Spider-man: Homecoming and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 Trailers

So it's been a hot minute since I've done a post about trailers. I've found on the internet these days, the best ways to give reactions to trailers is through reaction videos and explaining initial thoughts out loud in words. Now if you're a fan of this blog, you know that I've talked about trying that a couple times and have never really gotten off the ground with it. I like writing. Maybe one day I will actually give videos a try, but for now I'm going to leave it here. 

So because it's been so long since I've done a trailer post, I thought I'd give you a two for one and talk about the recent MCU trailers out. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Spider-man: Homecoming. 

Now I already did a post talking about the quick teaser we got back in October about Guardians of the Galaxy. I said that I was not exactly impressed and that I would do a rewind review of Guardians of the Galaxy soon. That review is coming. 

But of course, this new trailer came out...

And now I need to bite my tongue a bit. 

Now I am pretty cautious. Over the past year I have gotten pretty cynical and I do see the usual Marvel formulas in this trailer. They're trying to use catchy music and humor to distract me from the fact that there was absolutely no inclining of what the story is for this film. 

But dammit. Baby Groot is so cute and funny!

I mean look at that little fucker

This trailer is just fun. I think when it first came out, I just watched a few more times than I watch normal trailers just because of how entertaining it is. I mean I could watch an entire movie about Baby Groot just saying I Am Groot the entire time. The fun part about Groot is that now that he's small, there's a great scene where you see the roles switched between him and Rocket and he's on Rocket's shoulder instead of Rocket being on his, I thought that was a really clever switch as those two were definitely the best parts of the first film. And the last scene where Drax is just laughing about Starlord's secret crush on Gamora getting revealed, that's a really funny scene.

I'm going to talk more about what works for Guardians of the Galaxy when I do the rewind review

but it's very clear that regardless of whether or not it's a good story or not, it undeniable that these guys are funny and the humor in this film, as well as all the Marvel films is pretty good. While I can point to a couple of Marvel films that weren't nearly as good as people think they were. The undeniable truth is, almost every Marvel film, I have laughed at the jokes. And the same is true for Guardians of the Galaxy.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 looks like it's not going to be any different as the trailer mainly focused on reuniting us with the team and just reminding us that we're more than likely going to laugh during this next film.

There are a couple of other things in the trailer worth mentioning. There was concept art released of the team fighting a space alien and that alien appears in the trailer. There is obviously going to be more development on the relationship between Starlord and Gamora, something that was incredibly lacking in the first film. And beyond that, there's just a lot of action shots and funny sequences. This is kind of the definition of a teaser trailer.

Overall, I am excited again for Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Based on what I've heard about this film, and what I saw in this trailer, I think we're in good hands with the second film.

I definitely need to see more in future trailers. As much as I love the humor and it gets me every time, like I said in the beginning, there is very little story in this trailer and that can only last so long, especially with the fragile relationship I have had with the Guardians of the Galaxy property.

But regardless of my personal feelings on Guardians of the Galaxy, the property is in a good place and really has nothing to prove to the rest of the world.

The other trailer I want to talk about is a property that definitely needs to prove itself, and that is Spider-man.

Spider-man coming to the MCU was a big deal and I was incredibly excited to see that they brought him into Civil War. And while his part in Civil War was small, Tom Holland showed us a good indication that Spider-man is in the good hands of a good actor and that he has a place now in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

But that was a glorified cameo, Spider-man's standalone film is something totally different.

This is the first standalone film set in the MCU but this is the second time in 10 years that the character has been rebooted and Sony is in a little bit of trouble if this movie doesn't do well.

So what does the first trailer say?

Pretty generic.

Here's the thing. I've voiced my concerns about Spider-man joining the MCU. I think it's great that he's joining, but that doesn't mean that his solo movies are going to be successful. While this is a fun trailer and I liked it, I thought it was pretty generic and didn't really show me anything incredible to get me really pumped for this film.

Everything that I've read about this film has said that this movie is going to be sort of a John Hughes coming of age story with Spider-man and the subsequent sequels are going to be like the school years at Hogwarts in Harry Potter for Peter Parker.

While I think that's a good idea and the trailer does have that coming of age story vibe, we're delving into a character who has had 5 movies dedicated to him by now. We've kind of seen this before. Yeah Tom Holland is a younger looking guy and he's going to deal with different high school problems than Andrew Garfield or Tobey Mcguire ever did, but beyond the charming high school stuff, all the Spider-man stuff was pretty generic.

Maybe it's the cynic that has started to come out in 2016, but I feel like Spider-man can only be so interesting by himself and eventually you have to do something like what they're doing with this film and have Spider-man swinging but have Iron Man right next to him to try and make it interesting.

To be fair that is something that we really haven't seen before due to the fact that Spider-man until now has been at Sony where he couldn't team up with The Avengers. It's good to see a sort of team up movie. Also the relationship with Tony Stark might be interesting as he is sort of a frustrating mentor for Peter as he wants to join the Avengers and Tony will probably try and hold him back in the film.

But just because Spider-man is finally teaming up with the Avengers doesn't disprove the idea that I might be getting bored with Spider-man.

The Vulture is the villain for this movie. Now I'll be honest, I don't know that much about The Vulture. I know that both previous iterations of Spider-man were eventually going to go for the Vulture but never got to it, and I have a little bit of exposure to him from the Spider-man video games. But Vulture was always kind of a stupid villain from what I understand. I mean it's an old man in a bird costume... What else is there?

Of course this is all stuff we will figure out sooner or later, but again, it doesn't really disprove the idea that I might be getting bored with Spider-man.

The other part of the Vulture that was a little bit disappointing was how little Michael Keaton was actually in this trailer.

Yes. Michael Keaton is playing The Vulture. And again, I know that there is more to this character, I'm sure there's some fun backstory including Tony Stark and I'm sure that Michael Keaton is going to nail it.

But there was definitely not enough Keaton in this trailer. His only lines in the trailer is the generic, if you get in my way I'll kill you bad guy line and again, there's still nothing incredibly menacing about The Vulture.

My biggest worry is that Keaton will fall into the same trap that all the Marvel Cinematic Universe's villains will. That they will spend so much time on developing the main character, make me love Tom Holland even more than I already do as Spider-man. And The Vulture will end up being a really generic villain that I will forget about after the movie is done and Michael Keaton's great abilities will all be wasted on a one shot. The only way I feel I might be eating my words here is if this turns into Michael Keaton's Vulture forming The Sinister Six... which watching the International Trailer (I attached that below) might be the case. Who knows?

Again, I know this is just the trailer. And that's the case for both of these trailers, its the first trailers for these movies and I shouldn't be look too hard into them. But my main point with the Spider-man Homecoming trailer is that I thought it was generic and it doesn't make me want to set a timer counting down the days until this movie comes out.

I want to see Spider-man succeed, especially now that he's at Marvel and he can play around with the rest of the Avengers and a lot of fun stuff can happen.

But because of that, I think I expect more when I see these trailers.

Overall, I'm still excited for Spider-man: Homecoming. Of course you've got the humor that I said before might either be a thing to draw you in, or a distraction. But I am looking forward to both these films.

For me, they need to prove themselves as more than just movies with jokes in them. I'm hoping to get a lot of heart and a lot of action from both of them and I'm hoping that the concerns I have at the moment are just the cynic in me seeing the flaws in what is otherwise a really fun franchise.

But what did you think of the Guardians of the Galaxy Trailer and the Spider-man Homecoming trailer? Am I just cynical? Are these movies going to be great? Let me know! Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for movies I should be reviewing in the future. If you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. So I included the International trailer. It has a little bit more of Keaton and some fun music but it's basically the same trailer but without the high school vibes at the beginning. Which one do you prefer? Enjoy!