sense. I can't imagine there will be that much demand for movie theaters less than 2 months from now.

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I quite liked Inception the first time I watched it but I had some problems. The second time I watched it to see if it was because I missed stuff as the obvious suggestion from people was I hated it.

I actually don't mind Interstellar, but that's probably partly because by that stage the expectations weren't there so I could enjoy the bigness of it while letting the utter ludicrousness skate by. And I never did rewatch it entirely so...

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On 5/22/2020 at 3:37 AM, Ramsay B. said:

 

I feel like I'm somewhere in between @polishgenius and @Heartofice. The trailer is indeed a confusing mess, but I am quite excited.

While I think most of Nolan's output is hardly as good as the worship he gets from fanboy would lead you to believe, I do like the fact that he remains committed to introducing high-brow ideas into popular cinema.

I'm genuinely puzzled by the title though. Tenet as in doctrine? Or Tenet as in Tenit the Carthaginian deity? Or something else?

20 hours ago, polishgenius said:


I actually don't mind Interstellar, but that's probably partly because by that stage the expectations weren't there so I could enjoy the bigness of it while letting the utter ludicrousness skate by. And I never did rewatch it entirely so...

Interstellar might be the only movie of his I truly hate. Its sole aim was to stop the McConnaissance (which sadly it was successful in). I still count the Interstellar teaser trailer as the single greatest exemplar of the format:

Just seeing it makes me remember how disappointing the entire thing really was when it came out. After the emotional promise of the Interstellar teaser, we get a bloated, muddled mess weighed down by a ludicrous plot and just awful dialogue (fuck Anne Hathaway).

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So much Nolan hate!  I get the general criticism of his movies being a "confused mess," but what is that really based on?  Memento, Prestige, Dunkirk all pretty much made sense.  The Dark Knight Trilogy wasn't nearly as convoluted as most superhero movies.  So that boils it down to Inception and Interstellar.  Interstellar may have been messy, but considering its genre I don't think it's too much of a stretch.  Inception, ok.  I love Inception, but I get that one.

Anyway the new Tenet trailer did surprise me with the whole backwards time thing.  I'd say I hope after this Nolan stops being obsessed with time, but I should know better by now.

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On 5/21/2020 at 5:23 PM, SpaceChampion said:

 

Part of the premise reminded me of the thread we had recently about the immortals in Highlander struggling to stay under the radar in the modern world. Charlize Theron as an immortal warrior does sound interesting as a premise.

35 minutes ago, DMC said:

So much Nolan hate!  I get the general criticism of his movies being a "confused mess," but what is that really based on?  Memento, Prestige, Dunkirk all pretty much made sense.  The Dark Knight Trilogy wasn't nearly as convoluted as most superhero movies.  So that boils it down to Inception and Interstellar.  Interstellar may have been messy, but considering its genre I don't think it's too much of a stretch.  Inception, ok.  I love Inception, but I get that one.

I'd mostly agree with that, although I'd argue The Dark Knight Rising was definitely the weakest of the trilogy and despite some good moments seemed a bit confused in what it was trying to do. I'd say that and Interstellar are his weakest films (maybe along with Insomnia which isn't a mess but is perhaps the only Nolan film that could be accused of being forgettable).

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14 minutes ago, williamjm said:

although I'd argue The Dark Knight Rising was definitely the weakest of the trilogy and despite some good moments seemed a bit confused in what it was trying to do. I'd say that and Interstellar are his weakest films (maybe along with Insomnia which isn't a mess but is perhaps the only Nolan film that could be accused of being forgettable).

Agreed on all counts.  I've honestly not even sure I've seen Insomnia all the way through (watched parts of it a handful of times).

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8 minutes ago, DMC said:

Agreed on all counts.  I've honestly not even sure I've seen Insomnia all the way through (watched parts of it a handful of times).

I had seen the Norwegian film (with Stellen Skarsgard in the Al Pacino role) beforehand and I thought that was better than Nolan's version. Probably doing a shifted-to-America remake of a European film isn't really playing to Nolan's strengths. It's still not a bad film, but it's not a particularly memorable film either.

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The Nolan hate i think is mainly a reaction to the universal praise he was getting around the Inception period. The Nolan fan boys hyped everything to an extreme and it caused a backlash. 
 

I am a bit of a Nolan fanboy in that I really think he’s one of the only people out there able to do big clever blockbusters that aren’t just part of a franchise, that studios seem willing to take a risk on. Even if I didn’t think Inception or Interstellar fulfilled their potential, I’d take 100 of them over another mid tier superhero movie or Transformers reboot. Have to respect the guy for at least attempting to work on a higher level.

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4 hours ago, DMC said:

So that boils it down to Inception and Interstellar.  Interstellar may have been messy, but considering its genre I don't think it's too much of a stretch. 

 

Interstellar became an absolute shitshow in terms of following any coherent narrative logic when they replaced the much more hard-SF original concept of the movie, in which the drone that crash lands at the start is what gives Murph the plans she needs to save humanity via a few wormhole-based time-travel shenanigans and an accidental robot civilisation, with 'Superboy Cooper punches the universe'. 

But it also annoyed me by sticking really proudly to realistic science and plausible hard-SF concepts one second and then just completely handwaving some total bullshit, sometimes outright contradicting the more real stuff they dealt with before, the next.

 

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

that studios seem willing to take a risk on.

This seems to be the key part really. I'm not sure why some other directors aren't given the same chances but Nolan is, but it's true.

And I do give him some credit for trying to aim high with his concepts, but he falls short a lot.


But also I don't think he has a distinct voice of his own as a director. It's something I tend to bang on about but any time I watch a Nolan film he seems to be trying in various measures to imitate Spielberg, Kubrick and Satoshi Kon, at the same time. And that adds to the confusion sometimes.

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3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The Nolan hate i think is mainly a reaction to the universal praise he was getting around the Inception period. The Nolan fan boys hyped everything to an extreme and it caused a backlash. 

I definitely agree with you. With the exception of Dunkirk and Following, I have seen all Nolan's films. If I had to judge each of them I would say that Interstellar is trash and Insomnia, as others have pointed out, is forgettable. Memento on the other hand is certified classic of popular cinema. Same can be said for The Prestige. The Dark Knight falls into that category as well.

I would also argue for Batman Begin to get that same rank. It's not nearly as good as the the other installments of the Batman trilogy (it was a much simpler film and suffered from less mistakes than tDKR, but overall I'd still rate the latter higher), but just like Iron Man future film historians will deem it worthy of study as these are the movies that really kicked the era of the superhero into high gear.

Inception and tDKR on the other hand aren't all time classics, but they are pretty fun and enjoyable. I'd rate them just a tier below the others I discussed earlier. All in all that's an incredible winning streak for a director, especially since he's delivering quality while simultaneously bringing in bucket loads of money to the studios. There is not a big blockbuster director out there (Bay, Singer, Del Toro, J.J. Abrams, etc.) that can match that record. 

I'm pretty sure that is also the answer to @polishgenius question. With the exception of Del Toro (although he only got around to it with The Shape of Water) there is not a director out there who brings in those sweet dollars while at the same time being fawned upon by critics and awards on such a consistent basis. 

Let's not forget that despite the genuine things we can bash about (the horrible dialogue and sappiness of his movies being a good one), he has been hugely influential. He's one of the reasons that superheroes are so popular now, after Inception you couldn't watch a trailer without a loud BWAAAAAP score laid on top of it, he gave Tom Hardy's career a super big boost, he made sci-fi popular again, etc. 

In fact, despite my misgivings, I do think he has his own style. If I had seen the Tenet trailer I think I could have picked it out as a Nolan project. Indeed in many ways I wish Hollywood would allow its directors to emulate Nolan more. He might often fail at it, but he at least tries to bring intelligent fair to the masses. Compare that with abominations like The Rise of Skywalker or Transformers which actively seek to destroy your intellect and spontaneously feel like Nolan's work should be celebrated.

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40 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

in which the drone that crash lands at the start is what gives Murph the plans she needs to save humanity via a few wormhole-based time-travel shenanigans and an accidental robot civilisation, with 'Superboy Cooper punches the universe'. 

.....because the conclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey really smacked of logical consistency within the "plot," such as it was.

42 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

But also I don't think he has a distinct voice of his own as a director.

I think that's wayyy off.  Other than Scorsese, Tarantino, Wes Anderson and, I dunno, maybe Aronofsky, there's literally no other director I could blindly identify just by watching the movie more than Nolan.

27 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

after Inception you couldn't watch a trailer without a loud BWAAAAAP score laid on top of it

Thank you.  It really annoys, perhaps the biggest thing that pisses me off about Nolan and Zimmer.  Those sobs. 

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Just now, DMC said:

.....because the conclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey really smacked of logical consistency within the "plot," such as it was.

I mean sure but are we really going to compare the quality of 2001 to that of Interstellar? Because I feel like that's a bad road to go down.

In any case there's a difference between 'confused' and 'confusing' and I think 2001 is the latter whereas Interstellar is the former.

 

 

5 minutes ago, DMC said:

I think that's wayyy off.  Other than Scorsese, Tarantino, Wes Anderson and, I dunno, maybe Aronofsky, there's literally no other director I could blindly identify just by watching the movie more than Nolan.

I mean I could probably identify a Nolan movie in the same way but it's in large part because of the combination of those influences (plus a heavy touch of Michael Mann, forgot him). And I mean sure that is a little unfair because every director is to some extent the sum of their influences but I never feel like Nolan escapes them the way an Aaronovsky or Villeneuve escapes similar inspirations. Don't know why.
 

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1 minute ago, polishgenius said:

I mean sure but are we really going to compare the quality of 2001 to that of Interstellar?

I used the 2001 comparison because Interstellar was plainly Nolan's attempt to honor and update it.  I think that actually coulda happened if he let his brother's ending be the finish.

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