I finally finished The Beatles: Get Back, and even though it meandered a lot, I found myself wanting more. The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay nicely captures what it felt like to watch this 50-year old footage as a fan, like we were all kinda just hanging out with John, Paul, George, and Ringo as they worked on new material. Highly recommend watching, it will make you question some of the prevailing narratives about the Fab Four (like the widely held belief that they were at each other’s throats constantly as the band neared its breakup).
Also! We got some late-breaking news Saturday about the sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s going to be titled Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and will actually be a two-parter, with part one to be released October 2022, and part two following in 2023. Hit that link for the first trailer:
The rest of this week’s trailers include a new peeks at a few movies and shows we’ve seen previous trailers and teasers for, and a (fictional) new HBO Max series about people living in a post-pandemic world.
Station Eleven
Based on the Emily St. John Mandel novel, Station Eleven is a series about the aftermath of a pandemic whose production was delayed by the real-world pandemic. Twenty years after most of the population was wiped out by the Georgia flu, a band of performers travels the post-apocalyptic landscape staging performances and encountering all manner of survivors including a mysterious person known as The Prophet. (One glimpse of a “museum of civilization” shows a display of some 21st-century relics including “the internet”, a “Switch, Nintendo,” and a “car key fob”). We see both the Before and After Times mainly through the eyes of Kristen, who was a child actress at the onset of the flu and is played by Mackenzie Davis as an adult. Himesh Patel, David Wilmot, Nabhaan Rizwan, Daniel Zovatto, Lori Petty and Matilda Lawler star in Station Eleven, which begins its 10-episode run December 16th on HBO Max.
The Matrix Resurrections
I did a quick review/appreciation for this trailer the day it came out and have watched it a few (OK many) times since. We don’t get a lot more insight into the movie’s plot here, except that a main element will be “change.” We do hear a voiceover mention that “maybe this isn’t the story we think it is,” and I hope the movie rolls with this idea! Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Christina Ricci, and Jada Pinkett Smith star in The Matrix: Resurrections, which comes to theaters and HBO Max December 22nd.
The Book of Boba Fett
“I am Boba Fett, left for dead on the sands of Tatooine” this new teaser begins. We see our protagonist submerged in what looks like a Bacta tank with a breathing apparatus attached to his face, likely explaining what happened to him post-Sarlacc ingestion in Return of the Jedi (but not how he actually got out). A few characters look surprised to see Boba in this (very brief) new teaser titled “Message.” Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen star in The Book of Boba Fett, which comes to Disney Plus on December 29th.
Peacemaker
We got a teaser in October, and now we have a full trailer for the eight-episode Peacemaker series. John Cena reprises his role from James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (Gunn also created the Peacemaker series and wrote and directed most of its episodes), but he’s teamed up here with a new bunch of oddballs to try to keep the peace by assassinating people who are supposedly threats to the US. We see in the trailer that despite his bravado Peacemaker seems to question what he’s really doing and why. Along with Cena, Robert Patrick, Freddie Stroma, Danielle Brooks, Steve Agee, Jennifer Holland, and Chukwudi Iwuji star in Peacemaker, which comes to HBO Max January 13th.
Studio 666
The premise of this horror/comedy flick: The Foo Fighters are recording a new album in a haunted mansion and some evil and bloody hijinks ensue. We don’t get a whole lot of clues about the plot, but we see Dave Grohl get the demon eyes and start levitating, along with glimpses of monsters, an ostensibly evil book, and other supernatural staples of horror flicks. It looks silly and fun as hell. Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett, and Rami Jaffee, along with Whitney Cummings, Leslie Grossman, and Will Forte star in Studio 666, which comes to theaters February 25th.