The Avengers & Mad Max: A Tale of Two Futures in Sci-Fi Trailers

​Two blockbuster sci-fi film trailers are out today: One is the latest Avengers TV spot and the other, an international Mad Max teaser. They're striking, I think, in how they exemplify the two dominant cinematic trends in depicting our future: Sleek, anodyne metropolitanism steeped in robotic blue-greys, versus gritty, close-up apocalypticism doused in dark, blood-stained brown-reds.

The future, according to Hollywood trailers, is either shining robo-toys, arcing polished glass, and bloodless pageantry—a timeless, well-agreed upon construct of tomorrow that's clearly fantastical—or a dirt-caked hell-pit where each flesh wound is rendered in gruesome detail, and the End Times are nigh.

These videos inevitably rack up tens of millions of views—Avengers trailers are to the nerd internet what John Oliver clips are to the regular internet; the first site to share them can reap huge traffic rewards, which is why our platform manager is always trying to get us to post them. (Here you go, Ross! Sorry my Trailer Post is a wonky analysis of film aesthetics and there are no GIFs.)

Take a look at that Avengers 2: Age of Ultron trailer: It's basically Art Deco-inspired futurism dating back to the first Machine Age, smoothed over and rendered in CGI. I mean, the Chrysler building is right there in the opening shot. That aside, the other buildings barely look real, and neither do the gadgets. A haze of video game mist blankets all.

This seems to be the agreed upon 'Sci-Fi Look' du jour; think the nearish futures of the Marvel universe, PG-13 flicks like Oblivion, and every YA dystopia, from the Hunger Games to Divergent. Young adult comic futurism wouldn't look out of place in Silicon Valley startup marketing materials, and it is exceedingly popular.

Its inverse is, of course, the zombie-esque apocalypse futurism of Mad Max 2.0 and the TV adaption of The Walking Dead. There aren't zombies, exactly, in Mad Max, but they're just as savage; bloodthirsty un-humans propelled to a desperate state by the imminent end of the world.

One look at this Romero-on-steroids trailer, and we know we're going to see bones snap and bodies bleed. It's punishment, in a sense; there's a feeling that we deserve this; there will be death, and we'll instinctively look away from the screen. It's deeply pessimistic, if maybe a little cathartic, to think that maybe just maybe the end days will at least be a wild ride.

The two extremes of our Hollywooded future build an interesting polarity, if nothing else; it will either playfully dazzle us, or painfully consume us all together.