Pan and Jurassic World trailers

So before I go on, I should mention that it might be a little bit until my next review. I am in the middle of one of the last weeks of my time here in South Africa and part of that time here is writing a 40-60 page paper. I feel guilty writing anything other than that paper so there is a good chance you won't get another review until December...

Good thing December is 4 days away...

But, since I cannot seem to write a proper review of Die Hard (a review that may or may not be coming soon), I thought I would do a quick reaction post to the two new trailers that have come out in the past two days.

The first one I want to talk about is Jurassic World.

In all honesty, I don't have the emotional connection to the original Jurassic Park that a lot of people do. I've seen people react to it saying, OH MY CHILDHOOD IS COMING BACK! And I just don't feel the same way. I'm figuring out I had a very different childhood experience than a lot of kids my age, even kids I grew up with. While everyone else read Harry Potter and watched Jurassic Park I read Lord of the Rings and watched Star Wars... and when I say I watched Star Wars... that's ALL I watched.

Now of course, I have seen Jurassic Park since and I really enjoy the film. I think the music is great, the story is phenomenal, and the visual effects today are still pretty great. But when its 4th sequel is announced, ten years after a really shitty sequel, honestly I'm wasn't anymore excited that I would guess someone was who hadn't seen the film at all. Then I watched the trailer...

Honestly, I have mixed feelings on it. I think it looks gorgeous and I will no doubt see it. It just kind of fell a little bit flat for me. Here's the best analogy I can come up with (partly because I'm awful at analogies). Imagine you are really craving a Coke. You have been waiting for this Coke for a long time and its finally time to have this coke... And then you get it, and its flat, its not exactly cold. Its still good, it still fulfills that desire to have the Coke and yet its not quite what you wanted... that's kind of what the Jurassic World trailer was like for me. To me it felt as though I had to be a die hard fan of Jurassic Park to really feel this trailer and yet, I didn't quite feel like this was an adventure movie.

Look at the original Jurassic Park trailer

Now I know that trailers have changed since the 90's, but this movie made you feel like you were about to experience an adventure film. Sure there was a lot of effort shown on showing a little bit of the dinosaurs but just enough to get you to come. With this new trailer, we've seen the dinosaurs before, showing us dinosaurs is still going to look cool but its not going to be the visual experience Spielberg brought us on in 1993.

Therefore something new has to be added... and we don't quite know what that is yet.

The trailer does a really good job at building the suspense and not showing us the new hybrid dinosaur they created. However, I'm worried that instead of an adventure movie, this is just going to be a monster movie.

Honestly, I'm not one for monster movies. I never saw Godzilla, not that I heard bad things about it, I just wasn't interested. Frankly, after you've seen one monster movie, you've really seen them all. So I don't want Jurassic Park to be a monster movie. I want it to be a Jurassic Park movie. A movie that is an adventure... with Dinosaurs.

There are some pretty great things in this trailer. The dinosaur emerging from the water like Shamoo at Seaworld, and the look of the fully functional Jurassic World theme park looks phenomenal.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is Chris Pratt.

I love it when actors go through a change and start doing movies and TV shows you never would have thought they would do in the past.

You can tell I'm fascinated by the transformation of Matthew McConaughey, and my excitement for Chris Pratt's career is growing more and more. The guy was already kind of a Han Solo, goof ball character in Guardians of the Galaxy, if he can do this movie in the way that I think he's going to do it, I think the guy might be on the track to being the next Harrison Ford. That's a big statement and I don't want to bite my words later, but the guy looks badass in this movie. He's not Starlord, he's not a goofball lovable guy in this film, he's very serious, or at least he seems like he is.

The first thing that I thought of was that Pratt was channeling his inner Sam Neil and I love the idea of that.

There are kids in the film going to the park, there's Gwen Stacey from the 3rd Sam Raimi Spider-Man Film, all of that is really irrelevant. The trailer looks really good.

As long as it stays in the adventure category, I will be satisfied.

I'm excited for Jurassic World, I feel as thought if the film is done correctly and Pratt brings his new side out and develops it well, the film will be, at the very least, a medium success.

And that's really all I can say about it. I liked the trailer, it didn't blow my mind, but it got me excited for a movie I recognize and enjoy. Not as much as other franchises, but still, it should be a good film.

But the real kicker was the new trailer for the origin story of Peter Pan, simply called Pan.

I think that I had heard a little bit about this film but really not that much. All I heard was it was a movie about Peter Pan. I know there was a big deal about Rooney Mara, a white woman, playing Tiger Lily, an Indian, but that doesn't really seem to be a problem, at least from what I've seen in this trailer.

So this is suppose to be the origin story of Peter Pan and you can obviously tell they are taking a lot of liberties with this film. This does not follow the mythology that was laid down in the Peter Pan universe, but frankly, this trailer looks so cool, I don't really care.

If we're talking about an adventure film, this is the one I want to watch. Everything I've seen in this trailer just looks fantastic.

The obvious thing to talk about is Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard. He's not Captain Hook, he's Black Beard.

The guy just looks bomb as hell. I already love Hugh Jackman. The guy has proven himself to hell and back that he is a quality actor. I didn't even need to see a trailer to know that he's just going to be fun in this movie.

Again, he's Blackbeard, not Captain Hook. Hook is instead played by Garrett Hedlund...

Now the only thing I really know Garrett Hedlund from is Eragon... I don't really speak of that movie at all. However, Hedlund was not the bad part of that movie. He was in 4 Brothers but honestly he wasn't the good part of that movie either. Here he's taking on the role of Captain James Hook... I really hope its a good part. I saw a video earlier today kind of cautious about the fact that Peter and Hook are friends in this film. Obviously something will happen and Hook will loath Peter because of it. Because isn't that a novel idea, have the good guy and bad guy be pals before they become mortal enemies and that'll make it even better when the bad guy bites it in the original film...

Okay so the more I think about it, the more I'm realizing that that is becoming an overused trope. It happened in Oz The Great and Powerful, which I didn't hate... I also didn't love it.

The good thing is that if this movie is a success and Hedlund rocks it, it could be a breakout role for him. Maybe that's wishful thinking, but this movie looks really freaking good.

Its going to be hard to shine as Hook, especially if you're competing with this...

God, Hugh Jackman is going to be phenomenal...

Other parts of the trailer worth mentioning.

Visually, this movie looks spectacular.

I hate to compare this again to Oz: The Great and Powerful but that movie seemed very trippy and very Alice and Wonderland. In short, it was a Disney Film through and through. Again, not a horrible one, just very CGI and didn't feel like a real place.

Something about the tone of this film gives it that family adventure feeling to it but just isn't quite the same cartoony feeling. There's some great scene in this trailer where people are pulling off some Cirque du Soleil shit that could be a little terrifying but at the same time, it just has that perfect Peter Pan feeling that I got from the original novel. Its not exactly as bright and colorful as the Disney cartoon you grew up with but if done well, I could see this being a really, really fun movie that I feel like I'm going to enjoy the hell out of.

I love the Peter Pan world, from the cartoon, to the play, to one of my favorite Robin Williams movies ever, Hook.

The 90's created a lot of things... not all of them good. But Hook has to be one of my favorite movies of all time. And its because it delved into the world of Peter Pan so much and I feel like this new film has the opportunity to take me to Neverland again, and I am very excited.

The other things worth mentioning are Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily... I actually don't think I've seen Rooney Mara in anything... yeah... I haven't. I know she's in some movies I intend on seeing like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the Social Network, but I actually have never seen her in anything.

I'm sure she'll do fine. Hopefully the Indians in this movie are done with taste so people don't get too pissed off about it.

The kid who plays Peter looks like he could actually be really entertaining. I don't usually like kid actors and if the movie centers around them, its hard for me to really watch. But then again, its freakin Peter Pan. They gotta get a good kid to play such an iconic role. The guy who is playing Peter is named Levy Miller, he's a new comer. I'm really looking forward to see if this kid wows me.

Now all of this is just conjecture. Trailers do not mean that the movie is going to be good. There have been many a movie that the trailer said the movie was going to be one thing and then movie turned out to be something totally different.

All I'm saying is that these two movies are two movies that are not Star Wars, and not a comic book movie that I am actually really looking forward to. I think out of the two I'm actually looking forward to Pan a little bit more but both are coming out around the same time so maybe I'll do a post around summer of next year coming back to these films and letting you know which one was better and if any of them were good.

But those are my thoughts on the new trailers that came out this week. Let me know what you think of either of them. Comment and Discuss below!

I'll leave you with this. Because I think in this "contest" Pan was the trailer I was actually looking forward to the most, here's a cracked video talking about Peter Pan... Enjoy!