Yeah, I'm not a fan of this teaser. If you're not going to give us ANYTHING about the movie, then what's the point?

The Inception teaser was great because it showed us some really intriguing images (mainly the hallway fight), it had that great "Your mind is the scene of the crime" tagline, and it otherwise gave us nothing about the story. That's a teaser. This is just a statement of the movie's theme, some archival news footage and ten seconds of Matthew McConaughey driving a pickup truck. Yawn.

Meh. I'm not a fan of that aspect. It seems really blatant and obvious. Like, "Hey guys, this is what the point of our movie is! Come see it next year!" In my opinion, a teaser should tease the story. Let's go back to that Inception teaser. Imagine you're sitting in a theater in mid-2009, and this starts playing.

That's a proper teaser. It tells you NOTHING of what the movie is, but you still really want to see it. There's so much compelling imagery. "Why is that guy getting dragged away? What's with the top? Why is the water in that glass tilting? Does it have anything to do with those guys fighting in anti-gravity? Why is Leo in that bathtub?" and on and on. There was NO information regarding what the movie was actually about, in theme or in story. Just a collection of really compelling, mysterious images. It makes you want to be able to put those images in context, and therefore want to see the whole movie. It's exactly what a trailer should be.

You know what else had an amazing trailer? Alien.

Same thing as the Inception trailer. You see that and you think, "Man, what's going on there? I can't wait to see that movie so that I can see what that all means!"

Then there's this Interstellar teaser. And don't get me wrong, it isn't a bad teaser in the ways I mentioned. It doesn't give away the plot. We don't see any major scenes or anything from the climax, I assume. But that's part of my problem with it (and I realize that complaining about a teaser trailer is dumb as shit, but hear me out.) The Interstellar teaser is pointless. After watching it, I know exactly as much about the movie as I did before. Before watching this teaser, I knew that Matthew McConaughey was in it and that people went to space. Well, now I know that McConaughey also drives a pickup truck in the movie. And that a rocket gets launched. What about that is supposed to entice me to see the movie, other than Chris Nolan's name? Sorry, and maybe this is different from you guys, but knowing the theme of a movie doesn't make me want to watch it. If you tell me that, I'll know the theme whether I watch it or not. The interesting part is how the movie tells that theme, and yeah, this teaser doesn't show you that, I guess. But nothing about this teaser makes me think, "I can't wait to see how this fits into the film!" They might as well have sent out a tweet that said, "This film is about how America needs to regain its thirst for exploration," and it would have accomplished the same thing. It's absolutely pointless. The only new thing that this teaser could possibly tell me is, "Hey man, this movie exists." Which I already knew. So I guess if you're not a film nerd and you didn't know that Nolan was working on a new movie, yeah, this will work for you on that level. But the teaser doesn't give you any reason to want to see the movie. It's not like this is some new, radical, never-before-explored theme. Other movies have covered this before. And that's not a judgement of Interstellar. I'm just saying that nothing they show in this teaser is new or interesting, other than the fact that Nolan is making a movie about this idea.

I hope this doesn't come off as some dumb fanboy wank. I'm not saying, "Boo, I wanted to see more footage of the movie! This trailer sucks!" That's not my point. I'm talking about what makes a teaser trailer good. And in my opinion, this isn't a good teaser trailer.

So yeah, seems like there's gonna be plenty of plot in there. This is a Nolan movie, remember. The first 45 minutes will be all about explaining how wormholes work before we get to the good stuff. And has he ever made a movie that's about "ideas"? I guess The Prestige is about obsession. But it's been a while since he's done a movie like that.

I'm gonna play devil's advocate against myself here, because I just had a thought. What if this trailer isn't just a trailer for a movie, it's a rebuke of the unoriginality Hollywood blockbusters? Nolan is saying, "We (big studio filmmakers) have lost our drive to explore new ideas, to do new things, to go new places. But we are capable of telling original stories, and we should do so."

Now THAT'S a theme that interests me. I don't give a shit about the whole "we need to get back on the horse and start doing what we do best" thing. There are car commercials with that theme. But a more meta exploration of the moviemaking process? A bold, original film that tells us that we need to make more bold, original films? I'm so in.

I was literally running out the door as I was typing that and it came out way more pretentious than I intended.

I don't mean to say "ideas" as in "it's about ideeeaaaas maan." but that it has one very central idea or message that it really wants to convey to the audience. In this case we need to get off our asses and get out into the universe again.

I (personally) don't think Inception (or Alien even) has anything like that. They're both very action-y set piece driven (alien less so, but still true) films, so teasing them by literally teasing those set pieces is the obvious way to go for those. But there isn't some ...thing... that the film as a whole is trying to tell the audience. (um... don't go to deep into your own subconscious, cause like, shit gets real man. Aliens that want to eat you are bad, k guyz.) Whereas Interstellar feels like something that is more about instilling that sense of "get up and go" into the audience as main driving force of the film itself.

Granted, if that's not what the film is about, then fuck me, but just going off of what he's given us so far, that's the movie he's (at least telling us) he's making. I don't think it's fair to call out a teaser trailer as a bad teaser, for a movie you know almost nothing about, simply because it isn't telling you what those others one did. Especially when this movie may be EXACTLY what this teaser is telling us it is.

Isn't that the point of a teaser? For whoever's in control to give you a small insight into what the movie will be like? All we have to go on is what he's giving us. For all you know, the stuff you think should be in a teaser may not even exist in the movie. Whether that's a good or a bad thing you can decide for yourself, but that doesn't mean it's a bad teaser for THIS MOVIE.

/rant

EDIT: On second read, i have no idea if this even makes it clearer, but ehh, I'm too tired to care.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2013-12-15 08:11:07)

The teaser showed us less than we would have liked, but, for me, the only thing I need to know is 'Directed by Christopher Nolan'. If his weakest movie, is TDKR, that's a pretty awesome track-record, and he's earned the right to have my $20 blind.

And what's this about Nolan not putting any ideas into his movies? He's calved out a niche for himself as a director of cerebral blockbusters. The morals of surveillance, the prisoner's dilemma, dreams versus reality, fear as a tool of leadership, individual versus society, etc. Not all are perfectly executed, and he often bites off more than he can chew, but props for the ambition.

And what's this about how Nolan will spend 45 minutes explaining worm hole physics? Did Nolan spend ANY time explaining how the suitcase dream machine worked in Inception? Not one second was wasted on technobabble. They didn't even give the device a name.

I read your post while pressing the button... http://inception.davepedu.com/

That's a really good point, I hadn't thought of that. I didn't even realize that Jonathan Nolan didn't work on those films. What's he been up to?

Am hearing this might be one of the last IMAX movies projected in 65mm before they switch to their all-digital laser projection system. So glad Nolan is still out there fighting against the death of film.

Also, I am beyond stoked to see what he does with the space stuff. I would almost bet money he does model shots for at least some of the exteriors, which'll be awesome to see in 2014.

You are a terrible person and you should feel bad

You're all forgetting McConaughey's best performance: