Today in trailer happy hour: Angry astronauts, horny dragons, and a very chilly Keanu
Welcome back to Trailer Happy Hour, where the film promos and teasers glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate, destined to be lost in time, like tears in the rain. (Time to click.) Today, we’ve got Damien Chazelle trying to eke drama out of one of the most notable success stories in all of human history, some horny dragons, and Keanu Reeves looking downright cold, so let’s dive right in.
First up: The just-released trailer for Chazelle’s new Neil Armstrong biopic, First Man. Starring Ryan Gosling, the film, somewhat ludicrously, seems to be acting like it’s a big, scary question about whether Armstrong and his buddies will actually land on the moon. (If you want to know if he pulled it off, kids, turn to the Answers section at the back of the book!) That being said, there’s also a whole lot of quality terse yelling on display here, especially from Claire Foy and Kyle Chandler. Plus, little-to-no jazz music, which should be a relief for anyone worried the La-La Land and Whiplash director was in something of a musical rut.
Switching gears, we’ve also got the trailer for the third How To Train Your Dragon movie, The Hidden World. This one sees plucky little firebreather Toothless get himself a girlfriend—fucking finally—but danger lurks in the form of an F.Murray Abraham-voiced dragon hunter hoping to wipe him and his fellow dragons out. (Meanwhile, we’re in our own kind of danger suddenly, having just stumbled onto the incredibly detailed HTTYD universe wiki, which is offering a serious threat of eating our entire weekend with its carefully indexed lists of dragon classes, firepower, and behaviors. God bless the nerds.)
Finally, we’ve got a little chilly Keanu action for these hot summer nights. Reeves is currently starring in Siberia, which presents itself as part romance, part diamond smuggling thriller. Honestly, the weirdest thing about this trailer is seeing Reeves land somewhere below “apex predator” in its hierarchy of violence; at this point, we’re so used to watching him John Wick the shit out of people that anything less feels weirdly off.