There's still way more information in this trailer without dialogue than in your average action movie trailer, which generally has snippets of conversation and yelled lines which are, if anything, more confusing for their lack of context. So when I watch the action movie I go: "Oh that's what everyone was yelling about," but when I play a game I don't care how vague the trailer was because I'm having fun making things explode. I've read a little bit about this game, and don't remember much of what I read off the top of my head, but when I hijack a flying saucer with my blaster and jetpack, the trailer will likely be the last thing on my mind.
For example, the latest TV spots for James Cameron's "Avatar" are especially confusing. Granted, all I've read about this film's plot is from what I've read about the video game adaptation, which I've completely forgotten at this point, and the spot I keep seeing has about two lines of dialogue, unlike most action trailers. All I can figure out is that it's the future (either that or an alternate dimension, but more likely the future), and some crippled guy comes to an alien world to have his brain put into a blue elf-thing, despite the presence of numerous walking mechs, which suggest that the technology for cyborg legs is there but is somehow more expensive than the average inter-species brain transplant. Despite this economic downturn the future/alternate dimension is in, they have a large surplus of the aforementioned mechs, complete with guns and complementary futuristic heli-dropships to deliver them express to the forest where all the blue people live, who despite all being part of inspiring stories about how they were crippled and then saved their pocket change to be transferred to blue people, have somehow angered the military complex and their mech pilots, who proceed to drop in, making small craters in the blue people's beautiful alien rainforest preserve, and begin to make the forest less attractive by using their shiny bullets to put lots of varying sized holes in the forest and it's inhabitants, making much of the forest deader but in some cases more wet, and making the bullets a lot less shiny. In both a clichéd trailer line and literal sense, things just got ugly. So the blue people mount their seriously-not-Pterodactyls (seriously), arm themselves with bows and arrows, spears, and sharp sticks and ride into battle against the mech and helicopter army and apparently don't do half bad, possibly because they intimidate their enemy by swinging through the trees in their underwear. Also one of the blue people cries and there are many explosions to be enjoyed by all. I'm guessing it ends when the military complex leader guy, who turns out to be the main former cripple's father, is swayed by his son's willingness to fight for his no-so-beautiful-at-the-moment-but-give-it-about-five-days-and-it'll-be-fine forest planet, he gives his approval of his son's new blue girlfriend, and dies heroically saving the planet from one of his deluded sub-commanders who has gone on his deforestation mission with personal hatred for all things living and an insatiable loathing for all things that are blue or green. Military-dad dies in Blue-Cripple's arms, Blucripple cries, Blu-Girlfriend and Bluripple make out and become the King and Queen (and, after a heated argument, the heads of parliment or other governing body, but that can wait for the sequel) of the forest planet which will totally look fine in about 120 hours. Oh yeah, and the sub-commander guy comes back in sequel to help them against a common foe, then turns on them in the third movie, where he is finally eaten by bright purple things that resemble squirrels but are even smaller and more adorably deadly.
Now I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that some of my plot synopsis is wrong, but my point was that finding the right amount of information to put in a trailer is hard. I think they did well with the Dark Void trailer, and I might be willing to rent it based on this trailer, a review and whatever is on the back of the box when I find it in the video store.
Also, while you may feel free to correct me on the plot of "Avatar," I wish you to know that I probably wont be reading it for at least the next couple days, as I want to enjoy the delusion that my version would be better during that time. It would be funnier certainly, it might even make more sense in some respects. I've nothing against the filmmakers, I just have no idea what that commercial meant to convey, so I filled in the gaps. I also wish to appreciate the irony that only now, when I'm at home sick from school not working on my various and numerous final projects and have actually abandoned my entry for the escapist film festival because I was too busy trying not to think about my various and numerous final projects to write much of a script, and now, staying home and trying not to think of my disappointment in running out of time for that due to panic and procrastination, and trying to take my mind off of the various and numerous projects waiting in the last 2 weeks of my semester when I return, I have spent at least an hour an a half to two hours typing up and refining a fake plot for a movie I might rent a year from now when I remember to, most of this fake plot I made up on the fly and then went back and refined in about the same amount of time it would have taken me to make a script for my entry, only now there would be no time to film anything. I'm going to stop typing now, lest I discover something else that both saddens and highly amuses me through its irony.
EDIT: I went to see avatar and was delightfully wrong. I still want to see my movie though. I also read a pretty harsh review of Dark Void. Apparently the gameplay is good, but the story is disorienting.
