Is Soft-Breathy Cover Song the New Dubstep?

With the new trailer for Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak hitting the airwaves today, I think it's safe to say that there's a new running trend with trailers coming out of Hollywood. Gone are the days of the "Inception Tone." No longer will we wait for "the drop" and the dubstep to kick in for the closing montage...

Alas, the new era of trailer edit trends is here and it is "Soft Breathy Vocalist Cover Song."

Avengers: Age of Ultron seems to have started the trend, with its deeply melancholy rendition of "I've Got No Strings" that was used to great effect raising the stakes and the emotion for our band of heroes. But now it seems to have set the precedent for trailers to follow...

Crimson Peak is using a slow-soft melancholy version of Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand," San Andreas is using a slow-soft melancholy version of "California Dreaming," the Netflix series Bloodline is using a slow-soft breathy version of "Nothing Else Matters" and earlier this week the Hitman: Agent 47 trailer hit with a somewhat slowed down cover of "Voodoo Child."

Admittedly, it's nice that we've started to get away from the flash of imagery set to the deep LFE hit "BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMM" tones, but it's interesting to see how this has quickly become a repeated editorial device of late. Have there been other trailers recently that have used the same device that I've missed?

Can I also make a few suggestions for forthcoming trailers? How about this version of Dio's "Holy Diver" for the next Terminator trailer? Or what about a soft-breathy version of "Eye of the Tiger" for the upcoming Rocky spin-off film Creed? Or maybe this rendition of "Crazy in Love" for a Charlie's Angels reboot film?

UPDATE: Friend Adam Vadnais pointed out to me that a soft-ballad version of "Crazy in Love" was used in the 50 Shades of Grey trailer. So I guess I wasn't that far off?

Bits & Bobs - 8th Edition

Bits & Bobs collects some of the cool things around the interwebs that I think are noteworthy and worth your time but don't necessarily fill up a full blog post or news item. On with the show...

THERE HAS BEEN AN AWAKENING, AND YOU PROBABLY FELT IT...

View fullsize

Unless you've been off the grid since Thanksgiving, you probably have already seen and know that a teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released on Black Friday. The new sequel film takes place thirty years after the events of Return of the Jedi and features all-new characters and some familiar faces including Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia. The teaser trailer clocks in at a mere 88 seconds but is the first official glimpse of the newcomers John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Issac and is intended as something of an amuse-bouche before bigger trailers are released presumably next spring. Of course, fanboys are nitpicking over tiny details including a brand new lightsaber seen sported by what many assume is the new villain of the film but how can you not like everything you see in this trailer? A panicked hero in Stormtooper armor on the run, a tough female jumping onto a souped-up speeder and racing to (or away from) danger, X-Wings, the Millennium Falcon... I mean, c'mon. If you haven't seen it, check it out here in glorious high definition courtesy of StarWars.com.

HER NAME IS AGENT

View fullsize

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is about to head off into its mid-season hiatus with a blow-out Winter Finale on December 9th, but the good news is that in between episodes Agent Carter is going to help you pass the time starting with a two-hour film airing on ABC January 6, 2015. The latest TV spots and promos really make the film look true to the first Captain America: The First Avenger film (and in-turn, gets me stoked for the show because it also feels a lot like The Rocketeer). The seven episodes will presumably air weekly leading up to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s return later in 2015, and knowing how everything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is connected, will most likely have ramifications for all of the Marvel shows and films to come.

Jurassic Park vs. Jurassic World: Trailer Comparative Study

I've been a little surprised with the amount of negativity aimed at the Jurassic World trailer that launched on Tuesday. I actually really dug what I saw in the trailer and feel like if you're going to make another Jurassic Park film, this is probably the way to do it. In fact, a lot of it felt really familiar to the first film... As an experiment, I decided to compare this trailer to the original trailer for Jurassic Park from around 1992 in terms of structurally how they were presented as well as narratively what they were conveying.

Here's the results:

:15 (Both Films)

In 1992, Jurassic Park begins its trailer by introducing us to the world that we know: archeologists excavating a fossil while a narrator who sounds like Littlefinger from Game of Thrones sets the stage that mankind has always searched for its past. In 2014, Jurassic World opens on a young kid at an airport, his mother tells her how proud she is of him going on the trip but at the first sign of danger: run. Okay, so in 1992 we have to establish to audiences how and why dinosaurs have been brought back to life but in 2014, we automatically assume that it's possible and that people have knowledge of the dangers (even the past events) of a Jurassic Park. Not much comparison here quite yet.

:29 (Both Films)

In 1992, Sir Richard Attenborough tells us that he owns an island off the coast of Costa Rica and it immediately cuts to a beautiful shot of the InGen helicopter traveling to Isla Nublar. Incidentally, at the exact same time into the Jurassic World trailer in 2014, we see a similar shot of the plush boat traveling to the exact same island. Now we're talking.

:47 (Jurassic Park) / :42 (Jurassic World)

The 1992 trailer needs to drop in a little more exposition to establish how these dinosaurs have been genetically engineered, while the 2014 trailer hits us right with the familiar Jurassic World gates. However both trailers both literally and figuratively tell us that the "Park is Open" (the 2014 trailer by dropping it as a full-screen text card) followed by a shot of a Downtown Disney-looking environment... around the same time that the 1992 trailer opens the doors to the iconic atrium in a similar over the shoulder shot.

:58 (Jurassic Park) / :53 (Jurassic World)

John Hammond tells us in the 1992 trailer that his creatures are going to capture the imaginations of every living creature... and we immediately reveal character reactions to the Brachiosaurus. What happens in the 2014 trailer? We see hordes of audiences at the park with their imaginations being captured and, sure enough, at around the same time get a similar reaction to our friends, the brachiosaurus.

1:08 (Jurassic Park) / 1:04 (Jurassic World)

Jurassic Park: King Kong reference. Jurassic World: Jaws reference.

1:25 (Jurassic Park) / 1:29 (Jurassic World)

Dr. Alan Grant ominously begins explaining the science to us talking about the dangers of genetic modification while in the new trailer, Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire discusses genetic modification. Both lines of dialogue set up what will fundamentally be the harbinger for what's to come in the remainder of the trailer's events.

1:32 (Jurassic Park) / 1:30 (Jurassic World)

At the conclusion of Dr. Grant's speech, your subwoofer gets a workout with a big thump to the LFE channel as you see the iconic waterglass shot from the first film. Meanwhile, in 2014 as Claire's speech comes to a conclusion, your subwoofer also gets a workout from a big thump revealing this weird genetically modified spinal column-type thing.

2:00 (Jurassic Park) / 1:56 (Jurassic World)

In Jurassic Park, we learn that the fences are down all over the park and Samuel L. Jackson can't get anything back online without Dennis Nedry... then it cuts to this fantastic shot of Dr. Sadler surveying post-attack wreckage. In Jurassic World, Chris Pratt warns against the danger of something that escaped its fence and cuts to this image of his character: surveying post-attack wreckage.

2:04 (Jurassic Park) / 2:02 (Jurassic World)

Both trailers getting into their action montage sequences - both hit a similar palms sweating moment because our main characters are up in the air without a net at roughly the same time (Jurassic Park: the characters climbing over the high-reaching electric fence, Jurassic World: the characters jumping off a waterfall). A bit of a stretch, but identical moments eliciting the same type of response.

2:07 (Jurassic Park) / 2:05 (Jurassic World)

Jurassic Park: "Oh no." / Jurassic World: "Oh god."

2:14 (Both Films)

The young boy character sees something with a high eye-line that makes their jaws both drop.

2:21 (Both Films)

Raptors!

2:28 (Both Films)

Raptors... who learn how to open doors (Jurassic Park) / Raptors... who learn to ride with Chris Pratt (Jurassic World). And both trailers end on that note of the dinosaurs evolving in ways that we would never expect them to have.

Conclusion: Did you like the first movie? There's a good chance you might like the new one.

Jurassic World Trailer Drops

So much for waiting for the big reveal on Turkey Day... Universal Pictures did an about-face and released the trailer for the new Jurassic World film today. Clocking in at over two-minutes, the trailer gives us a really good feel for what this film is going to be and I have to say: I'm pretty $#@! excited. Dr. Ian Malcolm told us that life was going to find a way but apparently, so did humans and Jurassic Park (now World) is a thriving theme park akin to the the Disney empire. But, as they famously say, something goes wrong. And what goes wrong was incredibly unexpected on my part. Check out the trailer, now and let us know what you think!