The Trailer Park: The Best New Movie Trailers of the Week from Last Night in Soho to Eternals
Movies Lists
It’s so easy to miss a AAA trailer these days, even with all the endless marketing build-up around teasers, pre-trailers (“in one day,” etc) and other forms of cinematic hype. A good trailer is an art form, one that is able to convey a movie’s plot, tone and style all while resisting that ever-present urge to score it to a slowed-down pop song. So here’s the Trailer Park, where we’re parking all the trailers you may have skipped, missed or want to revisit from the past week. Appreciate them. Nitpick them. Figure out if the movies they’re selling are actually going to be any good. That’s all part of the fun, after all.
This week, we’ve got full looks at Last Night in Soho and Jungle Cruise, a more fleshed-out idea of what those Eternals are up to, and glimpses at The Tomorrow War and one Old beach—among others.
Here are the best new movie trailers of the week:
Last Night in Soho
Director: Edgar Wright
Release Date: October 22, 2021
Fans of the hyperkinetic filmmaking prowess of director Edgar Wright have been waiting quite a while for a glimpse of his latest film Last Night in Soho, and now that teaser trailer has finally arrived. You’ll see Wright taking an entirely new, but equally stylish turn, in the first film of his career that could accurately be described as “psychological horror.” Last Night in Soho is the story of Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie of Jojo Rabbit), a young woman who travels to the U.K. and then experiences a fantastical event, which seemingly thrusts her back into 1960s London while she dreams. In the hands of some storytellers, that might be the basis of a wistful comedy or romance, ‘ala Midnight in Paris, but here it becomes a horror story when her 1960s counterpart Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy) starts forcing herself into the modern day. Visually, the color schemes and cinematography of Last Night in Soho seems to pay obvious homage to the giallos of filmmakers like Mario Bava and Dario Argento, while the claustrophobic apartment settings evoke the apartment-bound psychological horror films of Roman Polanski, a la Repulsion and The Tenant. Combine those influences with Wright’s own dynamic shooting and editing style, and we’re expecting another visually resplendent feature. Notably, the teaser seems to strike a pretty serious tone, without much of the humor that defined films like Wright’s “Cornetto trilogy,” and to a lesser extent Baby Driver. Really, it’s just a pleasure to see Wright back in general, given that it’s now been more than four years since the release of Baby Driver, his last narrative feature.—Jim Vorel
Eternals
Director: Chloé Zhao
Release Date: November 5, 2021
The first trailer is here for Chloé Zhao’s highly-anticipated first Marvel film, Eternals, part of the MCU’s Phase Four. The Eternals are an ancient, immortal alien race who have lived on earth for thousands of years, quietly shaping humanity’s history but never intervening—until now. The film will trace the course of the Eternals’ presence on Earth up to present day. However, it is not yet clear exactly how this film will manage to fit itself into the larger MCU narrative, save for a joking reference to the Avengers towards the end of the trailer. The packed ensemble cast features Gemma Chan, Angelina Jolie, Bryan Tyree Henry (playing the MCU’s first openly gay superhero), Salma Hayek, Kit Harrington, Barry Keoghan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lauren Ridloff, Lia McHugh and Don Lee, each playing a different member of the Eternals equipped with a unique ability. After approaching Marvel with a desire to make a film for them, Zhao impressed Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige with her naturalistic approach to filmmaking, using real settings and lighting, which is clearly on display in this vibrant sneak peek.—Brianna Zigler
Old
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Release Date: July 23, 2021
The full trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s newest film, Old, was released today, following the mysterious teaser that dropped during a Super Bowl spot earlier this year. i>Old stars Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps as parents who take their brood of kids along with them to an idyllic beach that, bewilderingly, does not allow children. But when they notice items from the hotel littered across the sand, and one of their children finds a dead body that has decomposed faster than normal, it’s soon discovered that the beach is causing them all to age rapidly—and they can’t escape. Following Glass, the penultimate sequel to both Split and Unbreakable, back in 2019, the screenplay for the director’s fourteenth feature was adapted by Shyamalan from a graphic novel called “Sandcastle” by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters. Shyamalan has become notorious for his use of plot twists in his films, so it will be interesting to see where this chilling take on the fear of aging will lead. The film’s impressive cast also features Ken Leung, Rufus Sewell, Abbey Lee, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Eliza Scanlin, and Embeth Davidtz. Shot entirely in the Dominican Republic, Old is a notable first departure for Shyamalan, who shoots most of his films in the Greater Philadelphia area.—Brianna Zigler
The Tomorrow War
Director: Chris McKay
Release Date: July 2, 2021
Get ready to roll your eyes, and roll them hard, because the temporal entanglements of this first trailer for Amazon’s The Tomorrow War hint at the would-be action blockbuster’s ability to boggle the mind if you spend even a second thinking about it. Who would have thought that a story about soldiers being plucked from the past to fight a war against aliens in the future would have such opportunity for paradox? The Tomorrow War at least has an enjoyably eclectic cast, starring Chris Pratt, J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson and Yvonne Strahovski as a character from the future who will in no way be revealed as Pratt’s grown-up daughter. Why would you even suggest such a thing? The film was originally intended for theatrical release by Paramount in the winter of last year, but was eventually sold off to Amazon, a la Coming 2 America, thanks to the ongoing pandemic. Just looking at the first footage below, you get a feel for The Tomorrow War’s tone as something of a more comedic Edge of Tomorrow, or perhaps “Terminator in reverse,” considering that humanity is looking to soldiers from the past to fight its wars in the future. This of course opens an endless can of paradoxical worms. Why, for instance, are people from the past being thrown into future combat untrained, when they literally have 30 years to prepare for the upcoming alien invasion? Everything about The Tomorrow War feels like a setup for the softest of all soft sci-fi, in which the audience is meant to just shut up and not ask any questions about how any of this is supposed to work.—Jim Vorel
‘
‘
Jungle Cruise
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Release Date: July 30, 2021
We’ve all been living in Pandemic World for so long at this point that it’s almost become easy to forget exactly what the media landscape was even like before the era of COVID-19. And then you see a trailer like this newly released one for Disney’s Jungle Cruise, and it all comes rushing back, for better or worse. Initially filmed more than three years ago at this point, Jungle Cruise is finally getting its simultaneous release in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access. In terms of tone, the comparison to Pirates of the Caribbean is sitting there, just begging to be made. Like Pirates, this is an adaptation of a classic Disney river boat ride, and it seems to be shooting for the same sort of swashbuckling, macabre (but family friendly) energy. There are also elements of something like Kong: Skull Island in the mix this time around thanks to the tropical setting, while the plot itself is basically in the same vein as the likes of Anacondas: Hunt For the Blood Orchid. One thing it’s certainly not lacking: Big-budget CGI, which is on display in every second of this trailer. It feels like the sort of ostentatious use of a movie budget that we just haven’t seen in a while. Oh, and have we mentioned that Jesse Plemons shows up as a villain who looks to be, for all intents and purposes, like some sort of German U-boat captain? Because he totally does. Jungle Cruise started filming waaay back in May of 2018, and was originally intended to be released before the pandemic, in Oct. of 2019. It was eventually pushed back to the summer of 2020, however, which then ran into the obvious issue of theaters all being closed. At this point, it’s been a well over three year wait—will anyone still care when Jungle Cruise arrives? Check out the trailer below and decide for yourself.—Jim Vorel
False Positive
Director: John Lee
Release Date: June 25, 2021
Bearing an unmistakable likeness to Rosemary’s Baby, the first trailer is here for a new baby-making horror movie starring Ilana Glazer, Justin Theroux and Pierce Brosnan. False Positive centers on a couple, Lucy and Adrian (Glazer and Theroux, respectively), struggling to get pregnant, who are eventually guided to success by their doctor (Brosnan). All seems to be going well until Lucy witnesses something disarming on her sonogram, and things slowly descend into chaos. Produced by A24, the film has already been said to be a contemporary take on Rosemary’s Baby, so the obvious connections to the classic Mia Farrow/John Cassavetes flick would appear to be intentional—Theroux’s character even bears the same name as Rosemary Woodhouse’s Antichrist child. It will be interesting to see how director John Lee (who co-wrote the screenplay alongside Glazer) will put a new spin on this tale of the horrors of pregnancy.—Brianna Zigler