Reboots and Spy-Rings.

With summer coming ever earlier — are we really only two weeks away from Avengers: Age of Ultron? — the trailer machine is in overdrive of late. Among them…

Zack Snyder pours on the grimdark (and, as per 300 and Watchmen) lifts liberally from the visual iconography of The Dark Knight Returns) in the first offical teaser for Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Eh…I’ll definitely see it, but this seems to have the same tonal problems as Man of Steel. Not really one for the brooding demigod Superman — he should be more like how Chris Evans is playing Captain America over at Marvel — the last boy scout. And speaking of tonal problems…

FF is grimdark now too? To keep the rights from reverting, Josh Trank glooms up Marvel’s first family for Fox in the trailer for Fantastic Four, with Miles Teller (Mr. Fantastic), Kate Mara (Invisible Woman), Michael B. Jordan (Human Torch), Jamie Bell (Thing), Toby Kebbell (Dr. Doom, the Ultimate version apparently), and Reg E. Cathey (Basil Exposition.)

I like the casting here, but I’d like this a lot more if FF were being folded back into the Marvel universe (a la teenage Spidey — Andrew Garfield, we hardly knew ye.) As it is, this still looks like a money grab to me, albeit one with quality production values. And speaking of money grabs…

I can’t even with this Terminator: Genisys reboot or reimagining or whatever it is. Depending on what you think of Terminator 3, this is either the second or third time they’ve tried to wring more bling from James Cameron’s baby (and, Arnold, if you want to make bank reliving past glories, get moving on King Conan.)

All that being said, I wish actors like Emilia Clarke, Jason Clarke, Matt Smith, and J.K. Simmons all the best — Jai Courtney’s alright too, I suppose, but it sure seems like he came off the same bland-actor production line as Sam Worthington — so I was hoping this wouldn’t be a disaster. But the fact that this trailer seems to give away every single beat of the film (including, I presume, the main twist) while still feeling like a re-tread of T2, does not bode well. If you want to save yourself two hours/12 bucks, go ahead and click above.

Meanwhile, across the pond, Agent 007 is recovering from Skyfall Begins, and carrying his sorrows around with him again, in the teaser for Sam Mendes’ second Bond outing, S.P.E.C.T.R.E, with Daniel Craig, Monica Bellucci, Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott, and Rory Kinnear.

Waltz was born to play a Bond villain, and Bellucci an (age-appropriate for once!) Bond beauty, so this could be good fun if Mendes has the sense to let it breathe. We don’t need invisible cars and whatnot, but four films into the Craig era, they could stand to be a little less dour.

S.P.E.C.T.R.E, S.C.H.M.E.C.T.R.E…what about T.H.R.U.S.H? In a world where every past property from Full House to Galaxy Quest gets a reboot — including, one hopes, Twin Peaks — it’s Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin’s time in the sun in the first trailer for Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E, with Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Jared Harris, and Hugh Grant.

I was more intrigued by this when it was a Steven Soderbergh film, but Guy Ritchie channeling Peyton Reed might be amusing.

But can we say the same for Peyton Reed channeling Edgar Wright? Paul Rudd suits up for Michael Douglas as the titular Avenger in the official trailer for Ant-Man, also with Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Michael Pena, Judy Greer, Patrick Wilson, Bobby Cannavale, and Wood Harris. This one might be a tough sell for Marvel, but fingers crossed they can work some Guardians magic for this. (And is Evangeline Lilly playing Wasp? Because that’s good casting, and she’s been AWOL over at the Avengers so far.)

Also on the reboot tip, Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World, and just like Crichton and Scorpy back in the day, Chris Pratt is now colluding with the former Big Bads, the velociraptors, to take down an even greater menace. Bryce Dallas Howard and two kids (Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson) are also in the mix, as are a collection of fine actors that will no doubt be treated like hors d’oeuvres: B.D. Wong, Vincent D’Onofrio, Omar Sy, Irrfan Khan, Jake Johnson, David Oyelowo, and Brian Tee.

Jurassic Park nostalgia somehow missed me — I was probably too old for the original film, which I found so-so — so I’ll likely be OnDemand’ing this at some point. But, hey, good to have these opportunities for Chris Pratt to work his scoundrel edge before donning the fedora. It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

Want another top-secret, sinister spy organization at your multiplex? Ok, how about the Syndicate? Tom Cruise and various IMF agents of films past (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner) team up with Rebecca Ferguson to take down more Illuminati types in the trailer for Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, also with Alec Baldwin and Sean Harris.

I saw the trailer for this a few weeks ago during Better Call Saul and had no clue it was already in the can, much less coming out this summer. In any event, Brad Bird’s Ghost Protocol revitalized this franchise, so will lightning strike again here? The return of those goofy “perfect masks” from the De Palma and Woo outings don’t inspire confidence.

Finally, and speaking of Brad Bird, he’s left IMF to explore Tomorrowland with George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Hugh Laurie, Judy Greer, Tim McGraw, Raffey Cassidy, Chris Bauer, Kathryn Hahn, and Keegan Michael-Key. Given Bird’s mostly stellar track record in the past, I’ll probably catch this at some point, tho’ hopefully it sidesteps the weird Ayn Randisms of The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

Little Miss Slumdog.

Next up on the weekend bill, Danny Boyle’s sadly overrated Slumdog Millionaire. (Yes, I know I said I’d be skipping this one, but it just fit too perfectly between two other movies I was trying to see that day. Besides, fear is the mind-killer and all that.) Now, lest anyone think I just went into the film with a closed mind, I see movies all the time that I expect to be lousy and discover in fact to be really good. (Letters from Iwo Jima and In the Valley of Elah come to mind.) Still, while I suspected I might have to grit my teeth through some of the more implausibly “romantic” parts of Slumdog, I never expected that I’d be so bored by it.

Partly a Dickensian travelogue through the horrors of Mumbai slum life, partly a generous heaping of third-world-despair pr0n leavened with a very first-world cherry on top (A game show can change your life!), Slumdog Millionaire is in essence a feel-good, less resonant version of Fernando Meirelles’ City of God. If you can remain relatively ambivalent about cartoonish, over-the-top villains, characters who make random decisions solely to further the plot, a lot of chase scenes set to (admittedly catchy) bhangra, and, of course, a thoroughly implausible saccharine-sweet ending, Slumdog Millionaire may be more up your Mumbai back-alley than it was mine. For everyone else, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Make no mistake: As cloying as Little Miss Sunshine at times, this is really the Crash of this year’s Oscar crop (and, very possibly, the worst million-related Best Picture winner since Million Dollar Baby in 2004.)

Slumdog Millionaire begins, improbably enough, with a torture scene. Having gotten within one question of the big payday in India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, our hero Jamal (Dev Patel, an appealing presence) has been strung up at the local police precinct in Mumbai and hooked to a rusty car battery. His crime? Why, cheating, of course — there’s no way an itinerant slum kid and chaiwalla (tea carrier) could’ve known all the answers…could he? Since Jamal won’t break under the juice, the local sergeant (Irrfan Khan, the most recognizable actor in the film for western audiences) gives him a chance to recount his story. And what a story it is, involving religious riots and narrow escapes and rape and child mutilation and brotherly betrayal and swimming through a river of feces…uh, did I mention this was a feel-good movie?

As it turns out, the torture scene that starts the film is both a feint and a taste of things to come. It’s a feint because, however grisly the opening, Slumdog ultimately plays out in a very different world than it originally suggests, one where bad guys invariably get their comeuppance, love conquers all, and the truth really does set you free. People have been using the “Dickensian” label to compliment this film as a social novel of the city of Mumbai, but, to be honest, it works both ways. The villains of the piece, gangsters and orphan-nabbers and such, are cartoonish enough to make Fagin and Bill Sykes blush. Like any number of Dickens’ supporting casts, most of the characters are paper-thin and plot-determined (I’m thinking particularly of Jamal’s brother, who waxes on and off from scene to scene depending on what the story requires of him.) And the movie takes some ridiculous jags throughout — the last few scenes, for example — that reminded me of nothing more than ole Pip’s jailbird benefactor in Great Expectations. Yeah, it’s Dickensian alright, and not in a good way.

In any event, that kick-off torture scene works as foreshadowing too, as it turns out that Jamal has learned the answer to every single question (in order, to boot) as a side benefit of experiencing something truly nightmarish in his life. What is the name of Lucy Van Pelt’s younger brother? Why, I dressed up as Linus on that same Halloween the house burned down. Who’s the 27th president of the United States? That’s funny, a guy with a William Howard Taft t-shirt shot my dog. Even notwithstanding the screwed up moral economy of this notion — don’t fret if god-awful things happen to you, you might just win some money from it some day! — and the weird voyeurism involved in this story — oof, third world poverty is grotesque and horrifying, isn’t it? But don’t worry, we give the kid a happy ending! — it all gets to be a bit ridiculous over time. I mean, thank god Jamal didn’t get any questions about astronomy, or the poor kid might’ve gotten walloped by a meteor.

Are there things I enjoyed about Slumdog? Well, yes. Like all of Danny Boyle’s films (Trainspotting, The Beach, Sunshine) it’s sleek and propulsive and well-made. As I said above, Patel, Khan (a.k.a. India’s own Chiwetel Ejiofor), and a few others are engaging here. And I particularly liked the scene where Jamal gets fed an answer by the show’s host (Anil Kapoor)…sort of. But, as for the rest of it, I found myself looking at my watch more often than not. For those of you who’ve seen the film, I think Slumdog Millionaire could’ve at least “stuck the landing” for me if, in the final scene, [highlight to read] Latika had answered the phone, told him she was safe, she loved him, etc. etc., and then they both happily blew off the final question. So Jamal didn’t get the money, but he got the girl, and wasn’t that what he was in it for anyway? But, as it ends here — have your cake and eat it too, Jamal — it just reminded me once again how stilted, manipulative, and implausible this movie turned out to be. And by the time an impromptu Bollywood number broke out with the credits, I had my very own bhangra-scored running scene…out the door.

Good Germans | Poor Little Rich Boy | Rusty Fan.

In the trailer bin of late:

Terrence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Izzard and that scientology fella plot to kill Hitler in the latest trailer for Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie. (I think I can guess how the Fuhrer takes the news.)

Jamal Malik looks to win 20 million rupees and the girl of his dreams in the trailer for Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, with Dev Patel and character actor Irrfan Khan. (Which reminds me, I tried out for Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? once in NYC — I got a perfect score on the pre-test and still didn’t make the cut, meaning I got axed by dint of my sheer, boring personality. Hmm, let’s move on.)

And, though it was withering in development hell for so long that it’s now woefully out-of-date, Jay Baruchel, Dan Fogler, and Kristen Bell — in a slave-Leia costume, no less — brave road trip woes, William Shatner, and the varied shocktroops and minions of Lucas the Hutt in the trailer for Kyle Newman’s Fanboys, also featuring Carrie Fisher and Billy Dee Williams paying their respective mortgages. (Yes, this looks terrible, but it seemed somehow GitM-appropriate, and did I mention the irrepressibly cute Kristen Bell dresses up as Leia?)