Johnny English Strikes Again

Not detracting from a noticeably rampant Hollywood affliction of “sequelitis”, Johnny English Strikes Back is nonetheless a sequel that relatively few might recognize as its entries have been released about seven to eight years apart. Including 2003’s Johnny Englishand 2011’s Johnny English Reborn, which both earned $160 million worldwide, the series is a send-up of the Bond franchise, probably drawing inspiration from the Austin Powers trilogy (1997 - 2002).

 Strikes Again sees Rowan Atkinson back in action as a bumbling MI7 agent. While best known as “Mr. Bean,” Atkinson’s brand of comedy shines here, while also giving him the ability to have a speaking role and to fit a bit better amongst the broader cast, something that “Mr. Bean,” taking after the Charlie Chaplin school of comedic miming, was never intended for.

The trailer opens by taking advantage of the fact that few are expecting a sequel to Johnny Englishright now: a solemn cello is paired with a sombre drone in the upper strings against a shot of the London Eye; an incredibly sophisticated MI7 headquarter is presented as a trailerized version of Bonnie Tyler’s “I Need a Hero” is sung against stark images of phones off the hook and a few action shots. 

The ruse is revealed, however, on the word “hero,” which is contrapuntally juxtaposed with the image of Atkinson’s famously goofy visage, as he raises a martini glass and opines that someone is “looking particularly beautiful tonight.” It turns out there is a second reveal, as we realize he is actually, for some reason, teaching this gesture to a large class of schoolchildren. 

At 0:38 we’ve reached the second third of the trailer, and with it, after the reveal, a marked change in tone, with a rollicking rock riff pausing only on cue for the comedic dialogue, with the occasional trailer-signature “winding down sound”for good measure. 

At 1:18 the music changes track to more of a stomping groove as various other cast characters and new gimmicks particular to this entry are introduced, such as a virtual reality gag. 

By 2:00 the final third of the trailer is in play, which, while keeping the same music, has moved from presenting an assortment of clips to a more extended scene involving magnetic boots. At 2:12 we get the main title card, and at 2:20 there’s a moment of synchronicity between the music and image, as the music seems to be building towards a climax, only to end in Atkinson’s thudding body as he falls off a cruise liner’s railing, emphasizing Atkinson’s penchant for slapstick humour. The music returns at 2:28 with the release card (“coming soon” – more precisely, September in North America and October in the UK). 

Strikes Again’s trailer reaffirms many things that we already know of the modern comedy trailer, including the trope of the fake-out opener. It is interesting, however, that the editors would go for a completely new rendition of an existing Bonnie Tyler song rather than anything fully new or pre-existing. It could be that by presenting such an over-the-top song in this context, it could act as a subconscious indicator that the world of Johnny Englishis fundamentally satirical and more than slightly ridiculous. The effort to lampoon the slow pop song trope in a way that completely lifts from Bond openers, including the slowly rising and falling chromatic embellishments, is noticeable.

– Curtis Perry

Westworld Season 2

For the Season Two trailer of recent hit HBO show Westworld that dropped on March 29th, the music is a true highlight. Credited to series composer Ramin Djawadi, the music embodies the second season’s tagline – “chaos takes control.”

While it is another trailerized cover song in an environment where such an approach has become if not tired then certainly a norm, this rendition of seminal grunge band Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” is impactful on multiple levels. The first and most immediate aspect of note might be its intertextually allusive power. For a series that is a “dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin,”fn the themes implied in the title of “Heart-Shaped Box” resonate with those of Westworld, a series that is nothing if not an elaborate rumination on suffering and consciousness.

The trailer begins with a 19-second dialogue between Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright); both of them are “hosts” (artificial beings) who have both recently become aware of their apparent inhumanity. According to biographer Michael Azzerad, songwriter Kurt Cobain said that the song was inspired in part by documentaries about children who have cancer. The music video, meanwhile, was a surreal landscape that included imagery from The Wizard of Oz, and various other absurdist, surreal elements such as artificial crows. In this context, the choice of song is generationally powerful; those in the teenage demographic at the time of the song’s release are now well into their 40s and well in the position of recognizing what the song stands for and how it ties into the themes in this HBO drama.

All that being said, this pairing also works not least because the music is quite powerful in its own right, whether or not you might be aware of the original song. At first, the piano simply outlines a minor chord, and even the keenest listener would be able to identifiably discern that a cover song is underway.

By 0:38, however, the piano plays the quasi-famous riff in full, and there is no doubt for those familiar with the tune. At 0:50 a cello enters with the main melody and the dialogue continues over a montage of violent and dramatic scenes. At 1:15 we get a subtle pick up of energy; with every repeat of the riff, the intensity slowly builds. At 1:27, the staccato strings enter and we get additional harmonization to the main melody that wasn’t present in the original.

At 1:35 we get a brilliant musical takeout as everything cuts out except a closely-mic’d piano playing a tritone (known sometimes as “the devil’s internal”), which in turn allows the chorus of the song at 1:38 to enter in full epic bore, with pounding orchestral percussion and blaring brass. The jarring tritone that acts as the chorus’ hook works in tandem with the clearly mounting and ever-escalating conflict. At 2:14 we get a slight shift in the melody to direct it towards a climactic moment, rather than the usual descending tritone.

A black screen at 2:14 and a soft but clear major piano chord connote a bookending return to the opening aesthetic. Dolores’ smile enters in conjunction with a descending chord that chromatically modulates keys; it is bittersweet – just as we know Dolores’ smile is a brave one, fraught with all of the concerns presented to us earlier, the two major chords are separated by a minor third, and there is an underlying sense that something is fundamentally wrong.

Dolores asserts, “why on earth would you ever be frightened of me?” – and the Westword and HBO with release sate title cards quickly enter at the end as the piano plays the tritone motif once more, with a static hiss in the background and the last few notes fading out. It’s an ending as creepy as it is intriguing.

Westworld’s Season 2 trailer joins a fairly short list of paratextual media that very convincingly justify its sustained use of a cover song. It’s most reminiscent of the campaign for last year’s Logan, which used Johnny Cash’s cover of the Nine Inch Nails track “Hurt.” In both trailers, both the musical motifs and their connotative thematic resonance feel effortlessly compatible with the trailers they underpin.

– Curtis Perry