Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little summary of Fox's big CinemaCon panel. The big event was kicked off by DJ Enferno remixing the Fox fanfare and then slipping right into his take on the Peanuts theme, complete with hip hop dancing team Academy of Villains doing a big routine on stage. Nothing says Charlie Brown like hip hop dancing, I guess.
Snark aside, it was actually a really well-done number by the dancers and capped off by a crowd-pleasing intro of Fox's President of Domestic Distribution, Chris Aronson who strutted out in a Charlie Brown Yellow and Black jacket, crooked cap and diamond-studded headphones.
Man, did the crowd eat that up. I laughed, but also felt a little uncomfortable. I couldn't shake the feeling that I somehow slipped into an episode of Silicon Valley and was watching a rich white dude buying cool, extravagant company to try to impress other rich white dudes. That's not unique to Fox here, by the way. The whole of CinemaCon kind of feels like that.
It is first and foremost a convention for exhibitors. Theater owners decide which films to book into their theaters and how many screens they'll give them, so the studios go all out to... bribe is a strong word... impress, maybe? Yeah, they go all out to impress them. There's no talk about quality of product except how it relates to asses in seats. Visionary directors are only mentioned because they bring major movie stars, etc. It's an interesting change of pace from most of the fan-community pleasing cons I usually attend.
Fox unveiled a bunch of footage. I'm gonna start with the stuff I liked the most and work my way down from there.
-Alejandro Innaritu's The Revenant. Mountain Man Leonardo DiCaprio in the Canadian wilderness. He fights natives on horseback using flintlock pistols and has lots of ice in his beard. Seriously, the most interesting footage from the panel was this stuff. Supposedly filmed using only natural lighting the work on display by DoP Emmanuel Lubezki can best be described as Terrence Malick-y and this was just the raw footage from the camera.
Innaritu's talent for moving the camera was on full display as well. The best shot was a close on DiCaprio on horseback riding for his life from an attacking army of natives. The camera swings around to show one approaching as DiCaprio takes aim, fires and takes him out before resuming his gallop to safety. Very kinetic, urgent. Looks great.
-The Martian. This is Ridley Scott's adaptation of Andy Weir's book starring Matt Damon as an astronaut left behind on Mars when things go south. The rest of his crew made it off-planet and he's presumed dead... except he's not. The main vibe I got from the footage was an Apollo 13 one. A guy in trouble has to make due with what he has in order to survive.
If a rescue is to be attempted it'll take at least 4 years and that's only if he can get a message back to NASA that he's still alive. The station on Mars has only 31 days of life support and supplies. As Damon says, the only way to survive... “I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this!” Duct tape and odds and ends around the station have to sustain him.
This one looked like a ton of fun. We'll see what Scott delivers, but all the pieces are there. Damon seemed to be at the top of his game and it looked like a million bucks. Can't wait to see this one!
-David O. Russell's Joy. The footage shown here was all without dialogue. The intro described the film as a generation-spanning story about the rise of a strong businesswoman and matriarch. Jennifer Lawrence plays the lead and the vintage look of the footage reminded me a bit of Russell's own American Hustle except with a bit more Scorsese thrown in. I hope they release this teaser because it is really well cut together. Instead of dialogue the soundtrack is ringing bells that grow in intensity and fervor as the cutting gets quicker and quicker. Very striking.
-Paper Towns, the new movie based on a book by the guy who wrote The Fault In Our Stars. Teenagers discovering themselves kinda story about a boy who has a crazy evening bonding with the cute school weird girl who disappears the next day. It's about his search for her, which, of course, is just the journey he needs to figure out who he is. Can't tell if this one's going to go sappy or bittersweet, but the footage got me curious enough to find out.
Fantastic Four – The only thing they showed was the latest trailer, but at least the cast walked out to introduce it. That was nice of them.
-Peanuts. The footage was reverential of Charles Schulz, which is a good move. Still not sure how much I like my beloved Peanuts characters animated in 3D, but the footage showed off a lot of key Peanuts imagery, like Snoopy getting his finger caught in a binder, Charlie Brown on the pitching mound being blown out of his shoes and socks by a baseball and Pig Pen's trademark dust cloud. Their hearts seemed to be in the right place, at least. We'll see on this one.
-Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. I liked the first Maze Runner well enough, but it didn't make much of a lasting impression on me. The sequel promises something much bigger as the survivors of the maze are hunted by just about everybody, including, it seems, Little Finger from Game of Thrones. Yes, I know his name is Aiden Gillen, but I just like calling him Little Finger, okay? Post apocalyptic desert waste vistas, lots of guns and shooting and running and concerned looking people. I know this one has a lot of fans (the exhibitors went crazy for this footage), but it'll take a little convincing for me to see this series as anything other than Hunger Games-lite.
-Poltergeist. The exhibitors also went nuts for this footage. We saw pretty much a recut of the two trailers with a few more scenes peppered in. Still, it was easily the best-cut of all the sizzle stuff I've seen so far and really took advantage of the Colosseum's Dolby Atmos sound system. Imagery glimpsed included hand-like tree branch shadows outside the boy's bedroom and more stuff with the clown. There was also a really crappy CG ghost-rushing-at-camera moment that director Gil Keenan assured me on Twitter was not in the final movie and was only in the Con footage. I'm not an easy sell when it comes to this one as the original is very near and dear to my heart, but I'd much rather see a good remake/reboot than a crappy one and I have some faith in Keenan. We shall see.
-Hitman: Agent 47. This one looks big and cheesy, which could be a lot of fun if it all comes together or a DTV level disaster if it doesn't. The key moment to this new footage presentation was the female lead (Hannah Ware) tied up to an airplane's engine and the Hitman (Rupert Friend) turning it on... trying to prove to her that she's got the Agent DNA in her or something and that she can get out in time to not get sucked into the engine. Nothing I've seen on this has blown me away, including this footage, but there's enough there to hope for the best.
-Victor Frankenstein. Speaking of hoping for the best... Many, I really want to pull for this one because I love the cast. James McAvoy stars as Victor Frankenstein and Daniel Radcliffe is his Igor (no word on if it's pronounced Eye-gore). They showed the birth of Frankenstein's Monster scene and it really has me torn. The performances were great. McAvoy perfectly conveyed the excited madness of Victor Frankestein and Radcliffe was a different kind of Igor... Scraggly haired, but not misshapen. He was begging for Victor to stop before it was too late. The actual production design looked cool. The lab was circular and open aired. However the effects and cinematography looked laughably bad. Like Van Helsing bad. And how many times are we going to see this story?
-Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. Holy God, make it stop! If the teaser is any indication, this movie is a spoof of the Hangover films. I'm hoping that's just a joke for CinemaCon because we're in Vegas. If it isn't then I guess Fox assumes there's a large crossover audience between the Hangover films and Alvin and the Chipmunks...
The most exciting 2016 releases were only listed with dates at the end of the presentation. Deadpool (February 12th, just in time for my birthday! How thoughtful!), X-Men: Age of Apocalypse (May 27th), Independence Day (June 24th), Gambit (October 7th), Assassin's Creed (December 21st), etc.
And that was that. Still not sure if I can worm my way into the Universal panel today, but if I can I'll make sure to report back on what's going on with those fools.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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