Ridley Scott puts out a Prometheus trailer that smacks a couple of generations of nerds right in the face by haunting the trailer for Alien.

Do I dig it? The throwback elements of it, I do. The lack of non-screaming face-time for Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron, not so much. (I’d go into the underpants shot, but that means talking about the scene in Alien that is 110% underpants, -15% alien vanquishing, and that would lead into more than anyone wants, so we’ll just pretend nothing’s up.) And someday I will have to write about my feelings for Ellen Ripley, but loving her with the intensity of a thousand suns doesn’t mean I can’t love any other awesome lady that wanders this doomed-ass landscape (Hey, Vasquez!), so I’ll keep an open mind there. (The cast in general looks pretty stellar – resume-wise, anyway. So far in the trailer it’s lots of jumping and some questionable hair color on Monsieur Fassbender.)

I admit, I had always figured that Ridley Scott was just being coy about this movie because he didn’t want to blow his remake mystique before he could sign the contract for Blade Runner 2: Runnerer. But now I’m wondering if he was being coy because nobody wants to answer the “But really, are aliens in it?” question until the last second. However, what’s here is still more than enough to interest me (and the bursts of high-pitched squealing are just aces), so this goes on the calendar, with some poor, gullible friend who will get her hand terror-clasped an embarrassing number of times.

Speaking of, I think it’s time for me to pull the courage together to see the first one again! (It takes a lot of courage. That movie is amazing, but I have a very low threshold for the Creeps, and that movie pushes it right to the limit. I really need to work on getting a scary-movie setup where you have a small TV and it’s very sunny and you’re surrounded by puppies the whole time.)

So, they released a teaser trailer for The Hobbit!

Let’s get this out of the way: I am one of the bajillions who has strong childhood memories of The Hobbit, and in the back of this whole analysis there is a four year old who keeps that book on her bedstand at all times and can already sing most of the songs from the animated movie, which I will go to the mat for a hundred times, because despite it being associated with the dreadful animated Lord of the Rings, every frame of The Hobbit looks like a Rackham stained glass window, and all the non-”Greatest Adventure” music holds up.

That said, I am very excited about Jackson’s LOTR stuff in general, so I’m more than happy to be delighted by this. THAT said, I have some reservations. Not least among them is that someone in Peter Jackson’s camp wanted to buy his own island in the Maldives and suggested we drag out an already-slight story into two full movies, which means that some of this might be legitimate worldbuilding, and some of this is just because they know people will pay twice (or, if you are me and many of my friends, six to fourteen times) to watch whatever they feel like stuffing in, which is cause for side-eye.

Accordingly, the first half of this duology looks like it’s mostly going to be Martin Freeman Bagginsing (perfectly, we all knew he was the right Hobbit for the part), dwarf shenanigans (some dwarves are loud and clumsy! Ho ho!), and Galadriel and Gandalf making out (hey, the editors did it, not me).

Speaking of the music, let’s face it, the music MADE that trailer, and did just what it was supposed to do in setting mood without actually explaining that in this movie they’re making it to Beorn before credits. The rest is just promising you that they held on to the Hobbiton set, that one of the dwarves is cute enough for character posters, and that Ian McKellen has been making extracurricular visits to the Lady of the Elves because of [reason not found].

The actual trailer has ZERO about the actual plot – it is entirely about a Hobbit hosting a dinner party for a parade of character actors and some hints that 1) things are dangerous and 2) Thorin’s a bit of a tool – and I am still very anxious about the plotting and pacing of this puppy, but it’s hard to deny that the dwarf singing is pretty awesome.

Not that it matters. Everybody knows I’m there at midnight.

The new trailer for John Carter (of Mars) is out! Watch it here, and then let’s talk (vaguely, but without spoiler cuts, because you’ve had since 1912 to read it).

It’s an interesting contrast against the earlier teaser trailer.

Okay, so, the new trailer has completely stopped trying to explain that John Carter is a gent from Earth circa the Civil War. I guess that stops people from asking about that particular aspect of it, but by removing that origin story from the new trailer, his superpowers make a little less sense as anything but mutation-y superpowers, which just raises more questions, and the passing “John Carter…of Earth?” moment does not really clear anything up.

Second of all, good to see that Mark Strong and Dominic West are still paying the bills regularly! (Note: Mark Strong does not age. I saw him in Captives and Emma back in high school and he looked exactly like this, except less blue. He’s just going to have one of the best skulls in Hollywood until he’s 150 years old, is how that goes.)

Third, I actually find it very interesting how the available polished CGI footage changed the focus of the film itself. The teaser trailer’s vibe was much more about identity (right down to the out-of-place-but-always-welcome “My Body is a Cage” number) and the contrasts between his world and the world he woke up in, with hints that shit would be happening any second.

The finished trailer includes a lot more Stuff, but much less story, and is somehow also much less visually compelling than the teaser (I like a good CGI ship/gladiatorial arena/menacing army as much as the next nerd, but the contrast of warm and cool tones in the teaser was, for me, a more effective draw into the themes and aesthetics of it all).

That said, I am still interested; the treatment of Deja Thoris hints that she’ll have something to do, which is always nice (ladies in John Carter books got kidnapped a lot), and even if everything falls apart, it’s not like it can possibly be worse than SyFy’s previous attempt at the canon. The dialogue in this teaser is corny, but it would have to work really hard to be the next, “That was her pee bucket,” is all I’m saying.

And I was legit a sucker for this moment:

Not to get earnest, but this is something that, very probably, no human in our lifetimes will ever see, and it does such a nice job of bringing home to us (and to John Carter) how far he is from home. Give me more of this, movie! I dig this!

Man, I am already looking forward to the promo battle between these two, just because.

On the heels of the Snow White and the Hunstman trailer comes the trailer for “Mirror Mirror,” from on-notice director Tarsem Singh!

The good news is that the costumes look gorgeous, and he’s got a serious handle on that color story. (I could also, potentially, be talked into the Bollywood musical number. We’ll see.)

The bad news is that, while I’m glad to see this is a different approach to the tale and employs Singh’s usual visual flair, this also looks like it’s careening past Tenth Kingdom Boulevard towards Cringetown Way.

But don’t take my word for it – enjoy Dog-Prince Armie Hammer and Royal Assassin Nathan Lane for yourself!

All right, Battle of the Snow Whites, let’s do this thing. Tarsem released promo photos of his, and now Snow White and the Huntsman has released a banner that does not at all suggest that this movie is produced by the same people who produced Alice in Wonderland, if you ignore the font and the mushrooms.

(Here’s the thing; I completely understand we’re going with the little Giger-alien-forest-Mordor-armies vibe, and I understand the need to balance the dark frame with some light in the middle. I do not quite understand the part where she has to be bathed in adorable-mushroom-frond light…that she’s about to stab right through the beam with her knife? Is she hunting faeries? I mean, that’s cool, I’m totally down with that, I am just confused, is all.)

Let’s pretend they just used this shot of her in the trailer holding a sword and looking out from the top of a hill like a badass jerk:

Anyway, I do not know about this entire endeavor (this is the first of a trilogy! A TRILOGY.), but the trailer is underneath, and it’s worth watching just for Charlize Theron’s VO, which made me laugh so hard I had to go back and start over again.)

Check out the whole thing (ad-free) here! (Seriously, the voiceover is reason enough to watch it. Twice.)