They say, "don't judge a book by its cover". To which, we reply, "Who are 'they' and why are you not letting us live our lives?" The same goes for the film/TV/video game industry, where marketing drones and world-weary editors team up to deliver a tasty trailer of what to expect in the final product.
Is it unfair that we are hanging all our expectations on snippets of the main course? Maybe. But is it fun to speculate wildly about what we are about to experience? Yes. Let's get to the last trailers that dropped.
It's the sequel that is heavily prayed for, especially when you work in the magazine industry. You get all the familiar call-backs and cattiness from the last movie. Now you have Anne Hathaway's character, who is more confident and Stanley Tucci still summoning that droll Tim Gunn spirit in his bon mots.
However, the biggest surprise is Meryl Streep, who still remains as stoic, commanding and... ageless, ever since the first instalment came out in 2006. That is indeed evidence of some infernal dealmaking, if we ever seen one.
The last time I watched a movie called Michael, it starred John Travolta as an archangel sent to do menial tasks on earth. This year, we'll get another film of the same name, this time starring Jaafar Jackson, who is stepping into some pretty big penny loafers to portray his uncle, Michael Jackson. Other than the weird prosthetic, Jaafar nails the dancing and the voice but what really clinched it for us is Colman Domingo as the domineering patriarch of the Jackson family.
Thanks to shrewd marketing, our interests were piqued. And this trailer managed to raise our anticipation when Zendaya and Robert Pattinson and friends decided to play a harmless game of confession—"What's the worst thing you've ever done?" Everybody gives some mid reply but when Zendaya answers (we don't hear it), the whole room just stares at her before Alana Haim's character goes, "what the fuck?" and we cut to the rest of the trailer.
What did Zendaya's character say that is seemingly the inciting incident for how the movie unfolds? You bet your bottom dollar that we will be tuning to find out and then see if it's worth it to watch how it all plays out.
We haven't read the book that it's based on but is the trailer enough for us to start watching the series on 15 July? It has a strong lead in Anna Taylor-Joy, who looks like a woman on a run and is also looking to get even—we love a revenge-led underdog. There's also Annette Bening and Timothy Olyphant (the latter, we would watch anything he's in). Oh, and there's a scene of Taylor-Joy walking calmly away from an explosion. That money shot has us convinced.
