The Logan Trailer is Tricking Us

This is regarding a minor detail in the film. There are no spoilers unless you don't want to know precisely how violent this movie is going to be. In which case there's a nice wall of text to help you ignore what I say and gtfo now.

When I first saw the new trailer (which was a great story trailer btw, best I've seen in ages), one shot stood out as seeming a little off. After watching it again to show a friend, I was more convinced this shot was tricking us. Now, if you know anything about how trailers are made, it's common for unrelated shots to be cut together in a way that makes them look like one continuous scene. This is done for the purpose of pitching the story as efficiently as possible. Basically every trailer does that to some degree. If you pay attention to what people are wearing, it can be pretty obvious.

But there's another reason one might hide a discontinuous cut in a trailer: as a way of misdirecting the audience. In these situations, it's not uncommon for the trailer house to select unused alternate takes to better hide what's really going on. Sometimes, they do this to hide a plot twist. Other times...you have what they did in the Logan trailer.

So about 1 minute in, just after establishing the core cast, they create a setup for the oncoming action scenes with a shot of X-23 leaving the warehouse, followed by a reverse shot, then it cuts back to her forebodingly dropping the cuffs she was carrying. Wait a second...what is she carrying again?

Compare those shots. Notice how the goons on the right are suddenly gone? The one in brown pants (He's smart! He wore his brown pants!) should still be in frame. Especially since he's the gun arm guy we see immediately behind the villain a few cuts later. Also, the shiny high tech cuffs should stand out with the sun hitting her through the fence in the wide shot, but there's no glint of steel to be seen. One reason for this could be because the medium shot is an alternate take, or it could simply be from further along in that scene than we're meant to believe. And why would they do this?

Because she's not carrying cuffs...

She's carrying this guy's fucking head

Broad nose, wide ears, sunburnt skin, weird buzz-cut mohawk. All there. But if that's too "UFO sighting" blurry to convince you, I don't blame you. It didn't quite convince me either at first. I thought maybe it's just weird lighting on her bag. Since she's only got it over one shoulder in the medium shot, she might be holding it under her arm for some reason. But then I looked again and realized she had it around both her shoulders in the wide shot (which is more obvious in motion), meaning the bulk of the bag had to be behind her back. Whatever she's carrying in her arms, it's a separate object that magically vanishes in the medium shot. And that separate object is a goddamn severed head.

Which, while in context it's probably awesome, ripping off some dude's head and dropping it at the enemy's feet is perhaps a little too intense a way to establish her character for a trailer audience. But don't be too surprised if a red band clip shows up near the end of April that shows how this scene really plays out.

Submitted January 22, 2017 at 09:10PM by TerminallyCapriSun http://ift.tt/2k42JYv