If there’s one thing haphazardly selecting a team allegiance and doggedly supporting them for three hours a year does for me, it’s heightened my ability to boil absolutely everything into the philosophies “good” or “bad.” Shampoo scents, breeds of dogs, that stupid team that isn’t my team; you name it, I enjoy telling people whether I think it sucks or not, and I owe it all to the Super Bowl’s ability to work me into Jeremy Shockey levels of pomposity.
But if there’s one thing I enjoy more than pretending to care about football, it’s watching the lineup of Super Bowl advertisements that compete for one-upmanship year after year. And look, there are some new trailers scattered among them! Do you think I should tell people what I think about them?
“Prince of Persia:
The Sands of Time”
The Good: The near-universal critical panning and box-office failure of video game franchises at the movies has preemptively stacked the deck against “Prince of Persia,” which is based off a video game franchise of the same name. But marketing the film as a swashbuckling but lighthearted amusement park ride is probably the best angle for a franchise whose mythology is difficult to take seriously in the first place.
The Bad: With “Prince of Persia,” Disney apparently seeks to rectify the history books’ long-standing assertion that ancient Persia wasn’t populated entirely by good-looking white people.
“Robin Hood”
The Good: Robin Hood could use a facelift, and the climate for reboots is as strong as ever. Errol Flynn’s dashing but non-threatening portrayal of Sherwood’s original Man in Green is classic and has set the mold for all future Hoods to follow, sure, but it probably isn’t as marketable as it once was. A dark reboot, this time set during the Crusades before the folk hero’s adventures in Sherwood, could potentially reconnect the character to a new generation of viewers.
The Bad: Kevin Costner thought the same thing, and we all remember how that turned out. Or, to put it more accurately, we don’t. Nobody likes Kevin Costner.
“Alice in Wonderland”
The Good: Johnny Depp is doing stuff again! Come quick! Bring money!
The Bad: Tim Burton knows his fan base a little too well to take a creative risk, and for all of the loony art design on display, his vision of Wonderland appears safe, dull and expected. An all-new story seeks to focus on narrative drive, which could distance the film from the meandering daffiness that has endeared Lewis Carroll’s works to readers worldwide. An angsty tie-in soundtrack boasting songs from Avril Lavigne and Metro Station suggest that this will be less “Alice: Part 2” and more “Hot Topic: The Motion Picture.”
“The Last Airbender”
The Good: Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, this live-action installment of Nickelodeon’s widely-beloved animated series “Avatar” could have the right stuff to win big across a wide demographic range. I mostly know this because I watch the show when nobody is around to make fun of me.
The Bad: Shyamalan’s time as cinema’s golden boy has long since passed. A string of flops, topping off with 2008’s pulse-less “The Happening,” have wounded the once-hot young auteur, and many of those lashings would’ve been avoidable if someone had just stopped letting him write. But having penned the script to “The Last Airbender,” Shyamalan has directed all critical crosshairs squarely on him yet again.
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