2015 Summer Movie Forecast: Desert Explosions With a Chance of Good

What is it, exactly, that’s so unsettling about this trailer? I am exhilarated by it, but I can’t tell exactly why. Is it that the last film George Miller directed was Happy Feet? Is it that the most beautiful scene in the trailer, with the silent powder explosions over the desert, sort of evokes The Color Run™?

The trailer gives us an aesthetic and a few set pieces, and that’s it. If you haven’t seen the original film, the trailer tells you about as much as you already know: Something something wasteland, cars, chaos. Which isn’t unusual — most trailers, particularly for action movies, don’t tell stories so much as they leave impressions. But the impression here is unusual.

It’s orange and warm and the action sequences hold together from shot to shot. The camera doesn’t shake at all! Every single human is beautiful. It’s “almost a continuous chase,” according to its director, which sounds stressful. The only staggeringly large objects are natural, and things fall apart when they collide with one another. There are plenty of percussive sounds but no Inception horn or Michael Bay decaying slo-mo groans. Is the problem that it’s… too orderly? Has Transformers just dulled all our senses and blown all our nerves?