We ALL Cry in Movie Trailers Now!!
Wakanda Forever + Comic-Con Movie Trailers + Bradley Cooper's New Girlfriend Because I am a Completist
Greetings from sunny Los Angeles! ☀️ NYC is but a distant memory, and I am increasingly becoming a loose, warm-color-spectrum, abstract sketch of my very best self.
Wow, the Culture really said, “She’s taking a week off, let’s get loud!” Just a FEW of the things that happened:
JLo signed her marriage certificate in Vegas alongside several regular humans [can you IMAGINE!?] as well as, I can only assume, an illegal Elvis!
The Emmy nominations were announced (we might discuss these soon?)
NOPE, Persuasion, Crawdads, and The Gray Man dropped (reviews to come!)
Comic-Con came and went.
The Black Panther trailer dropped and broke the internet.
Since that’s a whole lotta big C Culture to cover, we’re going to split this week into two posts. Keep an eye out in the coming days for my review of The Gray Man, Nope, and if I can stomach the horror of it, Dakota Johnson’s Persuasion.
For this post, we’re going to review all the trailers from Comic-Con!! Buckle up your nerd belts because it’s the Year of Our Lord the MCU and every movie is a nerd movie now!!
IN THE NEWS
Bennifer is married. As we all know, Jennifer “morning affirmations” Lopez married Ben “Dunkin & cigs” Affleck. Aspirational TV!! She also legally changed her name to Jennifer Lynn Affleck, which sounds like a white lady from Birmingham who has “Live Laugh Love” framed above her farmhouse-style sink! My favorite bit of news is from their honeymoon in Paris where Ben fell asleep on a river cruise and immediately was Memed Around the World.
Anthony Weiner’s ex-wife, Huma Abedin, is dating BRADLEY COOPER!!!!!!! When I told my friend Laura this, she said: “I don’t like this for anyone.” But, I, dear Reader, LOVE this for EVERYONE!! First of all: mega glow up for Huma’s love life. Second of all, I hate to say it, but for Bradley: quite a cushy assignment following Anthony “Walking Boner” Weiner?? The bar is literally on the floor!
Chris Pine is in his Diane Keaton Era, and we love that for him! He has been featured on this blog before as a leggings-under-athletic-shorts-wearer [which we dislike]. But now he’s outright giving fashion the middle finger, and all we can say is, You won this one, Chris!
WATCHING — THE BEST NEW TRAILERS FROM COMIC-CON
This weekend was San Diego Comic-Con, and if you’re not into Comic-Con, the only thing you need to know is that the arrival of Comic-Con always means the arrival of exciting movie news and, best of all, long-awaited movie trailers!!
Here are the ones I’m most excited about:
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - in theaters Nov. 11
*chills*
*shaking*
*screaming*
*sobbing*
If you’re alive and online, you know that this trailer broke the internet when it was released at Comic-Con on Saturday night.
And it is…the best trailer I’ve EVER seen??? Getting it right was no easy feat! They had to honor the memory of Chadwick Boseman, helping audiences feel connected to but not disloyal to his memory, while also building on excitement for the idea of a new Black Panther. This was Difficulty Level 10, and not to mix metaphors, but they knocked it out of the park!!!
Experts could hold forth for hours about the layered significance of every choice in this trailer, but I’ll just mention a few:
The entire thing is a tribute to Chadwick Boseman while still being an engine for introducing a new story. Wow.
The music choices! When the somber “No Woman, No Cry” morphs into “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar, as a friend said in my DMs, “The POWER when Kendrick hits”!!!! Here’s a great article about what this song means to modern Black civil rights activism: “Since its release in 2015…‘Alright’ has been widely accepted as one of this generation’s most important protest anthems. It’s a symbol of hope.”
THAT LAST SHOT!!! As Vinny Thomas tweeted: “Everyone is currently trying to figure out who the new Black Panther is from a single frame of a butt in a full squat.” WE CAN DO THIS, Y’ALL!!!
Enjoy some of the rest of the world’s reactions to this trailer HERE.
House of the Dragon - on HBO Aug 21
Listen, I WANT to be excited about this, but I might be all dragon-ed out. The whole tagline for this is “War is afoot,” and honestly, that’s just bad writing.
Also, I don’t trust it after reading this tweet:
So that’s one big “HMMMMMMMMMMMM…” from me! But I was a bad person and watched Game of Thrones despite all the sexual violence, so I am not holier than thou!
Rings of Power - on Amazon Sept. 2
Was my LiveJournal Galadriel-themed? Did I read The Silmarillion at age 14? Did I buy an Elven brooch on E-bay in 2003 with all my life savings? Yes to all of these! Needless to say, I am equal parts excited and “They will destroy the treasured source material” about this.
Pros: We demand a Buzzfeed article titled “Who is that saucy blond devil boy in the new LOTR trailer, and is he single??”
Cons: The elf who seems to be Galadriel’s Boo Thang or Elrond looks like he went to British boarding school. Also, Galadriel looks like she belongs in a period film, but the kind where they wear corsets and talk about handsome officers in the visiting regiment. Not exactly Middle-Earth!
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - in theaters March 3, 2023
First, I said, “Another movie with a colon in the title?? Hard pass!!”
Then I saw Regé-Jean Page in full dreadlocks [in his Michael-B-Jordan-in-Black-Panther Era!!!], Michelle Rodriguez released from her Fast & Furious prison at long last, and Chris Pine [decidedly NOT in his Diane Keaton era here!] playing the lute!! I’M ALL IN!!!!
John Wick: Chapter 4 - in theaters March 24, 2023
“No one, not even you, can kill everyone.”
Keanu: *looks meaningfully at camera*
I would be happy if every action movie was a John Wick movie, so needless to say, I am very excited about this.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods (theatrical release Dec. 21, 2022)
Zachary Levi is like a non-gay, “B version but make it cozy” of Zachary Quinto and Lee Pace, but he is quite charming, so I’ll give this a shot. I watched the first one, and all I can remember is that it was so loud my neighbor came upstairs and asked Could You Turn The Speakers Down.
But Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu as the villains? Okay!?
The Sandman - on Netflix Aug. 5, 2022
The only Neil Gaiman book I’ve read is American Gods, and I didn’t watch that show. But this is interesting!! I like Gaiman’s wild dark creativity, and The Sandman is probably his most acclaimed work. The trailer has some Umbrella Academy vibe to it, plus a lot of the Game of Thrones supporting cast seems to have transitioned right over?
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law - on Disney+ Aug. 17
Tatiana Maslany from Orphan Black plays a surprisingly small and trim version of She-Hulk, Mark Ruffalo Hulk’s cousin!
Why is she so small when she Hulks??? Not to put my feminist criticism glasses on, but I think Disney is still uncomfortable with women taking up space!! This does look fun, though, despite that.
Avengers 5 & 6
They also announced the titles of the next two Avengers movies — The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars — but they aren’t coming out until 2025!!! Yes, you read that right: the Year of Our Lord 2025!!! I don’t plan that far in advance because I assume a meteor will have hit Earth by then!
I LOVE trailers - there's a reason I'm always on time to the movie theater so comic con was a great week for me. Your Black Panther trailer takes are 100% correct and I'm so hyped for it. The only part that made me cringe a little was the Chadwick mural...just seemed like a repeat of what they did for Iron Man in Spider-Man: Far From Home. I'm hopeful that the movie will do more than S-M:FFH did and it definitely seems like it will, but that took me out of it for a bit.
GOT anything is a pass for me just as LOTR anything is a yes for me. But also I could hate Rings of Power like I hated the Hobbit movies and DNF. Everything else I'm here for. Yes Tatiana deserves to hulk out more but I love her so much (have you seen Orphan Black??) so I will watch and enjoy even though my inner feminist is raging (like the hulk).