'Superman' Trailer Arrives Amid (Refreshingly) Lowered Expectations
Moreover, amid 'Minecraft,' 'Wonka' and 'Dune,' Warner Bros. has been on a roll in terms of the whole "make old properties exciting for younger audiences" thing.
As promised, we’ve got a second full-fledged trailer for James Gunn’s Superman. Frankly, even as someone who took significant issue with the… “all sizzle, no steak” CinemaCon presentation—partially because it was preceded by one of the most boring, overlong, ill-prepared, and empty-calorie Q&A sessions I’ve ever sat through—it’s not a terrible thing that WBD waited until the heart of the early summer movie season to drop this second “new” trailer. After all, nearly two months after CinemaCon, with A Minecraft Movie racing toward $950 million worldwide and Sinners passing with $220 million domestic, and even Final Destination: Bloodlines looking like a good-enough opener, the do-or-die narrative for this Man of Steel movie has been downgraded to DEFCON 4. I mean this as a compliment, but the stakes for this big-budget franchise (re)launcher have never been lower.
A brief digression, but both Dark Knight sequels had their teaser trailers released in mid-December (timed with, respectively, I Am Legend in 2007 and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in 2011) and the full trailers at the start of the summer season in late April/early May (timed to, ironically, Iron Man in 2008 and The Avengers in 2012). Even that banger final Man of Steel trailer dropped just before Iron Man 3 in 2013. This trailer came out in mid-May primarily due to next weekend’s presumed Memorial Day weekend juggernauts. Whether or not this trailer will play with A) Final Destination: Bloodlines and/or B) 70MM Imax showings of Sinners, the intent is to showcase the goods to the presumably packed crowds turning up for Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning and Lilo & Stitch.
Anyway, what I wrote in mid-April is now doubly, if not triply, true in mid-May. Sure, the sky-high performance of A Minecraft Movie (which is about to pass Wonder Woman to become WB’s fourth-biggest unadjusted domestic earner behind Barbie, Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises) made Superman less of an all-or-nothing release. And then the jaw-dropping performance of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (which might pass the WB holy original trinity of Gravity, The Hangover and Inception domestically) makes the commercial and consumer reception of yet another Superman reboot even less essential. Again, that’s entirely “thing good,” since few things have made me more annoyed (at least in the realm of movie “stuff”) than the extent to which the ups and downs of the 2010s DC Comics flicks overshadowed nearly 15 years of otherwise aspirational franchise/tentpole successes.