The Apple website now has a much better QuickTime version of the movie trailer, available here. Since it’s in QuickTime, you can easily stop it to see some of the stuff that moves by too quickly in the streaming versions, such as conjoined twins Ping and Jing.
Projects
Big Fish website is up
Columbia has launched the Big Fish website, although there’s not much to see right now.
Apparently, the movie received its PG-13 for “a fight sequence, some images of nudity and a suggestive reference.” And while that’s all true, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking offense to these moments. For instance, the “nudity” is no more than what you see in trailer. The fight sequence is a few punches. And the suggestive reference is, “You see, my mother was banging the milk man.” It’s all pretty innocuous. Nothing got cut out to get the rating.
Honestly, I think the movie should be PG-13, but not for the reasons listed. While a lot of it is cheery and bright, the story is ultimately about life and death and family, which might be a little too much for the Nickelodeon set. A large percentage of adults who see the movie cry, which is kind of bewildering to young kids.
In the long run, the rating might make some parents think twice about taking kids to it, so all the better. But in my opinion, an emotionally mature eight-year old could handle the movie, no question.
Big Fish trailer up at Yahoo! Movies
Daniel Wallace just tipped me off that the Big Fish trailer is now available on Yahoo! Movies. You can find it, and a lot of photos from the production, here. For right now, it’s only available in Real Player and Windows Media Player formats, but Sony is good about getting Quicktime trailers up, so I’ll be sure to mention when/where one becomes available.
The trailer was cut together by a company called Ant Farm, working under the guidance of the studio marketing department. I like it, though we’ve been through a lot of sturm and drang over it for the past few weeks. Basically, this is a very hard movie to explain in two minutes, and the more you try to explain it, the less satisfactory it becomes. Do you need to say that Will and Edward are estranged? That Edward is sick? That Will married a French woman? That the giant eats sheep?
What I like about the trailer we ended up with is that it more or less feels like movie, without trying to tell a lot of the story. I hope people like it.
Big Fish on Entertainment Tonight
On Monday, October 6th, there is supposed to be a segment on Entertainment Tonight about BIG FISH, including the first look at the trailer. In all likelihood, it will be little chunks of the trailer with Bob Goen (or whoever the host is these days) talking over it. But hey, footage is footage.