movie trailers

[meganbmoore]

Trailers for the only 2 movies currently on my radar to try to see in theaters:

Maleficent:

"Disney's Maleficent Official Teaser Trailer" (Watch on YouTube)

I like how they managed to convey the creepy gothic imagery from the animated movie to live action, and the visual feel of the movie overall. I'm iffy, though, on the fact that Aurora's actress is 15 and and Philip's is 24. I know Hollywood (and equivalents worldwide, really) likes to do that for characters who are supposed to be close in age, but it stands out more when one of them is too young to have a driver's license in most states. I think the ages of the leads in The Secret of Moonacre were around the same ages at the time, but that was heavily implied future romance, as opposed to explicitly romantic on screen, as I'm sure this will be.

(And I wonder if they're going to do "Once Upon a Dream." Which is THE MOST ROMANTIC THING EVER when you're 8, but then you rewatch it as an adult and it's "OMG PHILIP HOW DID I NOT KNOW YOU WERE A CREEPY FOREST PERV. Childhood crushing is destroyed.")

And Frozen:

"Disney's Frozen Official Trailer" (Watch on YouTube)

I have very mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, in and of itself. I really really like the idea of Frozen and think it looks fun. On the other hand, it bugs me as an adaptation of "The Snow Queen." Based on what I've heard about it, they went "good girl, bad queen, snow, road trip" and ditched the rest. While the final product may (will probably?) have more similarities than promotional material would imply, it's pretty unrecognizable as an adaptation of the source material. I mean, say what you will about Disney's adaptations of other fairly tales and the changes they made, they're pretty easily recognizable in relation to the original stories. Another thing about it being billed as an adaptation of "The Snow Queen" as opposed to original material is that then I have to dwell on how they took out all the women (which there are a reasonably large number of) but the Gerda and Snow Queen equivalents and replaced them with men, as seems to be the case from the trailer and character lists.

Comments

[shiegra]

I'm kind of really frustrated and disillusioned and not planning to see Frozen not only because of the completely wishwashy (in my gut reaction) adaptation of one of my earliest fairy tales (we had this breathtakingly illustrated book, it was like you could stroke the fur on the Robber Princess's books and they felt soft, damn) but because after selecting the five thousandth dazzlingly white cast (with female facial moulds identical to Rapunzel's) they then took the cultural trappings and costumes of the POC of that area of era and put them on their white characters. (Rough fantasy era, you know what I mean.)

I don't know if I'm ranting something at you that you've heard five times before but FOR ASLSJHDFJKSADHFJS.

[meganbmoore]

I hadn't seen any discussion of that re: trappings (the clothing/furs looked a bit"generic pseudo Russian" to me in the trailer, but I didn't look closely at all) but had noticed the facial moulds thing.

[shiegra]

Criticism has popped up over their appropriative design choices for fashion and music from what I've seen.

[elsane]

Seriously, I can't believe it's 2013 and the main characters are still being introduced as "descriptive!" "descriptive!" "descriptive!" and "not a man!" Being a woman is not a character trait, though it certainly seems the animators think it is.

I don't know, it looks well put together but I don't like the slick artificial look of the animation, and between that and the race and gender blast from the past, I don't think I have the patience anymore.

(I am kind of confused by the costuming aspect to the race debate? Saami are a historically oppressed ethnic minority, yes, and I wouldn't necessarily trust Disney to do anything respectful with historically oppressed ethnic minorities, but Saami are white...I wouldn't call them POC exactly)

[meganbmoore]

I hadn't actually seen or heard anything about the costuming until the comment above.

I agree about the animation, but I also didn't think much of the animation for Brave or Tangled in trailers, but liked the animation in the actual movies.

[shiegra]

Apologies for the research fail - I got the identification from a discussion (including Saami bloggers, who raised the point that there are black Saami among other races, given that it's an ethnic identity) about racial makeup and history in Denmark here.