Within the last day or two, I’ve come across five trailers for upcoming movies I had never heard of before, and I believe most of these trailers are brand new. There’s something very interesting about them, especially when you put all five of them together like this.

First off, Gods of Egypt.

Let me start by saying it’s interesting to see someone take on Egyptian gods instead of the usual Greek ones, but, at the same time, I’ve been expecting something like this. It’s outside the box, but not very far outside the box. There are so many mythologies to plunge into, and many of them have conflicts between their gods. Egyptian is barely one step removed from Greek, when they could choose Hindu, Sumerian, Russian, Japanese, Aztec/Mayan, African, North American, Chinese, Hawaiian, Filipino, Australian… the list goes on. (forgive me for not mentioning Norse in particular but, while I have a special fondness for it and it’s not been very widely represented outside comic books, it’s also fairly famous)

Instead of delving into any of these, we just go with Egyptian. And it looks very much like Clash of the Titans in Egypt, including a conflict between the king of the gods and the god of the underworld. I appreciate the symbolism, but, please, can’t we have something else every so often?

That said, probably the worst point against this movie is the terrible trailer-fu. They just revealed so much of the movie, I can’t even guess just how much. One god defeats his king, takes his eyes and his throne, conquers Egypt, rules it, and someone interested in resisting finds a thief to steal their god’s eye back, which he does, and he gives it back to the god successfully, and they engage in a war with the enemy’s many minions.

It might have it’s amusing moments, (“We should run.” “Run?” “We mortals do it all the time!”) and I can guess that the rightful king maybe learns something from his mortal servants that makes him stronger, but it doesn’t seem very appealing to me.

Second, The Huntsman: Winter’s War.

Of course, we all knew Snow White and the Huntsman was going to leave something to be desired. Between trying to turn Snow White into some kind of warrior princess, pairing her in some capacity with the Huntsman, and casting Bella Swan, well… yeah. Not surprising.

Of course, with sequelmania running rampant in Hollywood, even lesser films get recycled.

What surprised me is how they are not including Snow White in this, it’s focusing on the Huntsman. Now, I can already see some mistakes because the Huntsman was supposed to be a widower but now what I am assuming is his first love is still alive, and they were both trained to be hunters by the Evil Queen’s sister the Snow/Ice Queen (riding on Frozen‘s coattails, anyone?), and they’re making this part prequel, part sequel, part spin-off, which is a dizzying effort to even contemplate.

That said, this one is already more appealing than its predecessor, if only for having two villains instead of one, and excluding Kristen Stewart.

Next up, The Divergent Series: Allegiant.

This will be short: yet another utopia-that’s-really-not series with young, angst-filled people defying cascading levels of oppression that are all exceedingly stupid. ‘Nuff said.

Then there’s the Warcraft movie.

I am very skeptical about this movie. The stories found in computer games, and games in general, tend to not translate very well to the big screen, ya know? And when you’re dealing with a story as long and intricate as Warcraft‘s, there’s simply no way to represent that accurately within two hours of screen time. So it’s more likely they’re borrowing elements from the game to create a very different story.

I gather that this story will be about the conflict between humans and orcs. Not often a friendly interaction, with warmongers and peacemakers on both sides. Do they really need to have an inter-species romance to bridge the gap?

Finally, Alice Through the Looking Glass.

A sequel involving time travel. How original.

This one has some pretty good trailer-fu. They haven’t revealed the whole plot or many major points, only that Alic is trying to save the Mad Hatter from the machinations of a figure called “Time,” who seems to get along pretty well with Queen Off-With-Their-Heads. This one looks interesting, if also zany and wacky. I’m just wondering about the lighter, funnier aspects that were present in Alice in Wonderland, as there doesn’t seem to be much of that in the trailer.

So, five trailers. What do I notice about them? Well, in addition to mostly looking sub-par in some respect…

Four out of five are based on or continuations of existing franchises. Where’s the originality?!

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good series, properly and well done, as evidenced by my absolute fandom of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But come on! Five trailers come out on the same day, or near enough, and four of them are building on something someone else made! How did we get so… unimaginative?

Sorry, sorry, soap box moment. (sigh)

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention, Now You See Me: The Second Act. So five out of six.

This one has a few interesting twists, such as adding Daniel Radcliffe to play the son of Michael Caine’s villainous character, who’s working with the Horsemen, and replacing Henley with another girl. I know the actress is/was pregnant during filming, but that’s gotta make for an interesting in-movie explanation. Now that we know who’s really who, I’m looking forward to seeing the evolution of the conflict between the magicians and the rich people they’ve made enemies of. Mind you, that’s something of a cautious hope, but a hope nonetheless.