In the first trailer for Jon Favreau’s original Disney+ series, The Mandalorian, Star Wars goes dark, gritty and mature, alien mercenaries engage in some brutal space warfare, and, most shockingly, storm troopers finally learn how to fire a gun properly!
There’s not a whole lot to actually discuss, but that’s perhaps the beauty of this trailer: it’s simple, hauntingly so. We’re only treated to two lines of dialogue, but the music and atmosphere are allowed to say more than words ever could. Set in an era between the original Star Wars trilogy and Disney’s series of sequels, the Disney+ show will follow a Mandalorian mercenary (who, apparently, isn’t Boba Fett? I haven’t been paying attention) somewhere on the “outer reaches of the galaxy”, where the war between the New Republic and the First Order is only a distant rumor – yeah, right. Give it a few episodes, watch how fast we start seeing characters from the sequels show up. Not that I’m complaining. Have I mentioned that I finally got around to watching The Last Jedi? It’s a pretty good movie.
As someone who’s still reacquainting myself with the trappings of this topsy-turvy franchise, I have to admit: this catches my interest. Maybe it’s just because I’m still susceptible to stories about space gangsters and pirates. I don’t really know, but it looks good. It gives me hope that this whole Disney+ venture isn’t a disaster: in fact, it might be a worthy competitor to Netflix and HBO Max in the near future.
And as for Pedro Pascal, the show’s lead, well, he doesn’t actually appear from underneath his helmet and armor in the trailer, and he doesn’t even speak either line of dialogue, so…I don’t really know what to expect from him. He looks menacing – or, rather, his armor does. Pascal himself still looks like the lovable, tragically doomed Oberyn Martell from Game of Thrones to me.
The first episode of The Mandalorian is set to arrive on Disney+ on release day, November 12th, so that’s something to look forward to. Mark your calendars, folks! How do you feel about the trailer? Do the grittier aspects of Star Wars appeal to you? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Firstly, let me preface this post by apologizing for my delay: I’m more than an hour late by now, due to not being able to get home fast enough. Destiny has arrived, so have I, and so has the first teaser trailer for The Witcher on Netflix!
My first impressions are a mix of chaos and confusion: I’ve never read the books or played the video games that this series will be based on, so I have almost no idea what the plot is – I am slightly familiar with the main characters like Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) and Ciri (Freya Allen), mostly because I watch a lot of videos by BookTubers who are devoted fans of The Witcher series: specifically Elliot Brooks – go check out her channel, it’s great.
But for right now, until she publishes her own review of the trailer, which will undoubtedly be far more intelligent than mine, I must work from what I know: very little. Okay, let’s dive in. Let’s see, we’ve got Elves, beautiful dark-skinned Elves for a change, and we get a tantalizing glimpse of the paradise they created long ago in this strange world, known as The Continent. These Elves were sorcerers, and taught the arts of chaos magic to humans – only to have the humans rise up against them and massacre them. From what I gather, that is a core theme of the series, both in book format and TV – humans are horrible, despicable creatures, little better than the monsters that populate their myths and dark imaginings. This trailer shows off just how wicked people can be, through some montages of them killing people…wait a second, for a moment there I thought this was Game of Thrones.
Netflix wants this to be Game of Thrones for a new audience dissatisfied with how that show ended, and so they’ve gone to elaborate lengths to make sure this show looks incredible. The production values are insane – beautiful costumes, realistic CGI, and mostly good wigs (there was a lot of worry about that last point, after Henry Cavill had shared a picture of himself wearing one depressingly-cheap set of platinum extensions). The only thing that indicates this show has to work on a somewhat smaller budget than your average movie studio is the general absence of top-notch talent – Cavill is the biggest star by far, and his co-stars are virtually unknown actresses. But thankfully, they do a pretty good job, in this trailer at least, of being mysteriously magical. Magic is one of the trailer’s big attractions, in my opinion: it’s always been an element that fantasy films and TV shows are wary of, because it can easily look and feel slightly ridiculous. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones both steered clear of depicting much magic onscreen, unless they absolutely had to: magic is something that usually finds its way into more light-hearted fare, such as The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. But The Witcher doesn’t shy away from fancy lights and displays of sorcery and enchantment: we have glowing trees in the desert, plenty of monsters (including giant spiders, can’t go wrong with those), catastrophic explosions of uncontrollable power, and even people throwing lightning from their hands. When was the last time you saw that in mainstream fantasy? It’s actually been a while since we’ve seen anyone but superheroes and psychic teenagers harness supernatural powers like this. At least, it’s been a while since I’ve seen anything like this.
Overall, it looks really good, definitely something that I’ll want to binge-watch when it arrives on Netflix this…Winter? I don’t know, the trailer doesn’t inform me. Well, whenever it comes out, it looks like it will be really good. Fingers crossed, people!
No offense to director Matthew Vaughn, but now was probably the worst possible time to release this trailer. At least for me – probably only for me.
You see, I have only recently finished watching The Last Czars on Netflix: a semi-dramatized documentary about the final days of the Russian Czar Nicholas and his entire family, who were brutally murdered in 1918 during the Bolshevik Revolution. Their story was very closely linked with that of the highly mysterious monk and spiritual healer Grigori Rasputin. Now, I went into this six-episode series knowing full well what happened to each and every one of these people, and how they died horrific deaths: what I did not know was how the series would choose to depict each and every one in the most awful ways imaginable – from Rasputin’s terrifying ability to defy death several times even while he was poisoned and brutally injured, to the slow and agonizing deaths of the Czar’s four daughters, who were probably the last of the family to perish since they were wearing diamonds sewn into their clothes, granting them a temporary immunity to their murderers’ bullets. I was expecting the deaths to happen off-screen, preferably with a minimum amount of anguished screaming. I watched it at night (could it get any worse?), and I couldn’t sleep for hours afterward. The next morning I tried as hard as I could to forget what I had just witnessed.
And who shows up in today’s first trailer for the upcoming spy thriller The King’s Man? That’s right – the bearded monk Rasputin, looking rather more fictionalized, and showing an impressive skill at wielding…glass ornaments? Teapots? I’m not entirely sure what he’s holding at the 1:18 mark, but it’s also very difficult to focus on anything other than those wide eyes, eyes which supposedly hypnotized and enchanted the Czarina of Russia, to the point where she was unable to break free of his spell. I suspect we even see the Czarina in the trailer: one of the two women clinging to Rasputin’s arm as he strides through an elegant ballroom. Then again, the characters in this film are clearly only loosed based on their historical counterparts, since the IMDb page reveals that the fabled spy Mata Hari will also be in this movie, played by Gemma Arterton (who’s been getting her fair share of spy thrillers recently, coming off the unexpected success of Murder Mystery on Netflix), alongside characters like Field Marshall Haig; U.S. President Woodrow Wilson; the Kaiser Wilhelm II, Czar Nicholas II, and King George V of England, all played by Tom Hollander, which makes me suggest that somehow all three warring heads of state are going to be revealed to be the same man; and…and Rasputin’s real-life killer, the Russian prince Felix Yusupov (played by Daniel Brühl, Marvel’s “Baron Zemo”).
And this is what has me slightly upset. Not the fact that Rasputin is actually as terrifying as all get-out, and his portrayal in this film by Rhys Ifans looks even freakier (well, okay, that too), but the knowledge that this film is going to necessarily fictionalize a whole bunch of this part of history. Now, don’t get me wrong: I like historical fiction. Usually, seeing Mata Hari cross paths with Rasputin wouldn’t be a problem for me – but coming at this time, just after I’ve watched the most grim, grisly, realistic depiction of this very intense period of human history…well, it’s just coming at a bad time. Especially because this has so much potential: it could do so many things – it could, for instance, seek to capitalize on the very popular myths of the “escape” of Russian princess Anastasia Romanov. Let me stress that those are myths: trust me, I’ve just watched the documentary – the bodies of all seven Romanovs have been found as of this writing, and Anastasia is among them. She did not escape, no matter how much we may want to believe that she did. I’m going to make myself cry just writing this, because I loved imagining all the creative ways in which she could have made her daring escape from the House of Special Purpose. But, sadly, none of it’s true.
Anyway…that’s all I’m trying to say. At this moment, watching this trailer, my emotions on the subject are very raw, and I’m not currently relishing the idea of watching our British protagonists smuggle the princess out of Russia before the Bolsheviks (or Mata Hari?) can catch her. I don’t even know if that’s one of the film’s plot points – but if it is, I’d rather not know about it for a little while.
Moving on. The rest of the trailer looks really good, though I do have one other complaint. Namely, that this film already looks like it’s trying to copy certain aspects of my all-time favorite World War 1 film, Wonder Woman. Like, literally, right down to some of the shots in the trailer, such as when Ralph Fiennes (I think it’s him, at any rate) gets thrown through a wall by an explosion, while holding what looks to be a Germanic shield of some sort: it’s basically this shot:
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But with a lot less dimension: seriously, if you’re going to throw a guy through a wall, have him…I don’t know, fall from a height or something? Instead the man in question just falls onto a really barren patch of gray dirt. Not very visually interesting, if you ask me.
Aside from probably coincidental similarities (such as the scene of British soldiers going up over the trenches), we also have the peculiar appearance of a very familiar name in the cast: that of General Ludendorff, whom Wonder Woman fans will remember for his large role in that film, where he was…a glowing superhuman possessed by the Greek god Ares. I know, I was just complaining about fictionalization.
But leaving all that aside, I’m still a sucker for anything set during the Great War; I like Ralph Fiennes as an actor; and I think this film definitely has potential. It’s got elegance, wit, and a good dose of classic British daring-do. Let’s see how it is – and whether it’s got Mata Hari smuggling Anastasia out of a Russian empire controlled by King George – before we make any assumptions.
Lord of the Rings fans have been waiting with bated breath (or, at least, I have been) for news of the upcoming Amazon Prime adaptation of our favorite novel of all time: or, more specifically, the appendices of our favorite novel of all time, as well as posthumously published writings by the same author – I mean, possibly: we don’t know how much Amazon has the rights to, but the fact that the island of Númenor shows up on their official maps suggests that they at least have the rights to Unfinished Tales, the only time in which that map was published in one of Tolkien’s own works – unless they’re going off of Karen Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth? Or is it possible that-
Sorry about that, moving on. So, uh, yeah, where was I? Oh yes, we’ve been waiting to hear some solid news about the show – there was a flurry of excitement early this year, when Amazon released some maps and a few tantalizing messages on their social media platforms, but since then…nothing. Brian Cogman of Game of Thrones was brought on as a consultant, and there were rumors the show would be filming in Leith, Scotland, in August (as you can imagine, those rumors had me pretty excited, since, you know, the name). But since then, literally nothing.
Over the last week, our excitement has blown up like one of Gandalf’s fabulous fireworks. Conflicting reports started coming out left and right – Amazon was filming possibly 90% of the show in Scotland! No, Amazon had actually changed their minds and was moving filming to New Zealand! The latter seems to be true, with Amazon pretty much officially settling down to start filming in the city of Auckland, New Zealand, where preproduction on the show has already begun. A casting call has gone out for extras, specifically for people to play soldiers and farmers. And now, today, we have breaking news that is sure to divide fans.
Juan Antonio Bayona, director of films such as Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Orphanage, has joined the series and will direct the first two episodes of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings, along with his producing partner, Belén Atienza. In an official statement, Bayona said he “can’t wait to take audiences around the world to Middle-earth and have them discover the wonders of the Second Age” – confirmation, if you needed it, that this show will cover events in the Tolkien legendarium long preceding The Fellowship of the Ring, or The Hobbit. Meanwhile, a new name has been added to the series’ team of screenwriters: J.D. Payne, Patrick McKay and Brian Cogman will now be joined by Gennifer Hutchison of Breaking Bad, a big win for the show. We know from previous reports that Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey is involved as a consultant, and famed Tolkien artist John Howe is part of the show’s creative team.
Coming hard on the heels of Netflix’s first look at their upcoming Witcher adaptation, this is proof that Amazon isn’t about to let anybody steal their thunder when it comes to the fantasy genre. I, for one, am hugely excited for the show (a little disappointed that Leith, Scotland, won’t be the main filming location), and I cannot wait for more news on this front. I’m expecting some more announcements at San Diego Comic Con, where Amazon will also be unveiling shows such as Carnival Row and The Boys.
