“Star Trek Into Darkness” teaser is…awesome?

Oh hai there, “Into Darkness” bad person, Benedict Cumberbatch! Trailer images (C) Paramount Pictures/Bad Robot

If you haven’t spent your day constantly re-watching the “Into Darkness” teaser trailer on your PC at work, there’s a good chance that you A) Don’t have to use a PC for your work or B) Are Fluffrick and are sadly compelled to rock an office PC so antediluvian that it might as well be considered a Steampunk artefact.

If, like this blogger, you had to wait until home time to catch the new J.J. Abrams‘ “Star Trek“ movie’s teaser trailer, no doubt you’re trying to form words and phrases which can fully encompass the splendiferousness with which your gentle eyeballs have been subject to.

From the look on Chris Pine and Zoe Saldana’s faces, Cumberbatch isn’t playing “Twister”.  Unless it’s Deadly 23rd Century Death-Trap Twister, of course.

The best that I can come up with is a onamatapeaic noise which sounds like a small child gargling jelly compulsively.  All teaser trailers are meant to pimp the biggest, boldest moments of any blockbuster, but this first look is impressive as much for lead bad guy Benedict Cumberbatch’s superbly gravelly, unrelenting grim voice-over which offers a tantalising suggestion that the shiny-happy territory of the rebooted 2009 film is being jettisoned in favour of “Wrath of Khan“-style, “I can’t believe they did that!“ character offing and high stakes scares.  In fact, if you’ve watched the slightly longer, Japanese teaser trailer for the film, the “Wrath of Khan” comparison seems more than justified…

Fringe versus Fringe – who will triumph?

 

Go and press your  face against the screen HERE if you haven’t seen the trailer.  And then watch it 25 times.  You know you want to…

Related articles

• First Star Trek Into Darkness Teaser Sends the Enterprise Straight to Hell (io9.com)
• ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ Announcement Teaser Trailer (slashfilm.com)
• Star Trek Into Darkness Teaser Trailer Beams Down (geeksyndicate.co.uk)

“Star Trek Into Darkness” gets a new poster

Ominous, much?  Image via Paramount Pictures

As we wait for either the nine-minute IMAX prologue playing before selected screenings of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey“, the astute folk at Paramount have elected to steal a march on the marketing for next summer’s “Star Trek” sequel by releasing every geek-centric blockbuster’s must-have item, the enigmatic teaser poster.

Putting on my modish great-coat and a fashionably directional long scarf in the manner of all the best consulting detectives, I note that the poster seems to feature putative “Star Trek Into Darkness” villain, Benedict Cumberbatch, who is of course playing classic “Trek” baddie Gary Mitchell/Khan/Keyser Soze (delete as likely) in the J.J. Abrams directed sequel.

And that scene of urban mass destruction, the hallmark of all contemporary bad guys who seek to threaten our very way of life via the medium of terrorist action – could it be London?  As Empire magazine‘s post on the teaser poster intimated, the background scenery seems to have the ‘Gherkin’ building prominently featured.

England’s capital?  Being destroyed in a summer blockbuster?  Such a thing has never happened before…

A trailer for this must-see geek fest is due before the end of 2012 – I don’t know about you, but I already have my popcorn ready for that one…

Related articles

• The ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ Teaser Poster Has Arrived (slashfilm.com)
• First Star Trek Into Darkness Poster Features the Wrath of Cumberbatch (tor.com)
• “Star Trek Into Darkness” with “The Hobbit” (fluffrick.wordpress.com)

“G.I. Joe” – Evacuation!

What if you made a summer movie and nobody went?

NOT coming soon to a theatre near you…

This appears to be the line of thought over at Paramount, where their imminent blockbuster-in-waiting, the sequel “G.I. Joe – Retaliation” has suddenly been yanked from its June 25th release date and given a March 2013 release.

Officially, this is due to a need to bolt-on a 3D conversion to the film, as Paramount’s press release would have us believe that the delay is necessary to do the job properly and so take advantage of the foreign box office’s insatiable desire for 3D Sci-Fi Action flicks.

Unofficially, having seen Universal’s “Battleship” take a beating at the hands of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Paramount didn’t fancy having their summer flick get a one-two drubbing from “The Amazing Spider-Man“ and “The Dark Knight Rises” and ran scared to a far less busy, free of superheroes weekend in 2013.

What do we really think caused this abrupt decision?  Probably a bit from column A and a bit from column B – If the other super-flicks of this summer have half the appeal of “The Avengers”, Paramount are going to look very smart and have protected their considerable investment by tailoring it to where the global film market is going.

China and Russia love their 3D action and are accounting for an ever-larger slice of box office takings – if you could get a chunk of that cash, wouldn’t you make an effort?  Even if, you know, it involved taking your 2-D flick and daubing the equivalent of a virtual moustache on it.

Who knows, by this point in 2013 the post-conversion technology may have improved to such a point that the words “Post-Converted 3D” won’t fill discerning nerds with uncommon dread…