A short time ago the trailer for the new J.J. Abrams movie “SUPER 8″ finally came out online. It was a fairly hectic couples of days for me so I didn’t see it until about 2 days after it surfaced. During those two days I read a lot of tweets and facebook updates from people hailing it as one of the best (if not THE best) trailer they’ve seen this year. Obviously I was excited to see it.

So when I finally saw the “SUPER 8″ trailer and realized it was in reality a pretty modest and fairly generic monster/alien movie trailer that was “ok I guess”, my first thought was that I was watching the wrong trailer. Perhaps this was an older trailer that I had missed and this “amazing” new trailer that so many people seemed to be gushing over was still out there somewhere waiting for me to see it. But no… that was the right trailer.

Don’t misunderstand me, there was nothing wrong with the trailer for “SUPER 8″. I didn’t dislike it. But that being said, there was also nothing remarkable about it. It was, as I observed earlier, a fairly generic monster movie trailer. That doesn’t mean the movie won’t be fantastic, but the trailer itself was… for lack of a better word… mediocre.

This left me a little bit confused. Why were some people hailing this average trailer as “wonderful”, “fucking sweet”, “bloody perfect” (real quotes)? The only conclusion I could come to was that people were just excited about it because J.J. Abrams’ name was attached.

I decided to conduct a little survey. I put the following message up on my Twitter account to see what kind of responses I would get:

“Question: If the SUPER 8 trailer stayed EXACTLY the same, but said “from director Michael Bay”, would people still be saying it’s great?”

My hypothesis was that certain people were just so looking forward to what Abrams would put out next, that it was a foregone conclusion that they would revere the fist trailer as a masterpiece regardless of its true quality. I got a lot of responses. Some sort of avoided the question altogether like this one:

“Don’t be stupid, Bay can’t make anything worth watching”

Thankfully most of the responses I got were a little more thoughtful:

“Damn I don’t know dude. That’s a tough one.”

“Hard to say. I might have tuned out as soon as I saw Bay’s name”

“people certainly wouldn’t be giving the Cgi shots such a free pass”

“It’s possible. But the name is a part of the trailer so it’s kinda pointless to imagine it without it”

In the midst of all the responses, a few of there hit the nail on the head like this one:

“I think that’s the point. It’s exciting and intriguing *because* it’s Abrams”

So for the purposes of the rest of this post, I’m just going to proceed on the notion that the “SUPER 8″ trailer was ok, but got over praised for what it was because of the fact that J.J. Abrams is directing it. You may agree or disagree, but that certainly appears to be the case from my perspective.

THE REAL QUESTION

Now we get to the real question. Why is J.J. Abrams so revered? Why does his name get people so stirred up and excited over a trailer that isn’t really all that special? Has his body of feature film work really been so incredible that our automatic assumption is anything he does will be great, and that upon viewing something less than extraordinary (like the “SUPER 8″ trailer) we will still credit it as such simply because his angelic name is attached to it?

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: REVISIONIST HISTORY

I can’t remember what brought the discussion on, but I remember about four years ago I was at Comic Con and having dinner with about 8-9 online film bloggers and writers and the “Mission Impossible” franchise came up. The general consensus around that table was that MI:3 (the one directed by J.J. Abrams) was probably the best of the series so far, although it was still nothing remarkable or special. A few things were mentioned about the strengths and weaknesses of the film, and then we proceeded onto talking about something else.

It was an unremarkable discussion because what we talked about at that table was the commonly held consensus amongst most film fans at the time. MI:3 was a pretty good movie, and that’s about it. If you look back at the reviews for the film, RottenTomatoes shows that the movie got a 69% (meaning 69% of critics gave it a positive review and 31% gave it a negative review) which is not bad at all, but hardly mind blowing.

Here’s the interesting thing… in the past 12 months or so the way people (particularly J.J. Abrams fans) talk about MI:3 has begun to change. As the mythos of J.J. Abrams has inexplicably grown, so to has the mythos of past projects, like MI:3. Suddenly people are talking about that movie in terms that were NEVER used for it when it first came out (and before Abrams’ name grew to the level that it’s at now).

Here’s an example: Last week I was engaged in a discussion with some online writers on the topic of J.J. Abrams. One friend of mine (who I respect very much) wrote the following:

“…even back in 2006 you could see a master’s hands at work with Mission Impossible…”

“…you can’t deny that the action, the pacing and the tension were near perfectly crafted…”

“…I would put it [MI:3] in the top 10 films of the genre of that decade.”

Now, there is NOTHING wrong with having a high opinion of a movie. However, as I dug back a few years in his archives, I saw that this same friend gave MI:3 a 2 1/2 stars out of 5 when he did his first review of it. So basically he gave the film a 50% rating. Somewhere between the time he wrote that review and last week, it evolved into one of “the top 10 films of the genre of that decade”.

But lest it look like I’m picking on my friend, the fact of the matter is you see this sort of Mission Impossible 3 revisionist history going on everywhere. I’ve witnessed a fair share of tweets, facebook updates and conversations where MI:3 is now being talked about in much more glowing terms than it was originally or deserves. Now not everyone is calling it one of the best films of that decade, but there is undeniably a more positive tone in general to MI:3 discussions that there were 5 years ago.

And so the cycle is born. The J.J. Abrams name grows which in turn rewrites history and inflates the perception of MI:3, which in turn grows the name of J.J. Abrams which in turn rewrites history and inflates the perception of MI:3… and so on and so on.

J.J. IS THE HEIR TO SPIELBERG?

The J.J. Abrams euphoria grows quickly like a groundswell of hysteria and rapidly spins out of control. There are people out there who claim that J.J. Abrams should be considered one of the greatest directors in Hollywood… not only today… but of all time. Seriously.

In one online discussion I was a part of on Facebook, one person even went so far as to say Abrams is the heir to Steven Spielberg:

“Time will tell if he reaches Spielberg level. Though out of all the modern day directors, Abrams is most likely to reach that level.”

Not Christopher Nolan (who has directed MEMENTO, INSOMNIA, BATMAN BEGINS, THE DARK KNIGHT, INCEPTION, THE PRESTIGE).

Not Darren Aronofsky (who has directed THE WRESTLER, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, BLACK SWAN, THE FOUNTAIN)

Not the Coen Bros. (Directing films like TRUE GRIT, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, OH BROTHER WHERE ART THOU, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, FARGO)

Not Paul Thomas Anderson (with films like THERE WILL BE BLOOD, MAGNOLIA, BOOGIE NIGHTS)

Not David Fincher (directing THE SOCIAL NETWORK, FIGHT CLUB, SE7EN, THE GAME, PANIC ROOM, ZODIAC)

No, the true heir to Spielberg is J.J. Abrams who has directed the aforementioned MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3, 5 episodes of the ALIAS tv show, 2 episodes of LOST, 2 episodes of FELICITY, and STAR TREK. Apparently that’s all you need on your resume to be considered the next true Spielberg.

CONCLUSION

Look, I know there are some dim witted people out there who will read this and try to claim that I am “slamming” J.J. Abrams. I suppose you could say that if you don’t actually read what I’m saying. I like J.J. Abrams very much. I absolutely LOVED Star Trek which (in my opinion) deserved at least an Oscar nomination for best picture over THE BLIND SIDE and DISTRICT 9. He was one of the creative forces behind a couple of very good (at least for a while) TV shows that I watched religiously (especially ALIAS) and overall I really enjoy the style and feel he brings to his projects. Thus my purpose here is not to besmirch or slam Abrams whatsoever.

The questions I raise and observations I have surround how we (not J.J. Abrams) have prematurely inflated the mythos of J.J. Abrams to the point that we rewrite history on his past projects, exaggerate the quality of even a simple trailer if his hallowed name is attached to it and crown him the next Spielberg (after one great movie) which skyrocket our levels of expecations to unrealistic and frankly unfair levels. I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before people begin calling “ARMAGEDDON” a masterpiece of cinematic history since J.J. Abrams wrote the script.

Just a thought.

The release of the first “Transformers” movie back in 2007 was a huge event for me, not only because I’ve loved the Transformers since I was a kid (I collected just about every single toy they released and then even cut up their boxes that they came in to put up on my bedroom wall… it was COVERED with Transformer images… as you can imagine I didn’t have a lot of girls coming into my bedroom at that time), but I had been blogging and podcasting about it for years ever since the project had been officially announced.

Did the first film have its failings and shortcomings? Absolutely, no question about it. However for me, it hit all the notes that it needed to hit in order to be a positive experience at the movie theatre. For myself, it was probably the best time I had at the theatre all that year. Was it a great motion picture? Hell no, but it was as fun as I could hope it would be as a kid who grew up with Autobots battling evil Decepticons. Oh sure, I wished:

– There was more action
– Megatron had more screen time
– Starscream and Megatron had more than 1 annoyingly short conversation
– Rachael Taylor, Anthony Anderson and their tech crew had been left out of the movie
– More Transformers fighting each other
– Megan Fox could actually act
– There were a lot less “Shaky Cam”

All that is true, but seeing Optimus Prime transform for the first time on that dark street for Sam and Mikaela sent shivers down my spine and almost had a grown man in tears (yeah, I was that happy).

Fast forward now a few years to “Transformers 2″. I was extremely excited about the film since I hoped that not only would it recapture the fun and excitement of the first film, but also that it would be exponentially better by addressing some of the aforementioned glaring weaknesses of the original film.

Transformers 2 was nothing short of disastrous. A monumental disappointment that was unwatchable at best, and overtly offensive at its worst. I hated that movie. I hated it more and more each time I tried to give it another shot and watch it again. I tried to hold on to the few positive elements of the movie, but they faded more and more as time went on. Transformers 2 is garbage plain and simple.

So now here were are in 2011, a mere 6 months away from the release of the next film in the series, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”. If you read around the webshere you’ll see that the vast majority of pundits and bloggers are already proclaiming that T3 is going to be terrible (and who can blame them for thinking so?).

But here’s a surprise… as much as I detested “Transformers 2″ and thought it was one of the worst films of the year… I STILL HAVE HOPE FOR TRANSFORMERS 3!

You may understandably ask: “John, why the hell would you have any hope for this movie, especially considering how much the last one let you down”? That’s a fair question my friends… and here’s how I would respond:

WHY I STILL HAVE SOME HOPE FOR TRANSFORMERS 3

1) Michael Bay Listens To The Fans
Oh Bay might say he doesn’t listen, but trust me he does. As a matter of fact, when you go back and look at Transformers 2 again, you’ll see that a lot of the complaints that people had about the first Transformers movie (see my list above) were actually addressed in the second one. There was LESS shaky camera (still too much, but less), there was more Transformer centric action, there was more Megatron, there was more interaction between Megatron and Starscream, They got rid of Anthony Anderson and Rachael Taylor (unfortunately they added Sam’s worthless college roommate which was a complete waste of screen time).

You can see that even if he failed in 100 different areas, he did indeed try to address some of the main concerns coming from the fans after the first movie. He may not have done a great job at it, but you can see he tried and he listened. I believe that as stand-offish as he’s been regarding the criticism he’s received from Transformers 2, Michael Bay has listed to the universal rips and complaints about the project and will once again at least TRY to correct them. He did it before, he’ll do it again.

2) Top Notch Visuals
One thing that the Transformers film have always had going for them is the absolute best visual effects in the business. Returning for “Transformers 3″ is the best visual effects company in the world… Industrial Light and Magic. With big summer blockbuster movies great action and awe inspiring visual effects can cover up some other weaknesses for a lot of movie goers.

3) The Action Will Be Good
Regardless of any weaknesses Michael Bay has in his game, one can usually count on big explosions and bigger action. Bay does these about as well as anyone in the business today. When talking about a franchise like “The Transformers”, big healthy doses of giant robots beating the living crap out of each other while massive explosions go off in the process gets you more than half way there.

4) The T2 Experience
I think there has been a sense around film fans, pundits and Hollywood studios themselves that you can’t mess up a “Transformers” movie no matter what you do… that as long as Optimus Prime shows up and says some cool things and gets into a fight or two, fans will eat it up regardless of any other weakness the film may have. Well guess what… T2 proved that theory wrong. Die hard Transformers fans, like myself, hated the second film. Yes, you need to do all those assumed things… but it’s still a movie and as such NEEDS a GOOD story, good dialog, likable/compeling or at least interesting characters and a coherent development and progression of the plot. You can’t just throw those essential things away. Transformers 2 ignored all those things, and I’m hoping that the rejection the film got from film fans will have acted like a wake up call for Bay and Paramount as a whole.

Look, I’m certainly NOT saying that “Transformers 3″ will be a great movie, or even a good movie. I think we’ve been given a lot of proof that it’s a long shot. However, I still believe that with all the base building blocks the Transformers have, with the larger than life robotic characters and truly rich background mythology… with a director who at least listens to the fans and the support of the best visual effects company in the history of the business… with a director who does action just about as well as anyone… with all these things I have hope. Maybe not a lot of it… but hope nonetheless.

Until opening day I will hold out that hope (as stupid as that might make me). Until the final credits roll I will hold out that hope… or until the Autobot Twins show up on screen again, because at that point I just walk out.

What do you think? Do you hold out SOME sense of hope for Transformers 3 like I do, or are you completely convinced that it’s destined to suck a great and mighty suck? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Bah Humbug. As we draw close to the end of the year, I thought I would take this opportunity to share with all of you my list for the 10 worst films of 2010.

Now, I know there were a million small indie films that COULD be on this list, but for the purposes of this particular post I’m limiting the list to just those films that had a wide release.

Like anything else in movies, this list is completely subjective… but the horrible stench of these brutally awful films just had to be acknowledged. So now, because I hate you all just a little bit, here are the worst film of 2010.

#10 – THE BOUNTY HUNTER
I’m actually someone who can appreciate a cheesy romantic comedy once in a while, and I’m going to be completely honest I thought Gerard Butler’s last Rom-Com “THE UGLY TRUTH” was funnier than most people gave it credit for… but this movie just had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Poor Jennifer Aniston.

#9 – THE TOOTH FAIRY
As we roll into 2011 it looks like THE ROCK (Dwayne Johnson) is finally getting back to what he should have been doing this whole time… action films… we are still left with the awful taste of this ball of shit in our mouths. NEVER GO BACK ROCK… never go back. I totally understand the appeal to cash those big family film cheques… but it almost killed your career. Stick with action man.

#8 – MARMADUKE
This was one of those movies where everyone just knew it was going to completely suck long before the first trailer came out. Whoever gave the green light to this mess should be getting a pink slip in their stocking for Christmas. I mean seriously… if all of us knew from the moment we heard about this movie that it was going to be horrible… why couldn’t a highly paid movie exec?

#7 KILLERS
I’ve been saying for years that Ashton Kutcher is a completely waste of screen time in any film… but people just won’t listen to me and thus we keep getting “movies” like Killers. Domestically the film only made $47 million, so it’s not like he’s a draw. STOP PUTTING HIM IN MOVIES!

#6 – MACGRUBER
This is one of those movie that I actually had some hope for… and man did it ever fall flat. I watched it again this week just to make sure, because someone actually put this steaming pile of shit on their TOP 10 list. Nope, I kept count through the film and it only made me giggle 2 times. A mortal sin that no comedy is allowed to commit.

#5 – CLASH OF THE TITNAS
One of those movies that I thought was ripe for a remake and had a lot of potential, but just ended up being 2 hours of my life I wish I could get back. Sam Worthington continues to fail to impress with any performance he’s given so far (although you can see he has the tools to be a solid actor… I just haven’t seen him put it all together yet… I’m sure he will).

#4 – GROWN UPS
Oh Adam Sandler… why do you continue to disappoint us so? Your comedy has run dry, but you’ve shown a real gift for the dramatic and I really wish you would start doing more films like “REIGN OVER ME”. You’ve done some amazing comedy in the past, but either make yourself fresh again or PLEASE move on to drama, because you seem to be amazing at it.

#3 – VAMPIRES SUCK
I can’t remember when the last spoof movie was actually any good. Maybe HOT SHOTS PART DEUX. Ken Jeong… what the hell were you doing?!?!?! You’ve set yourself up as one of my absolute favorite comedic character actors in Hollywood… you make the funniest commercials and you’ve got a hit TV comedy. WHY THE HELL DID YOU AGREE TO DO THIS MOVIE?!?!?!

#2 – MACHETE
This film was probably one of my most anticipated movies of 2010 and the first 5 minutes made me think I was going to get everything I was hoping for. Sadly, after the first 5 minutes the film quickly slopes into a horrendously unfunny and painful political propaganda movie… such horrible propaganda that it almost made me switch to the other side.

#1 – WHEN IN ROME
The funny thing here is that I actually think Josh Duhamel could be a great romantic comedy lead and we all love sarah Marshall… ummm… I mean Kristen Bell… but man… this movie almost felt like they were intentionally TRYING to make the absolute worst movie that they could. Congratulations… you succeeded.

So there you have it. Leave your thoughts… but remember, if you tell me a film that I should have put on this list you’ve also got to tell me which of these films was TOO GOOD to be on the list in its place..

I’ll admit right up front that I was never all that excited to begin with when it was announced that “The Walking Dead” was going to be developed into a television show. Oh sure, it was being produced and written by one of my all time favorite filmmakers, Frank Darabont, but it was still a show about Zombies… and quite frankly I’ve begun to get a little bored with movies about Zombies.

I mean come on… they’re all basically the exact same story told over and over and over again. Some kind of outbreak… don’t get bit… people turn into Zombies… destroy the brain… run for your life… hold up somewhere… yadda yadda yadda.

Still, there were a number of reasons why I was still going to give the show a shot:

1) I’ve had a lot of fun with some Zombie films in the past.

2) Although I’ve never read the graphic novel, I know some people who have and loved it.

3) Like I mentioned above, Frank Darabont is one of the main creative forces behind it.

I missed the first couple of episodes, so I got caught up using On Demand and watched 3 in a row one afternoon… and although I didn’t see anything to dislike about it, I was left feeling completely underwhelmed. It really was just everything I was (unfortunately) expecting. Guy wakes up in a hospital only to discover the world has been overrun by Zombies (haven’t we seen that already?).

I kept waiting for something to come along that would give “The Walking Dead” some sort of unique element to the standard Zombie story line… but it never materialized.

Still… it wasn’t awful… so I decided to hang in there with it and continue watching to see where it went.

In the entire first season (only 6 episodes) there was only 1 significant plot development… the cop found the group and his wife and son. Oh sure, lots of THINGS happened here and there, but in terms of significant events that marked a progression in the story, that was it.

Which leads us to the season finale and ultimately why I’m done with “The Walking Dead”.

Seasons for a television show are much like chapters in the overall story. One chapter ends, another begins. When our rag tag group of survivors finally make it to the CDC, I got some hope for the show because I thought it would mark a turning point in the story… that maybe we would FINALLY see a second significant plot development. It was the season finale… so certainly there must be some sort of closure and resolution to major themes in the first seasons while opening up the door for further ones going into season two right? RIGHT?

But instead of any resolutions, instead of giving us major developments in existing sub-plots, instead of introducing (in mythology terms) the “quest” for season two… we’re left with nothing.

The CDC blows up, leaving our characters no further ahead… no further behind… no more or less hope… no goals… no objectives… no new obstacles in their way… no conclusion to any of the side stories or significant developments to them (yeah I get it, the best friend still loves the cop’s wife, i get it, you can stop hitting me over the head with it).

Essentially what this means is that when season 2 will start with our survivors just being in the exact same predicament that they were in all of season 1… just in a different physical place.

I wasn’t excited for “The Walking Dead” and I certainly wasn’t all that impressed by the first few episodes, but I hung in there waiting for something… anything to happen. Something to show me it was different. Something to show me it could evolve into a real narrative. Something that showed me it would be worth going along for the ride. None of that materialized. And now with the sorrowful disappointment of the directionless ending to the first season, I’m officially dinging he bell and asking “The Walking Dead” bus to let me off at the next stop. I’m done.