The first Dark Shadows trailer is here...and it made me mad

The first Dark Shadows trailer is here…and it made me mad

Honestly, it takes a lot to make me mad. When it happens, I recognize it as a visceral, emotional response…different from, say, righteous indignation, which can be more based on a reasoned response.

I’m not indignant about the trailer for the new Tim Burton/Johnny Depp Dark Shadows movie.

I know a trailer can be cut in such a way that it doesn’t give you a good sense of the movie.

I’m hoping that’s the case here.

I thought that the movie would be respectful of the series…both Depp and Burton were supposed to be fans.

What we see plays it for laughs, mostly…like Austin Powers on the fish out of time period gag. Maybe more like Adam Adamant, which I always guessed was an inspiration for Austin Powers.

The trailer has slapstick that The Munsters would find demeaning. There’s an obvious joke about Barnabas misunderstanding the idiom of 1972…not a good sign for an engaging, challenging script, at least to me.

Even more odd to me is that Barnabas says he is a vampire, apparently to the family. You could watch 100 episodes of the original series (I have), and nobody uses the word “vampire”…even people who know what Barnabas is.

However, in scenes that aren’t given a funky 1970s soundtrack, it looks like we may get a more serious sense of menace. Playing the movie with respect to the series would have worked, in my opinion. Making it into a silly farce? I’m afraid of that…and not in a good way.

It’s possible that we’ll see several advertising campaigns for Dark Shadows…if the studio can’t quite figure out how to sell it. That, by itself, could be a good thing.

I’m willing to wait and see.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the The Measured Circle blog.

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