I'm of two minds on this:
On the one hand? Yeah, not really feeling the psuedo-"Amazing Spider-Man" vibe for the reworked origin, Megan Fox already feels wrong as April even with no opportunity to actively disappoint, and the trailer as a whole definitely seems kind of generic.

On the other? I gotta admit, I kind of like the look of the Turtles here. Yeah, they're...bigger than I'm used to, and the lips ARE weird, but I found the latter fairly easy to ignore, and I actually rather LIKE the way they're using the Turtles' size to their advantage here; Raph busting that van with his shell is a pretty bitchin' action shot.

Plus, Mikey's "It's OK, it's just a mask" line was...actually pretty good. Kind of funny, kind of sweet...it struck me as a nice little character moment for him, and that was honestly the LAST thing I was expecting from ANY of this.

So yeah. Movie as a whole? Prooooooobably gonna suck. But I can't lie, this looks a LOT less awful than I was anticipating.

Thanks! :D
*watches the clips*
...sort of. lD;

As a head's up, that link for "The Last Eagle Scout" just leads to the "Persecuted" trailer again.

And yeah, I find this particular strain of fundamentalist paranoia pretty noteworthy too, though I confess I find it a lot harder to react to it with anything other than anger and disgust. Still, I imagine your method of dealing with it is honestly the healthier one, and lord knows nonsense like this and "Alone But Not Alone" are just sort of outright laughable in their own right, so that certainly helps.

As I said on "Badass Digest", I'm a touch disappointed to see we're still at close-to-the-vest Teaser Level in terms of mood. We've been at that place for a while now, and this seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to really come at us with both barrels. Still, there are some very intriguing things going on with this trailer. Cranston's impassioned, terrified speech ties the whole thing together quite nicely, and ALL the destruction footage looks fantastic; the sweeping, sky-high pans over ruined cityscapes REALLY ratchet up the tension, we get just enough little glimpses not only of Godzilla but those new MUTO monsters we've been hearing about to satisfy, and the notion that this is somehow connected to the events (or an analogue thereof; I'm willing to bet they're not going to stick to all the details of the original film regarding the '54 attack) of the very first "Godzilla" is a notion with a LOT of potential to it.

Most of all, though, I love that they are NOT fucking around in terms of Godzilla's size and strength; the flares gliding past his MASSIVE body, the use of his dorsal plates in a "Jaws"-esque fashion (especially the shot of his flat-out BARRELLING through goddammed AIRCRAFT CARRIERS), and that final shot of his roaring at the viewer as they are slid behind a closing door...it all does a great job of establishing that this is Godzilla-as-Force-of-Nature at its most powerful, a force so great as to put humanity into full retreat rather than confront it outright.

Like you, I am a lifelong Godzilla fan, and have little love for Edwards' "Monsters". And even as I share your anxiety over how this is all going to play out in the final film, I see enough in there that feels right to me as to be optimistic.

"Continuity Porn and not a whole lot else" is a big part of why I'm not all that crazy about the "Thor" movies, honestly, and I'm doing my level best to give the ASM series a fair shake; even as I get your problems with it, I can't QUITE share in your hatred of the first one, which managed to juuuuuuust average out to "decent" for me: I personsally like Garfield, and I think he has the potential to be a better Peter than Maguire if only he could get some stronger material to work with, I think there were enough bits of good, creative Action set-pieces in the first one to hold my interest, and Emma Stone, as you say, is pretty great. But MAN they need to rein the out-of-control, unfocused story in something fierce, and that looks to be about the last thing on this new movie's mind. It looks like we're doubling down on all the worst elements (Secret Conspiracy that no one really cares about, dozens upon dozends of different plot threads very few of which will actually be resolved by movie's end, a distinct disinterest in the human element that actually makes Spidey worth caring about) while adding in all-new problems (after getting to have an actual, proactive role in the first one, Gwen looks to be in full-on Movie-MJ mode here, existing for no other purpose but to be kept out of the way or put into danger to be rescued, and even by the less-than-high standards of the first movie, that is one awful-looking Electro). Still, it's at least a better, more compelling trailer than what we've been working off of so far...I may give this one a shot now, but I'm not exactly setting my hopes very high.

Oh, also.

If indeed there was more to the potential Thor/Sif/Jane love triangle? I am MORE than happy it didn't make it into the finished movie. Love Triangles like that are often insulting enough on their own, but I find something even more wildly inappropriate about it in the context of Sif and Jane, two characters I just don't see giving in to such childishness. Far better we get the underplayed but respectful dynamic between the two in the final film.

Just got back from a show at Chunky's. Color me thoroughly unimpressed.

Then again, I'm not that big a fan of the original "Thor", which for all its fantastic imagery and an intensely-enjoyable Tom Hiddleston playing a surprisingly-well-realized Loki rarely amounted to more than fitfully entertaining for me, and instead spent the majority of its running time being interminably boring with character beats that never really seemed to pan out or feel interesting. So maybe I just wasn't ideally primed to enjoy this movie in the first place, but goodness knows I went in wanting to; "Iron Man 3" showed Marvel did in fact have what it took to make compelling stories post-"Avengers", and "The Avengers" itself was, obviously, a rare treat indeed.

Alas, "The Dark World" stands as a stark reminder that Marvel's Phase One films really didn't have THAT good a batting average when you get right down to it*, because we're working at more or less the same level of quality here: well-realized and admirably-fantastical imagery anchored by OK-to-good performances, but completely and utterly unable to save itself from a script that feels completely uninterested in its own story as anything other than an extended set-up for other stories. It is, at least, a vast improvement over the original in that it's nowhere near as dull, though like Bob I cannot help but wish it had slowed down at least a little to give some breathing room to ANY of its character arcs (in particular the interplay between Thor and Loki, which feels like it ought to be the focus of the entire story but is instead focused on only very briefly, all the more a shame because for that small time it is easily the most compelling the movie gets dramatically and is just genuinely well-done and well-acted). And for the first while, it actually manages to be enjoyable if not particularly exceptional.

And then we hit the final act and everything just goes to pot. I don't want to get too specific for Spoiler Reasons, suffice it to say the story just sort of stops trying to make even one iota of sense, even internally, and it's hard not to feel like the movie stops more so than effectively ends.

So yeah. It's OK, all things told, but I definitely left unsatisfied, sorry to say.

*for the record: I loved the original "Iron Man" and "The Avengers", am OK with "Captain America: The First Avenger", was unimpressed by "Thor" and "Iron Man 2", and outright hate "The Incredible Hulk".

Oh my glob, Batman being the trying-way-too-hard-to-be-cool-guy? As voiced by Will Arnett? That alone is going to be worth the price of admission.

Normally, I'd be inclined to agree; ANY whiff of similarity to the '98 film ought to be avoided.

And yet, given that literally every last hint they've dropped and every last detail we've seen suggests that, whatever else is true about it in action, the overall design this time will, in fact, LOOK LIKE GODZILLA? I'm actually willing to give them the slow teasing, mainly because it's hard to deny the "What does he look like?" game was the single most brilliant move of the '98 film's marketing campaign (as you yourself pointed out on twitter, the "giant foot crushing a T-rex skeleton" trailer is pretty brilliant), and it's kind of fun to see it play out again to similar effect with a design I feel much more assured about.

Like you, I'm not a big fan of "Monsters", so Gareth Edwards' presence isn't exactly one I'm hopeful about, but Frank Darabont's presence on the writing team is MUCH more reassuring, and I'm at least willing to give Edwards another chance here; he seems genuinely enthused about the project, at the very least, so I don't think we have to worry about the "ashamed of the genre this character is from so we'll pretend it's an Irwin Allen Disaster Movie instead" thing that kneecapped the '98 version so badly, at the very least. Fingers big-time crossed; Godzilla is one of my absolute favorite things of all time ever, and the idea of getting a GOOD, big-budget, mianstream American movie version in my lifetime is a hope I've been holding on to since childhood.

I got the reference, I was just making a joke about how much I needed to pull at straws to make ANY complaints about the ep. X3