Welcome to the Trailer Trasher. Don’t let the name fool you, I love movie trailers. Sometimes I like the trailers way more than the actual movies. But other times, movie trailers just flat suck and someone needs to call them on it.
What can make a trailer suck? Usually they either show too much or not enough. Or it looks just like every other trailer for every other movie in that genere (here’s looking at you, Michael Bay). Trailers should be original and leave you wanting more like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and not try to be too cute like Star Trek Into Darkness.
To kick things off– I’ll start with a trailer for a movie about a farting corpse which becomes a stranded man’s best friend. Things get weird after that.
SWISS ARMY MAN
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrK1f4TsQfM[/embedyt]
I have no idea if this will be a good movie, but boy is this trailer something. It starts with Paul Dano as a castaway named Hank ready to hang himself when he sees the corpse of Daniel Radcliffe wash ashore. As Dano rushes to his new island-mate’s side… the corpse let’s one rip. If you think that’s strange, well hold on it gets more bizarre. Radcliffe’s corpse becomes the Wilson to Dano’s Tom Hanks, but only if Wilson could also double as a machine gun, jet ski, grappling hook, tree chopper and possibly explosives.
So, is Radcliffe really alive? Is it all just hallucinations caused by Hank’s starvation? Who’s the girl? And how does his cell phone stay charged on a deserted island? You’ll have to watch and see.
Originality
I’m torn here. On the surface this is your pretty standard “finding love in an unlikely place” blue print of a trailer. But then the content is so odd, so totally different that it completely distracts you from that same old formula. It’s tough to take that blueprint and make it feel original and I think this one does.
Look & Feel
If Castaway and Weekend at Bernie’s had a baby this would be it. The trailer leaves you thinking this is a buddy dramedy between a man and a corpse without a hint of necrophilia. It makes you care about their friendship to the point you can almost ignore the fact that one of them is a rotting corpse.
Intrigue
Despite appearing to offer something totally new, ultimately I fear the best scenes from this movie are in this trailer. I won’t go see this in the theater, but I think I’ll give it a watch when it’s on HBO or something if only to see how Daniel Radcliffe pulls off the role of a corpse (insert acting joke here).
