And you shall know us by the trailers of the dead...

As much as I'd love to spend the entirety of my free time ragging on DC and the apparent competition they're running to see who can edit one of their movies the worst, even I have to take the foot off the pedal sometimes. Stop and smell the roses. Or more accurately in this case stop and watch a few trailers.

Trailers are one of the best bits about going to the cinema. It gives you that extra bit of time to finish your Minstrels, chug down half your preposterously sized drink and try to calculate how long it'll be before you need to pee. Usually not long enough. So, without further ado...

Wonder Woman

You didn't genuinely think I could go for more than about two minutes without hating on DC did you? Rookie error. Evidently, they've decided to go down the Captain America route and crack out the old WWII era origin for Wonder Woman and it all looks fairly generic action movie. DC just seem intent on being dark and edgy and gritty and frankly it's dull. Even when the do try to inject a little humour it's painful. The secretary schtick at the end is the lamest, laziest script writing bullshit ever though; least accurate description of that job role ever purely to set up a feminism gag. You know what? We get it. Wonder Woman is a Strong Female Character. Ripley never needed signposting, Furiosa didn't need signposting; credit us with a little intelligence. Stop telling us you wrote a Strong Female Character and just write one. She's still basically only wearing a corset and mini-skirt, so I guess equality never made it to the design department. They also seem to be touting her origin story after she already saved the day in B vs S; DoJ and only just before she plays a major part in Justice League. Messy.

Kong: Skull Island

After the first trailer I was really looking forward to this and I still sort of am, but the new trailer does what too many do nowadays and gives way too much away. Kong himself looks pretty good, but it would have been nice to get his reveal in the movie, not here. I mean, I know what a gorilla looks like but still. The first trailer had a cool Apocalypse Now vibe to it, but the second one is sort of overshadowed by John C Reilly playing Captain Birdseye who, having seen too much at sea and wrestling with unsanitary working conditions at his fish finger factories has now settled with the indigenous people for some vital plot exposition and zingy one liners. I'm not sure how it relates to Peter Jackson's King Kong if at all, because it seems to be a prequel set about 20 years afterwards, so I guess reboot? That and the weird dinosaur things make it look more like Riddick set in 'Nam, minus the baldie. Actually that doesn't sound so bad when I say it out loud, I'm in. 

Beauty and the Beast.

Ah, Disney. The relentless money-making machine that is The House of Mouse. Owners of the Marvel and Star Wars franchises and Lord do they know how to merchandise the shit of something. They also, it appears, have now decided to re-release their entire back catalogue of animated movies with a slew of slightly more realistically animated movies. I'll admit that the Jungle Book was pretty decent fun and looked fantastic. I can't wait for the Lion King; seeing as there isn't a single human being in the whole damn film, it absolutely will be the dictionary definition of pointless. This looks like it's going to be almost shot-for-shot and just like Kong the first trailer was nice and mysterious, the latest one has just about as much subtlety as you'd expect from a company who care more about action figure sales than spoilers. I will concede that Luke Evans does fit the bill as Gaston, but the Beast looks more like an uncommonly hirsute boy band member than a raging, atavistic narcissist in need of a lesson in humility. I think it's the teeth; pointy little baby fangs that don't look like they'd pierce the wrapper on a Penguin bar. Abject.

Ghost in the Shell

I often find myself pondering the turgid futility of raging against remakes and reboots and rehashes; fittingly the race to produce the most pointless live action remake of an anime classic now has a winner. For years people have been so worried that Akira was going to get the Hollywood whitewash treatment (Zac Efron? Really? Go home Hollywood, you're drunk) that Ghost in the Shell sort of slipped under the radar. To paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm: They were so concerned with whether or not the could, they didn't stop to think if they should. It's the cinematic equivalent of that last minute, panic-stricken Halloween moment where you sling a white bed sheet over yourself and hope it makes you look like a ghost, not like a complete tool. Just in case you ever wondered, you will invariably look like a tool and fit right in with all the other tools. Good for you. Nothing wrong with the cast per se other than the glaringly obvious lack of anyone from Japan being anything other than cannon fodder. Oh wait, the weird robot geisha are Japanese looking, does that count? I'm not sure how they thought people would be OK with it, but honestly they probably didn't even think. It looks pretty enough, but the original is still prettier by a country mile. It's effectively the Black Widow standalone movie everyone seems to be desperate for, so I guess there's that.

The thing is I'll probably end up watching all of these and at least one of them is bound to hack me off. In my head I'll be on here launching a heroic tirade about the decline of cinema and be held up as a folk hero. I'll actually just be scowling and grumbling quietly in a darkened room full of strangers about how I just forked out £15 to watch this shit. Odds on that one being Wonder Woman?