Trailer Trash: Thor, Captain America

Thor - May 6th

The first trailer for "Thor" showed Thor kicking ass and taking names before giving us his backstory about being exiled to Earth before cutting to action scenes in Asgard of Thor fighting monsters and it looked awesome!

This trailer, not so much.

Here we show more of Thor's arrival on Earth as opposed to before where Thor fighting soldiers was spliced with after the fact narration. Now that we can see things first hand, we're building up suspense, which is good.

What's bad, is the character of Darcy, and how whenever she opens her mouth, all that tension just deflates when she says stuff like, "What he was freakin' me out!" or "Oh this is going on Facebook!" Also, whenever she speaks the music comes to a halt, to let us know that the people whoever wrote the script thinks that line was funny.

Then we cut to the epic Lord of the Rings style action that I want to see, intercut with typical disaster movie footage of wrecking and running with "The Destroyer" rampaging through the city.

It seems the heads of marketing what this to blend  "epic action" with "contemporary and relatable" for wider appeal. Hey if you want to appeal to me, make Darcy the first victim of the Destroyer and I'll be there opening night.

Grade: Diminished Interest. I'll likely wait for the reviews to weigh in. It just feels so divided.

Captain America: The First Avenger - July 22nd

We are introduced to our underdog hero Steve Rogers, weak and frail, yet aspiring to greatness.

Personally I'm still a bit phased by the "Benjamin Button" technology used to put Chris Evans head on a scrawny body, but I should probably be grateful that at least they're showing some distinction in the Before and After of Steve Rogers unlike in the 70s and 90s Captain America movies were he was just as big and muscle bound before the super soldier program.

Despite the title "The First Avenger", I hoping the story won't be polluted with all manner of tie ins to other Marvel Films like "Iron Man 2" was. I'm a little nervous since we have a shot of a young Howard Stark, with the actor playing doing his best Robert Downey Jr. impression, and while that's a fun tip of the hat to other parts of the franchise, we've got enough going on here that we need to get too involved with sequel hooks already.

Other than that it looks like a fun, pulpy, two fisted, "stop Hitler's jetpack soldiers" adventure movie.

Grade: Elevated interest.