Every year during Comic-Con in San Diego, film studios take the opportunity to showcase their upcoming movies to a rabid audience. We’ve round up the five best film trailers from the exhibition in this article, in no particular order.
Wonder Woman
After the hot mess that was Batman v Superman, DC Comics is on a really thin thread now, especially if it aims to usurp Marvel. However, based on the strength of this trailer, Wonder Woman looks especially promising. The fact that the film is directed by American female director Patty Jenkins, the same person behind the amazing Monster, gives us hope that this will be a nuanced action film with solid scriptwriting. And Hollywood needs a strong main female character badly. Wonder Woman might just be it.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
“Holy smokes,” was our reaction after we watched this trailer. Featuring Guy Ritchie’s razor sharp writing and dynamic style of filmmaking (check out the opening scenes in the trailer), King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is reminiscent of Ritchie’s gangster films such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, except set in medieval England, and featuring giant elephants and magic. We reckon the latter is Merlin’s doing.
Justice League
While we’re not exactly sure about Batman’s sudden turn as a wise-cracking vigilante, Justice League looks really, really promising, based on this trailer. There doesn’t seem to be any miscasting (we’re looking at you Jesse Eisenberg pretending to be Lex Luthor) and Zack Snyder seems to have toned down on the flashy theatrics. But Batman v Superman also had promising trailers so we’re keeping our expectations as low as possible. Interestingly there is no footage of Superman so make of that as you will.
Kong: Skull Island
In Hollywood’s tradition of rebooting a franchise instead of coming up with new ideas, King Kong – who has already appeared seven times on the golden screen prior to this film – is coming back and this time he’s bigger, taller and apparently, very pissed off. But the producers of Kong: Skull Island are also the people behind the decent 2014 Godzilla film and have already made plans for a 2020 super-fight between King Kong and Godzilla, so this latest entry into the franchise should be good.
The Lego Batman Movie
The best character in 2014’s The Lego Movie returns in his own film and we’re secretly looking forward to it. If you haven’t caught the show we highly recommend that you watch it. It was surprisingly fun, with elements that appealed to both children and adults, and we’re hoping that The Lego Batman Movie will be more of the same. The line “The first lesson is: life doesn’t give you seatbelts!” is already a winner in our book.