"Monsters vs. Aliens" Trailer Released

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So, after being leaked a few days ago, Dreamworks has just released the first official trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens, an extremely high budget animated film that, as best as I can tell, delivers what it promises. In case you haven’t been following its production history, this movie is a pretty big deal. It’s the first animated film rendered directly into 3D, making it the first truly 3D animated film. It’s also phenomenally expensive, resulting in higher ticket prices (that’s right, you’ll have to pay more to see this movie in theaters than you already paid to see Eagle Eye). I hate to be a naysayer, but I think that this is going to humongous fumble for Dreamworks, and I’ll tell you why.

1) The voice cast includes Hugh Laurie, Stephen Colbert, Reese Witherspoon, Rainn Wilson, and Kiefer Sutherland, which makes me wonder exactly who this movie is being marketed to. Certainly, that’s a huge draw for the teenager-twenty-thirty-something crowd familiar with all of those respective television shows, but is it really going to do anything for the kids that this movie will need to go into the black? Furthermore, is it going to attract the people who would go see it for those people? Higher ticket prices aren’t going to seem like a winning proposition with this economy next March, and the fact that the trailer plays like a toy commercial won’t help draw the ‘hip’ crowd.

2) Nearly everything I’ve read about this film has referred to it as a throwback to 50s sci-fi films. When was the last time that a major big budget Hollywood film did that? O yeah. Mars Attacks. When was the last time it happened successfully? Let me get back to you on that. The lesson that Hollywood never seems to learn is that mainstream audiences aren’t as enamored with the past as they seem to assume (witness the outright failures of The Rocketeer and The Shadow, and the disappointing returns of King Kong and Superman Returns). If they try to modernize the style for today’s kids, then may God have mercy on all our souls.

3) This is more speculation on my part, but it seems that Dreamworks is swimming against the tide of history. Higher ticket prices? Walt Disney did that sort of thing to promote Fantasia over sixty years ago. Like it or not, the trend overwhelmingly seems to be cheaper, quicker, and produced by amateurs (how many hours of youtube videos have you watched compared to time spent in the theater?), or to simply download the film illegally or wait until DVD. The mindset seems to be that this is going to be an event, and that we’ll all be whipped into an excited fervor by the release of this movie. Heck, people don’t even dress up to go out to restaurants anymore.

Monsters vs. Aliens will be released March 29, 2008.

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