Plenty of people grumble about trailers not delivering the movie they promise, but only one man — New Zealander J. Congdon — got Paramount Pictures to refund the cost of his Jack Reacher ticket, because the movie didn’t include the badass cliff explosion that got him to spend money on a Tom Cruise movie in the first place. In fairness to Paramount, this kind of thing happens all the time; trailers are often cut months before the picture itself is finalized, leading to all sorts of shots, jokes, and scenes that don’t show up in the finished product. It’s all part of the tricky world of film advertising, where the goal is to lure you into the theater, and not necessarily to reflect the tone, story, or (certainly) quality of the film in question. Trailer cutting is kind of an art form unto itself, which is why we so often see trailers that get us all in a tizzy, only to wander out of the movie they’re selling in a befuddled and disappointed stupor. After the jump, we look back at ten movies that were far better in two-minute form. … Read More
Jack Reacher
On Sandy Hook, Movie Violence, and 'Jack Reacher'
Any time there’s a senseless, random mass shooting, the responses come in waves — and senseless, random mass shootings have become so common that you can all but set your watch by those responses anymore. First, there’s shock. Then, there’s the insistence that “now is not the time” to talk about guns, or to “politicize a tragedy.” And then the anti-gun people either wait a while or don’t, and start talking about gun control, and then the pro-gun people start talking about arming everyone, and comparing outlawing guns to outlawing cars and spoons and fertilizer. And then the blaming starts: of parents, of a deficient mental health system, even (this time) the lack of men around. Alex Jones will lead the charge of tinfoil hat-sporting nutjobs claiming that the whole thing was a government operation enabling them to “come git our guns.” And, at some point in the midst of all that, it will be time to blame pop culture. … Read More
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