Last week in trailers: more like The ENOji Movie

It’s been three whole weeks since I’ve done a Last Week in Trailers, and I’ve missed plenty of important ones, but now is not the time to reminisce on what might have been. There is no time like the present. If we look back we are lost. It does not matter how slow we go so long as we do not stop.

So here’s what happened last week in the world of trailers.

The Emoji Movie

I could try to ease you in to the suffering that will occur with this trailer, but there is no trailer this week that is half as insufferable as this. It was never going to be gradual, so we might as well get it out the way.

The Emoji Movie is an animated kids movie about a “meh” face who experiences a whole range of emotions that his society just doesn’t understand. Along with a band of misfits, Meh Face just wants to find his place in the world — and to fall in love with Punk Girl along the way.

The trailer promises a host of kids movie cliches we all thought we were moving away from, and if you’re looking for laughs, you won’t find it here. But you may find it in Sony’s chutzpah: it hosted a party the night before Cannes to promote the movie, in the hopes that journalists and filmmakers may just have nothing better to do.

The Emoji Movie is out 28 July.

Battle of the Sexes

Almost every week sees at least one film annoying “male rights activists” and it’s Battle of the Sexes’ turn to carry the torch.

The film, starring Emma Stone and Steve Carrell, is a comedy-drama about a feud between tennis legend Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. The film tells the generally true story of the 1973 tennis match between the “male chauvinist pig” and the “hairy-legged feminist.”

Catch Battle of the Sexes in theatres 22 September.

Glow

If your niche is female sports stars, then, boy, is it your week.

GLOW is a Netflix original series based on the 1980s show of the same name. It tells of a down-and-out actress (a disguised Alison Brie) tired of the roles the film and TV industry has to offer women. Her last shot at fame? Women’s wrestling.

GLOW will be available to stream on 23 June.

The Gifted

The Gifted is yet another Marvel TV show ready to make a quick buck off the superhero boom — this time hoping to lure in more teenagers.

The FOX show is set in the X-Men universe and is directed by Bryan Singer, who has multiple directing credits in the world of mutants. The trailer promotes a campy project, with low production quality but hopefully loads of heart.

Catch The Gifted on FOX in June.

Black Lightning

Black Lightning is the CW’s first black superhero, and the trailer tells of a retired father who hesitantly rejoins the hero world along with his two daughters.

The show will be the fourth DC show on the CW, and could potentially bleed into the world of The Flash and Arrow — cashing in on the existing viewership and cementing DC as the Top TV dogs in the midst of its failing cinema.

Black Lightning is expected to air mid-Fall season when the other superhero shows are on hiatus.

Okja

Much like when film and TV use extensive analogies and aliens to tackle issues of race (Pleasantville, I love you, but I’m looking at you), it seems we now have to create fictional giant pigs to convince people the meat industry is bad.

In its defense, the trailer for Okja is visually breathtaking, beautifully edited, and I’m still going to watch it. I’m still definitely going to cry over this dumb giant not-hippo.

Cry with me 28 June, and why not check out some delicious vegetarian recipes while you wait?

The Alienist

In a seamless segue from fake hippos to that time mentally ill people were thought to be aliens, here’s a trailer for The Alienist.

Starring Dakota Fanning, Luke Evans and Daniel Brühl, the show is a psychological thriller drama about a series of murders of boy prostitutes in 1896. The investigation is headed by then-cop Teddy Roosevelt, a psychologist (or alienist), a newspaper illustrator and a headstrong secretary.

The show does not yet have a release date, but you can read Caleb Carr’s eponymous 1994 book if you just can’t wait.

The Good Doctor

Based on the KDrama of the same name, The Good Doctor tells of an autistic doctor with savant syndrome who struggles to work as a surgeon.

The show comes from the creator of House and, off the bat, walks a difficult line between representation and exploitation. On one hand, only 10% of autistic people are considered savants, but that’s almost all the media depicts them as. On the other hand, an autistic man as the titular protagonist is almost certainly a step in the right direction.

Find out how the writers do whenever ABC decide to tell us when it premieres.

Life Sentence

Stella has spent the last eight years thinking she was going to die. She spent all her money, avoided education and lived her supposedly short life to the fullest. Until her cancer is cured.

Life Sentence tells the story of the real-life consequences of “living life to the fullest” — from the emotional toll on friends and family to the inevitable lies they tell the kid with cancer.

Catch the show on the CW soon.

The Mummy

That’s right: The Mummy finally posted the final trailer, and it still doesn’t live up to that one trailer the studio accidentally posted with only half the soundtrack attached.

This trailer doesn’t offer anything more than any of the others, except the sweet relief of knowing I have seen Tom Cruise one time closer to the last.

The Mummy, full soundtrack in place, will be in theatres 9 June.