2012 vs. The Shining

I know that 2012 (the movie) has come and gone and we're all waiting for the real December 2012 to come along so we can see whether the world crumbles apart or whether Roland Emmerich has a big fat red face, but until then take a look at these two teaser trailers: Roland Emmerich's 2012 (2009) and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Emmerich, or whoever cut the trailer, appropriated the intense and bizarre music and the simple yet effective concept from Kubrick's teaser, and I can't say that I'm against it. It totally works. Even if you aren't aware of the infamous Shining trailer, it is quite, at first, eerie, then horrifying, just like the The Shining version.





That all being said, I think the teaser for The Shining is just that much better, because a) I'm biased to Stanley Kubrick, and b) it's just so much simpler: the one unbroken shot, the building tension, and then the release, which the camera just keeps rolling and is soon completely submerged. But I do like in the 2012 one how the music lines up with the monk gonging the big bell.

All this talk about the movie 2012 reminds me of this great little article on The Onion. How do they churn out such consistently funny pieces?