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The game is afoot.
Transformers: Age of Extinction‘s first official trailer scored 26.3 million views on YouTube in its first week, according to technology firm Zefr, which tracks the numbers.
That performance followed by one week the big opening for Godzilla‘s first official trailer, which also scored 26.3 million views. Those numbers put the two films at the head of the class of most-anticipated summer movies, with first week trailer numbers head and shoulders above the competition.
Monsters vs. machines in the great box office showdown of the summer of 2014!
Honestly, we weren’t to excited for Transformers–it’s the fourth movie in the franchise after all. Hot damn, this trailer gets us excited: Mark Wahlberg looks all Mark Wahlberg-y, Titus Welliver is perfectly cast as the bad guy and who doesn’t get a little choked up seeing Optimus Prime come back to life? Most important, the transformers look excellent. There’s a couple of transformer vs. transformer smackdowns teased in the preview that are going to look excellent on the big screen. This is a well-done trailer that ticks off all the boxes–introduce the heroes and villains, set up the story, preview the action but don’t give to much away–that need to be ticked off to get fans pumped to see it.
Transformers: Age of Extinction opens June 27.
The second through fourth spots were also held by new trailers, but for the second week in a row the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 was immense. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’s first trailer did a very respectable 3.7 million YouTube views. The second installment of the comic book-based film (with a script from Frank Miller) opens Aug. 22.
The third spot was held by the Annie reboot starring Jamie Foxx and Quvenzhane Wallis (and what appears to be a horribly over-the-top performance from Cameron Diaz. Ouch!) with 2.5 million views. It doesn’t arrive in theaters until late December. This trailer is so-so. Wallis is a young superstar in the making. Her voice sounds great, but some extended singing and dancing scenes would be good. There are to many quick cuts in this trailer–especially of the Blue Man Group-influenced dancing, which looks awesome. The trailer for a movie like this should be rousing, getting viewers humming to themselves and tapping their feet in their seats. This one didn’t do that for me. The upshot? The movie looks like its going to be better than trailer.
At No. 4 is the creepy horror film Occulus (dead people in a haunted mirror hence the title Occulus. Don’t get it? Google it.). You can scare yourself with that one on April 11. This was a pretty good trailer that set up the premise (horror movies don’t have plots so much as premises) and teased some of the scary parts. It could have been a little scarier, but overall Occulus looks like its gonna be a fine old school (it has a great 70s vibe) horror movie.
The rest of the top ten consisted of returning favorites–Godzilla, Guardians of the Galaxy, Amazing Spider-Man 2–and one crazy surprise–Jinn. We can’t say we’d heard of this movie before it showed up in the No. 9 spot with 1.1 million views. I watched the trailer, but honestly I have no idea what this movie is about (a curse, a mystical creature (of fire?) is about all I got), the special effects seem so-so and the cinematography looks muddy. This trailer totally failed to do its job for me: Get viewers excited to see the movie, though there appear to be about a million viewers out there who might disagree with that view.
every color eye shadow was glittery. It was like a budget version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Glitter everywhere! [Working with Andersen] feels like that, just fun.”
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