Vanessa Hudgens: Unexpected Acting Star

Sucker Punch is the best move Vanessa Hudgens could have made for her career. What’s more, I think it’s going to make her much more successful in the long run than her beau Zac Efron.

Ex-Disney princess, former face of High School Musical, and temporary scandale, Hudgens has never registered in my mind as more than, say, Selena Gomez. She’s generically pretty, of average talent, and almost entirely forgettable. I have never found her offensive, but I also don’t go out of my way to watch her in things. In short, up to this film she has been one of a thousand fresh faced Disney starlets, vaguely entertaining and entirely disposable. Her acting resume up until now has included High School Musicals 1-3, something called Bandslam, and a surprising blip early on (Thirteen). Oh, and a bunch of random Disney show guest spots.

Enter Sucker Punch. I know it’s early to be speculating on this film – the trailer has only recently been publicized, and deciphering the plot line is a sticky tangled mess, but you only have to look at the (heavily photoshopped) posters to know that this is so far outside of Hudgens’ established acting zone it’s practically on another planet. She appears in a leather-and-nylon heist-style body suit, with lots of buckles, an awesome pair of goggles, and a gun that’s bigger than I am. She looks dirty. She looks a little scary. And she looks like a badass. (The Ultimate Badass title goes to Jena Malone, who not only looks like she can kill you with her brain in her shot, but can now deadlift 300 pounds as a result from the physical training she did for the film.)

Suffice to say, it’s a long way from Disney. It’s also connected to a director known for his gritty, action-filled noir influenced violence films (300, Watchmen, Dawn of the Dead). AND, to top off that already intriguing cake, she’s surrounded by established and capable actors, including Jon Hamm and Carla Gugino. The true test will be to see how she does in the film, but all in all, it looks like a remarkable set-up and could be her vehicle to a more diverse acting career. And if she proves her chops as an action girl star, we’ve got one more kick-ass chick in Hollywood, and that’s never a bad thing.

In contrast, here’s what Zac Efron has been doing (keep in mind, he’s supposed to be the more talented and more successful star than Hudgens): 17 Again and Charlie St. Cloud. Fluffy, romantic one-notes. He did do a pretty good turn in Hairspray, but since that’s SO closely related to High School Musical, I have a hard time thinking about it in terms of advancing his career.

Go you, Vanessa. Show us how a Disney girl can grow up and be awesome.

Inception, and the Problem With Trailers

I saw Inception last night, but that's not what I want to talk about right now. I think the major media outlets and the rest of the world are doing a really good job of promoting how awesome and well-conceived and visually stunning Inception is, so it's really enough to say that I agree with them and think you should all go see the movie right now. What I WOULD like to talk about is the distressing habit of trailers to ruin movies.

Before Inception I watched three trailers: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Social Network, and The Town. Wall Street is a sequel, so it's a pretty good guess that the film will be about Shia LaBeouf following Michael Douglas into nefarious money-making schemes and Carey Mulligan saving them all by being adorable. The Social Network is about all those privacy and copyright issues we've all grown to know and love because we use Facebook every day. These movies are being marketed on their familiarity to us - the trailers can tell us anything because we already know everything. And that's ok.

But The Town has potential to be surprising and exhilarating. Ben Affleck is a bank robber trying to make good in a small New England town, girlfriend and everything. Except that his girlfriend was the hostage in an earlier bank robbery, and it turns out that Affleck was one of the robbers in that incident. Instant drama. But how thrilling would it have been to be watching that movie, and to not know that that connection existed? What a reveal that could have been! Except that it's in the trailer, and now the film pretty much has no surprises for us.

Somewhere, at some point, movie producers decided that audiences didn't want surprises. The biggest evidence of this is the staggering number of sequels and remakes being pumped out of Hollywood; they're practically no-risk, because the litmus test has already happened. And now trailers are performing the same function, by using what should be key plot points as artificial hooks. It makes me feel like studios don't trust me as an audience member, which is ludicrously condescending.

And what's more, we know have PROOF that this doesn't need to happen. What did you know about Inception from the trailers and ad campaigns? Practically nothing - in fact, Christopher Nolan banked the whole profit of the film on not telling us anything. And it worked. Inception made $64 million in its opening weekend, and continues to profit by that endangered species, word-of-mouth publicity. Nolan trusted us an audience to choose to see his film even though (and more importantly, because) we'd be surprised by it. Not only did this make me want to Inception pretty desperately, but it also makes me more inclined to see films Christopher Nolan makes, because he has made me feel like he respects me as an audience member more than other directors or studios. And I appreciate that immensely more than I appreciate being spoon-fed an idea because someone doesn't trust me to "get it."

You know who else makes trailers like this? Trailers that give you a taste of a concept, without telling you much of the story and certainly without giving any plot keys away? Pixar. Remember the first teaser for Wall-E? Some starscapes and that adorable robotic voice. Later, we got to see the little dude gazing soulfully up at the sky, and finally we learned that he'd developed imagination and a personality. That was all. Wall-E made $63 million on its opening weekend. I could also quote you stats on UP and Toy Story 3, because they're similar stories. This isn't quite the same animal, since at this point Pixar has basically proved that they can't actually make BAD movies, but the point is the same: Pixar gives us a taste and a striking visual and trusts us to come to the theater on those legs alone. And it WORKS.

I hope it's a lesson other studios can learn.