Super Adam Sandler World: The PIXELS Trailer

We've known Chris Columbus' Pixels was coming for a while. Now, the movie that pits some of video games' greatest characters against some really annoying comedy actors (and Peter Dinklage and Michelle Monaghan) has a trailer, and it...certainly features those characters and those comedy actors (and Peter Dinklage and Michelle Monaghan).

You see, the peril of sending a time capsule into space filled with, apparently, working video arcade cabinets, is that aliens might use those video games to rain down expensive CGI destruction upon Earth's cityscapes (and Peter Dinklage and Michelle Monaghan). And were that to happen, the only people who could save the Earth would be a bunch of annoying comedy actors (and Peter Dinklage and Michelle Monaghan). Intriguingly, Adam Sandler seems to have toned down his schtick here, understanding that they're all playing second fiddle to the visual effects.

I'm not one to get up in arms about the likes of Pac-Man being used in a way that isn't "true to the character," whatever that means in this instance. But It definitely does seem cheap to have these iconic designs used as interchangeable destruction machines in a generic, reference-heavy action-comedy. If the trailer is any indication, this is the kind of movie where the leads state the name of every pop-culture icon they come across, both to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge and to instantly give the uneducated full context for the barrel-hurling and fruit-eating. It's also the kind of movie that puts subliminal, vaguely sexist single-frame ads for tie-in games into its trailer. Hey, at least it gets game culture (sigh).

At least Pixels is forging ahead in breaking the fourth wall: even its title describes the process used to make it. It doesn't describe Peter Dinklage or Michelle Monaghan, but that'd be awkward to say over and over again, so I'll allow it.