Trailer Round-Up: THE PROTOTYPE, HERE COMES THE BOOM, And FRANKENWEENIE

And we're back. Vacation/hiatus was good. Not great but certainly a nice break from the norm. Didn’t see as many movies as I would’ve liked (caught TED and ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, still have yet to see SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, BRAVE, MAGIC MIKE, and PEOPLE LIKE US) and definitely didn’t keep the Facebook page as updated as I promised (things got real busy about the middle of last week and I just couldn’t find the time to get my laptop) but my creative batteries are recharged and I’m ready to play catch-up. Let’s go!

First up is the kinda okay trailer for THE PROTOTYPE, a sci-fi chase thriller -- looks like THE FUGITIVE by way of the craptastic Gary Sinise clunker IMPOSTOR to me -- from the second unit production assistant of the recent STAR TREK reboot and the guys behind the recent Marine recruitment film ACT OF VALOR.

I like some of what’s here (the action beats are solid, the CG nifty, and it’s always nice to see Neal McDonough getting work) and the character design for the lead is pretty cool (though it skews a little too close to 9 from Shane Acker’s 9 which skewed a little too close to Kroenen from Guillermo Del Toro’s HELLBOY) but this feels more like a “proof of concept” reel to me than an actual trailer.

Keeping with the “proof of concept” feeling of THE PROTOTYPE is the second trailer for Tim Burton’s FRANKENWEENIE. The first minute or so is just complete rehash of the first trailer (which has been played to death, no pun intended, at my local AMC) and the second half is a mish-mash of visuals and ideas that make absolutely no sense.

I mean, seriously, the lead character’s buddies decide to start resurrecting live and dead pets and even …a faux-Godzilla? I got a feeling Burton lost track of the plot when exploding his original FRANKENWEENIE short film (click HERE to check it out) to feature length. It worries me that every trailer for this pic is basically a super-compressed version of the original 30 minute short. Just saying.

Fun Fact #1: WARRIOR, the MMA-infused drama from director Gavin O’Connor (MIRACLE) starring Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton that just so happened to be my favorite film of 2011, grossed only 23mil versus a 25mil budget at the worldwide box office.

Fun Fact #2: HERE COMES THE BOOM, the new Kevin James MMA comedy from director Frank Coraci (ZOOKEEPER) that, if the trailer below is to be believed, appears to be a remixed “fat joke friendly” version of WARRIOR, will likely gross 100+ million at the worldwide box office.

Fun Fact #3: Hollywood sucks.