Ted's trailer reactions: Dawn of War 3 cinematic trailer (2016)

Image source: http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/03/warhammer-40000-dawn-of-war-iii-announced-with-a-rain-of-corpses/

For the last 7 years, my favourite game has undoubtedly been the 2009 real-time-strategy game release Dawn of War II, a highly ordained sequel to the massively popular 2004 RTS Dawn of War and both based off of the in-depth and much-loved Warhammer 40,000 franchise.  I used to play DoW 2 daily and still partake in it regularly, it truly is a wonderful experience for someone who grew up loving the shit out of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and while I loved the original 2004 game I tend to prefer the 2009 sequel for its more company-level tactical-based combat with more precise actions that came out of THQ and Relic Entertainment's previous works on the 2006 World War 2-set RTS Company of Heroes.  This doesn't mean that the original 2004 game is bad at all, its really just down to personal taste and preference.

Regardless, this has been one of my favourite franchises in video games over the years and aside from the Dawn of War games, the peeps at Warhammer 40,000's Games Workshop have ok'd the making of some other great titles like the 3rd-person shooter Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (2011) or the late 1990s Space Hulk games.  Therefore, I was a bit perplexed when the only significant releases after the last Dawn of War 2 expansion pack Retribution (2011) were crappy lane-defence games produced by third-rate driving game developers.  So Imagine my joy and nostalgic inner-fanboy going mental with convulsions when I saw and heard about the recent release for a cinematic announcement trailer for Dawn of War 3.

YouTube link for the cinematic trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN8geCTlZOo

Now there are some problems with this trailer which I feel should only be right to go through before getting into why I'm so excited by this recent announcement.  First and most apparent is the fact that a cinematic trailer only really gives you some idea about the story of a game and never really reveals anything about the gameplay and thus there really isn't too much to know about the game in this trailer aside from what races from the Warhammer 40,000 universe will be in the game when it comes out.  I know this comes without saying as many have stated before about cinematic trailers, really I think one could make a solid argument from this point that cinematic trailers are pointless.  However, it does make for an interesting marketing tactic that will undoubtedly raise up buzz for the upcoming release and increase clicks on gaming websites like Gamespot or Joystick.  Therefore, it makes reasonable practical sense to release a cinematic trailer but I do feel a bit irritated by the fact that there is little to really know about the game from the simple fact that we haven't seen much of either the story or gameplay in Dawn of War 3 judging from this cinematic trailer.

The second major concern I have about this trailer is more of a subjective and personal one but I do think it is worth taking up to some extent.  One thing that has defined the best RTS titles over the years is an abundance of several and varied armies and/or races to play with throughout the game.  This in particular has been something prevalent with the previous two Dawn of War games with the original game having 8 races to pick from after its third and final expansion pack Soulstorm (2008) marking it out as a highly diverse and varied title with many gameplay styles.  Therefore, I was a bit pissed off that judging from what I've seen in the cinematic trailer for Dawn of War 3, only 3 races at first seem to be the eldar, orks and Imperial space marines and that unlike the first two games, the first iteration of this one will not start off with at least four races.  I suppose this game has been one in the making for a long time but I would hope that they would at least stick true to the inherent variety of the franchise up to this point.  It also galls me that an RTS in this day and age would include such a small start to its content but to be fair, the cinematic trailer really doesn't reveal too much about the gameplay which could end up covering up for all this and ensure that this becomes a moot point.

The only other real major concerns I have around the trailer have come out of official statements made by Relic and Game Workshop in the wake of the trailer as more and more information has filtered out.  For one, despite the fact that the companies have not revealed the release date of Dawn of War 3 there is a possibility that it may be revealed in the next several months but I am hoping the date will be sometime before late 2017.  Look, I can be patient but I really do not want to be kept long for this.  Is this down to fanboyism?  Yeah, probably but I really can't help it.  The last main concern I have is that the single-player campaign is apparently going to be an interwoven story in a gameplay sense with each race generally playing through the same campaign.  Now if they do what was done in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade (2006, yeah, 2006 was a great year for RTS titles) and have all the races in the game play through the campaign but play with their own specific narratives then I won't really mind but considering the sheer focus on story that was so prevalent in DoW2 it does strike me with a bit of concern that such a centralised story may not come into play as much as it has done in the previous games.  I could be getting overly-worried about this and like I said above, the gameplay could easily make up for this in an abundance of enjoyment and good design but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

So what is there good about this?  Everything else.  No really.  Much like a Sainsbury's sausage, onion gravy and mash potato ready meal served with some beans and peas and a can of Stella Artois after coming home from an 8 hour shift as a kitchen porter (something I have experience of believe me), I'm more than willing to accept the nourishment and good points of this trailer over any of the misgivings I have about it.  Do these misgivings play into my opinions about the upcoming release?  Of course and they never will stop doing so until I actually play the game but I really can't deny my own nostalgic joy about the announcement of DoW3's upcoming release.  Sure I am being bias about this but I really can't help it too much.  At the very least I can tell you I am just giving my honest opinion on this trailer and the issues surrounding it and that's all I can really do in this situation.  Sorry if I am not objective enough for your liking here as I may have been with my last trailer reaction but its just the way your uncle Ted operates.  At the very least I can say that this title is going to get my support, as bias as that support may be.

So as always, I hope you lovelies have had as much fun and informative nourishment from this blog as much as I have had researching, editing and writing it and until next time I wish you all best wishes and remember to have fun, stay safe, don't do anything I wouldn't do and I'll be seeing you all on the battlefield!

Ted's trailer reactions: Ghostbusters (2016) first trailer

Ok so considering that the last couple of news reviews I did were a bit dark I think it might be about time that we have a look at something with a little less intimidating and haunting implications.  Well...not so much in a qualitive sense in this case at least.

I'm gathering that you all saw the first trailer for the new all-female-main-cast Ghostbusters reboot and much like myself saw many people either turning into a whirlwind of joy and exclamations of diversity and others hanging their heads in disillusionment and disgust.  Now while diversity and equality of opportunity are good things in my eyes, the fact that this new Ghostbusters film has a main female cast is irrelevant to me in terms of the qualitive value of the films' trailer itself.  The reason as to why I am saying this is because I hated this trailer not because of the fact that the main four characters are women which I really don't have any problem with, the main reason as to why I am bringing this up is that the trailer itself is fucking dreadful.

Link for the first Ghostbusters reboot trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ugHP-yZXw

Image source: http://teaser-trailer.com/movie/ghostbusters-3/

Now before I rip into this travesty of a trailer let me at least try to accentuate some of the pros that I found in the trailer.

Firstly, some people have been saying that the effects are pretty shitty and while they aren't really anything spectacular they are still decent enough by the looks of it and at least seem allot better than any shit we saw in Gods of Egypt (2016) or that slew of Hercules films released in 2014.

Secondly, Slimer looks marvellous in this trailer so I have no doubt that the ghost designs of both old and new ones will at least be solidly competent and nice to look at.

Thirdly, the costumes and designs of the new Ghostbusters car are all superb so chances are that the visual designs on both the special effects and the actors and actresses themselves will be superb.

Aaaaaaand that's it...no really.  That's all that I could find good about the trailer and even then I really had to stretch my expectations and assessment of the trailer to be as humanely objective as possible but I really couldn't.  As mentioned above I only thought that the special effects were good and not superb or even great and even with that point I had to be really generous .

Image source: http://screenrant.com/ghostbusters-reboot-casting-release-date-2016/

There's little I can actually compliment about this trailer because from the first musical tone I just wanted to shrivel up with copies of the original Ghostbusters and a cuddly toy of the stay puff giant man.  The music, while certainly not the worst thing about the trailer, is certainly as generic as it gets in terms of modern, post-2010 big blockbuster trailer music riffs as it repeatedly exclaims the same riff as seen in trailers such as Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013), Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) or London has Fallen (2016) (still can't believe that last one is an actual movie and not just a joke).  Even when snippets of the original theme are played throughout the trailer in order to cynically exploit the nostalgia of the franchise's old-school fans they end up being drowned out by generic-as-fuck pseudo-techno remixing and thus lose almost all nostalgic value.  However, as I said, the music is certainly not the biggest problem that this trailer has.

Image source: http://firstklassbreakfast.com/ghostbusters-3-will-star-all-female-cast/

The worst part of the trailer for me without a doubt was a dual mixture of both the comedy and the casting.

Comedy is of course a hard thing to criticise however as it is virtually entirely subjective and what I may find funny might be completely unfunny to you or anyone else for that matter.  Therefore I implore you all to take this into account when I say that I thought that the comedy in this trailer was truly horrendous.  To be honest, someone watching my reaction when I first saw the trailer could've probably seen that to be quite obvious as I didn't laugh, crack a smile or even chuckle once throughout the entirety of the 2 minute and 37 second pile of pig shite that was this film's trailer. 

Not one of the comedic moments stuck in my head unlike the timeless comedic tones of the original 1984 film which gelled all or at least most of the jokes together with a seamless mixture of top-notch writing and chemistry between Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis (may he rest in peace in comedy heaven) and the mayor of cool town-upon-Tyne Ernie Hudson.  I never got that same level of chemistry from this one trailer or the same level of comedic gelling and smooth humour that was prevalent in the 1984 original and even the 1989 sequel (albeit to a considerably lesser degree than the 1984 original).  I could go into length about this but I'd be here all day so I'll summarise this all up by recommending you see what I mean by looking at the trailer and keeping in mind that the first joke in this reboot of one of the greatest comedy franchises of all time is a projectile puke joke...ARE...YOU...FUCKING...9!?!?!?!.

Ok ok, calm down Ted, they can't hurt you.  Well the sheer shittyness of the comedy could.  And aside from the seemingly lacklustre writing and awful comedy on show I can easily attest that the other main reason for this not to mention the other main problem about the trailer itself is the casting.  Much like with the pros of the trailer I feel like I'll have to go through the main actresses step by step to give my tuppence on why I think the casting in this film looks about as useful as a paintball gun during the battle of Narvik.

Main actress 1: Kristen Wig

Ms Wig is probably the best one out of the four main actresses to address first because while she definitely seems to be putting in the least comedic and acting effort in the trailer, she is also the least aggravating.  Throughout the trailer I expected Wig to exemplify the same snappy, comedic wit as shown in Bridesmaids (2011) or The Loony Tunes Show (2011-2013) but she seems inexplicably bored throughout the trailer and is undoubtedly going to be the main core of the team in the film which I'm not sure I feel about.

On one hand she is a great comedic actress with a huge amount of experience and has been in many great comedic shows and films but on the other hand she doesn't seem to bring her A-game into this trailer and while the film might actually accentuate her talents to a greater degree than the trailer does, I'm not going to hold out for too much.  However, I do hope Wig's performance is allot more fleshed out than it appears in the trailer for sure.

Main actress 2: Melissa McCarthy

Oh McCarthy what happened to you?  Around the early 2010's with films like Bridesmaids (2011) and This Is 40 (2012) it seemed like you had revived your career from the sludgy slump that it had fallen into in the mid-2000s and you were set to trail-blaze the scene of female comedic acting for the next several years, fast-forward half a decade and you're turning up in drivel like The Heat (2013) and Tammy (2014) which make no use of your once-great talent and now you're in one of the worst-looking reboots in the better part of 4-5 years?  (The last one being the 2012 reboot of Spider-Man (2001-07)).

I cringed every time McCarthy was on screen in this trailer as she smarmed her way through her lines and showed no genuine comedic charisma or accurate comedic timing in order to make her jokes truly stick.  Instead she seems to have gone to the other end of the comedic spectrum in this trailer to Wig's performance in that I thought she seemed to be trying WAY too hard to be funny.  As a result, every time McCarthy was on screen in this trailer I wanted to jam shattered DVD's of Ghostbusters II (1989) into my eyes.

Main actress 3: Kate McKinnon

Ok, I'll be perfectly honest, I never heard of McKinnon before the casting of the Ghostbusters reboot was announced but supposedly she has risen to moderate comedic prominence after reasonably successful stints on shows like Saturday Night Live (1975-present), Family Guy (1999-present) and The Simpsons (1989-present).  Therefore, I shan't be too harsh on Ms McKinnon by telling her that she doesn't have enough experience for as big a project as this reboot.  Instead I'll just say that she doesn't have enough what with only acting in bit parts on small comedy shows and shorts since 2008 and leave it at that.

The main reason as to why I think that McKinnon is poorly suited to this Ghostbusters reboot is that her character is about as cynically designed for a film with underpinnings of female empowerment as you can get.  Again, to reiterate as mentioned earlier, I have no problem with women making it big in comedy or acting and some of my favourite film characters of all time are women.  However, McKinnon's trying-way-too-hard-to-be-edgy gimmick of having flared hair (which she admittedly looks hot wearing), licking her guns (pretty unhygienic to be honest), trendy clothes and snarky attitude comes off as really forced.  In all fairness, the edgy, bubble-gum popper with a penchant for short hair and blasting motherfuckers kneecaps off has been done very well with female characters before but there seemed to be no comedic substance or reason for showing McKinnon's character off like this in the trailer and as a result it just came off as forced and without any real heart or meaning.


Main actress 4: Leslie Jones

Anything that I said about the cynical design of McKinnon's character in the trailer goes double for the mess that was shown of Jones' character in the trailer.  I don't really think the sub-standard nature of the 'sassy big black woman' stereotype is really as prevalent in modern media as some make it out to be as I haven't seen this trope come about too often as of the last few years in pop-culture and media.  Even still, it couldn't be more obvious in the Ghostbusters reboot trailer that Jones admittedly meagre comedic talent is totally wasted for a cheap and insultingly lazy stereotype that isn't even done well in the trailer and seems to have just been made the core aspect of her character out of sheer ineptitude and lazy writing.

This makes me all the sadder that Jone's character is supposed to be the daughter of Ernie Hudson's character from the original 1984 flick in that her own character is highly unlikeable and unfunny from the trailer whereas Hudson couldn't've been cooler if he'd worn the essence of Bruce Campbell while wearing the suit John Connery wears in his first scene in Dr.No (1962).  It just doesn't fit that a character this stereotyped and lazy could be the daughter of such a respectable, cool, suave and badass character as Winston Zeddmore.  But alas, it does not bode well when this is truly the case.  Alas poor Ghostbusters, I knew them well.

Image source: http://www.sagoma.com/ghostbusters-ritorna-nel-2016/

The worst thing about this trailer is however isn't really anything in the trailer itself but, as far as I could see it, the exclamations of many people across the internet that the film is somehow a grand empowerment of female acting and comedic talent when the trailer really just dives back on lazy female acting and comedic stereotypes with little-to-no originality or creative heart.  This is probably the saddest thing about the trailer for me aside from the sheer lack of comedic quality and timing.  The profile of women in comedic roles has gotten immeasurably better since the late-1990s as far as I'm concerned and thus there is no shortage of female comedic acting talent in this modern age of Hollywood and comedy. 

Therefore, while I'll be certainly willing to give this Ghostbusters reboot a chance and am more than willing to admit myself if I am proving wrong (although that seems unlikely after seeing this trailer) but I have to ask myself one thing; if the women of the main cast have all been in better stuff and considering what I've already seen about this upcoming film, how likely is it that I will even be able to crack a smile?

Sorry if this one was a bit angry but hey, if the film really does seem good or interesting to you, don't let me stop you lot so until next time, enjoy whatever you're watching, take care, don't do anything I wouldn't do and I'll see you lot next time!


My gaming YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHmq7KX4Qc46VGhYzWqQfOg