Zathura Movie Trailer

Have you ever watched Zathura the movie? It was meant to be a sequel to Jumanji, a fantasy-genre movie which was a great success in the '90s. But Zathura tragically lacked the magic Jumanji has, due to weak plot and characters. The story, in a nutshell, was about two boys who were accidentally trapped in magical board game that sent them to imaginary outer space. Could be interesting, but it fell short and failed to engage the audience.

However, the trailer was surprisingly wonderful. The visuals were based on the old graphics on the game board itself. Displayed as an old game, the drawings on the game board's surface is badly scratched in some places, the color is a bit off, with all the hallmarks of an old skool comic.

And there is where the beauty lies. The trailer makes use of this beautiful drawing, animate them and combines them with actual clip of the movie. Interestingly, although the color of the graphic is a bit off, it blends nicely with the movie snapshot. It effectively portray the imaginary outer-space world in the mind of young boys around 8-12 years.

One interesting technique they used here that I think would be really helpful for any motion-graphic student is the way they chopped up the outer space graphic elements, and animate it separately, to create the illusion of depth in a 2D world. There are rockets, planets, clouds, smokes and of course texts, moving around in a synchronized choreography.

As a person who watched the movie first and then the trailer, I was pleasantly surprised by the trailer. But for those who watched the movie because they've watched the trailer first, they would have expected a really cool movie. It was a good display of how designers could build up something very engaging and thus entice the public to run to cinemas. However the movie turned out, it just goes to show the power of visual manipulation. A very good work at that.

Image from prologue.com

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