Will Smith, Collateral Beauty

Trailer Time: Collateral Beauty Trailer #2 (2016) *The Peculiar Pen Pals of Will Smith*


Collateral Beauty stars Will Smith as a man in the aftermath of an unspeakable tragedy.  His way of coping of it is by writing letters.  Not to the deceased.  They tell you to do that in grief counseling and sometimes it helps.  Smith is writing letters to Death, Love, and Time.  And mailing them.  This has his friends understandably concerned, but not as concerned as Smith when Death (Helen Mirren) shows up with one of his letters in hand. The film also stars Kate Winslet, Michael Pena, Edward Norton, Keira Knightley, and Naomie Harris, and has the daunting task of opening against the next Star Wars film when it debuts December 16, 2016.
Will Smith, Collateral Beauty

5 thoughts on “Trailer Time: Collateral Beauty Trailer #2 (2016) *The Peculiar Pen Pals of Will Smith*”

  1. This is textbook counter programming I suppose, though I’m not sure exactly what demographic they’re trying to siphon away. I’m clearly not a member of that demographic, because I’ll be seeing SW that weekend, yet I still want to see this movie, and I will, the following week.

    Smith has really damaged his reputation. He let his kids give that interview where they seemed like they were in an altered state, and then he tried to give his son a star vehicle, and the kid wasn’t remotely up to the task, and it was pretty sad. And then, for some reason, Smith and his wife announced that they had an open marriage. I’m not judgmental, but this is a cautionary tale against staking your reputation on wholesomeness. Smith is not coming back to where he was before.


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    1. Sadly, I think you may be right. It doesn’t bode well that a film with FIVE Oscar winners or nominees is being buried against Rogue One. I thought Jaden was great in Karate Kid and why that never took off into a franchise, I have no clue because it was successful. After Earth was a bad judgment call for Smith to get involved with Shaymalan. We know how good the two of them can be from Pursuit of Happyness. Smith still has chops. Concussion was a good film, and he was the best part. The problem with it was it ws more of an informative film than a story or a journey, but his performance was quite good. He makes odd choices and then will disappear for years on end. No, he’ll never be what he was when he was The King of Summer, but maybe the right vehicle will come along. He and Viola Davis saved Suicide Squad from going completely off tails, after all.

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      1. Concussion was buried too. You don’t release a film like that on Christmas Day if you have any faith in it. But in recent years Smith has grown by leaps and bounds, to the point where he seems like a different actor than the one who starred on Fresh Prince all those years ago.


        I don’t think the right vehicle will come along, and that’s OK. To everything, turn, turn, turn. As long as he continues to grow as an actor, and does quality work, that’s what matters. He was smart to avoid Independence Day 2 BTW. Given the current state of his career I can’t imagine he would have brought in that much more money. The film would have been spun into a blot on his career, an emblem of failure.

        This new film looks to be inspired by A Christmas Carol, with its three apparitions that personify things. Although “Collateral Beauty” is a terrible title. “Concussion” was a pretty bad title too. I’m glad they held back with the marketing, because they could have really gone nuts…

        “This Christmas… prepare to GET CONCUSSED.”

        Even by adding an “s,” and calling it “Concussions,” they would have done themselves a favor.


        In all seriousness though, the film dealt with an important issue, and deserved to be seen by more people. I wish it had been better, and better marketed, and more true to the facts.

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      2. Well choosing Suicide Squad over ID42 in terms of his career was definitely a better move and Deadshot was a good role for him. He has matured. His oldest son was playing football and he got the script for Concussion and that’s the whole reason he did the movie: because he felt as a father he wanted other fathers to know about something he had never heard of. Last year’s Best Actor field was crowded, or he probably would’ve been nominated. That was one of the problems with the white-only nominations….they happened during a really good year for film when most of the voters are white. The film, from a craft and significance standpoint that deserved more recognition was Straight Out of Compton, but it was one of those movies where it was hard to single out a single performance in a great ensemble and the dumb Oscars, unlike the SAGs, don’t have an ensemble cast award. Creed had a legitamite beef too, and Michael Jordan should have been nominated before Smith. Marvel sucked up the entire starring cast of Creed for future projects, and was wise to do so. Tessa Thompson is going to be in Thor 3 and Ryan Coogler is directing Black Panther in which Jordan is the villain. That move alone is the kind of forward thinking that separates Marvel from DC. Marvel sees a film like Creed and young talent, especially when they know they need to diversify, and immediately slots them into their long-term plans. DC scrambles for established stars. It’s comparable to baseball. There are two ways to build a World Series winner. You can spend $200 million and buy one ring with free agents. Or you can use the draft, your scouts, and your farm system to build a unit that can win you five rings.


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      3. WB’s stated purpose of creating a more mature, filmmaker-centric superhero universe would have been terrific.

        Sigh.


        The MCU is not exactly a bastion of auteurism. There’s a top-down organization behind those movies, just like with the DCEU. There are just different people at the top. The guys appointed by Disney actually like and understand the characters, and the directors are mostly virtuosos without swelled heads.

        The DCEU is governed by everything BUT respect for the characters, and so far the “visionary” directors have either been crazy, or marginalized by the suits after the fact.


        WW will be no better. In fact it might be even worse. Meanwhile I’m confident that GOTG2 is going to be better than the first one. And call this a tangent or an aside or whatever you want, but I want to see more Howard. I’m not suggesting a standalone movie because that would be insane, but Howard the Duck was a terrific absurdist, existentialist comic book before it was ruined forever by Lucasfilm, and if the MCU threw its weight behind the character I’m sure he could find a place. That is all.

        I didn’t know Will Smith made Concussion for personal reasons. That’s admirable. Football is an extremely perilous sport, as everyone would now know in a perfect world. But like I said I think the film went under almost everyone’s radar.


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