Improbable, Odd Or Funny Trailers

The trailers for Reign of Fire kept claiming that the film was set in 2087 when it wasn't remotely set anytime later than, say, 2020. What the fuck?

Mongolia does not really look all that much like Nevada! Also interesting that most of these have middle eastern-by-way-of-Rimsky-Korsakov scores rather than something more East Asian sounding.



Oh man, that cast—I’m honestly curious about checking this out. These sixties late sword-and-sandals flicks are often ambitious and feature some great performances without necessarily being good (cf. Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, which features Alec Guinness doing beautiful narrations of Marcus Aurelius Meditations…and Omar Sharif in history’s shortest tunic).



Hey, this one actually features Asian actors! It’s the girl from DS9’s the DS9 epsiode “Paradise!” It’s got some Stravinsky! And Heston’s not playing Genghis but Wang Khan, the Nestorian Khan! Some googling reveals that this was actually an (unfinished?) Kirghiz production, which is in keeping with how big, internationally-ambitious films tend to operate. Below is the trailer for Nomad, featuring Kazakh brothers (of Mexican descent) fighting against Dzungarian invader Jason Scott Lee, sponsored as a culture/nation-building exercise by the Kazakh government:



There is, however, a good (not in a high art sense, but in the fun-historical-action-movie-with-a-cast-of-thousands sense) movie about Genghis Khan is 2007’s Mongol, incidentally directed by the same guy as Nomad, I was also under the impression that it was a Mongolian production, but it was evidently filmed in Kazakhstan and Inner Mongolia in part because the Monglian government said it wasn’t a positive enough portrayal of Genghis Khan (spoilers: it’s still pretty positive). While Mongol may be the good Genghis Khan film, its trailer is still hilarious:

All true (and Heston as a Christian Khan would make me want to see whatever remains of it for that alone; there's got to be some Moses camp in that delivery) but they apparently still got a white guy - Richard Tyson - to play Genghis.

I quite like Sergei Bodrov's Mongol; which was meant to be the first in a trilogy that never came, and I admit the Conquerors - even as a film that almost certainly contributed to the death of much of its cast due to radiation - is an utterly bizarre viewing experience as John Wayne tries to play Genghis as some kind of gunslinger (and has a Mexican brother - the racial choices in casting aren't something that stand up to even passing coherency in that film.) I've not seen the Omar Sharif film, but Eli Wallach looks charmingly ridiculous in it.

Anyway I also found this more recent, Japanese-Mongolian co-production, that was actually filmed in Mongolia with the participation of the Mongolian army, but based on Japanese novels about Genghis Khan and with Japanese actors in the principle roles and... well... it looks like this:

Obscure animated religious films.

Mohammed: The Last Prophet*


Ramayana:


Ben Hur:


Princess of Rome:**

*Note, like Moustapha Akkad's The Message, Mohammed is an off-screen presence.

**A movie about the Byzantine mother of Muhammad al-Mahdi, the twelfth Imam, if the religious content is not clear from the trailer.

The only film I can think of offhand is Moustapha Akkad's The Message, in which Emperor Heraclius appears in one scene (receiving ambassadors from Mohammed, per the Islamic tradition that this occurred.)

You'd think it would come up in Hollywood's various films about the Crusades, but Cecil B. DeMille's film on the subject manages to implausibly invoke Russia (with the 'Prince of Russia' - never mind no such title existing at the time - as one of the leaders of the Crusade) while avoiding Byzantium entirely. Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible does include Ivan's observation that Moscow is the 'third Rome' - with the fallen Constantinople implicitly but not explicitly named being the second - but after that nothing comes to mind.

A short history of ancient Egypt through movie trailers. First, the era of the Pharaohs:

Then the era of Cleopatra, which as far as volume of films is concerned is the most important era:

Then anything set after Cleopatra, which is rare but tends to be the Roman Empire in decline (and something something Alexandria):

Malcolm McDowell in the 90s: A short appreciation.

I’d forgotten about this thread and it is awesome. I mean, I get Coccoon for Tahnee Welch but first mentioning Generations for McDowell actually made me laugh.

Omar Sharif, once more an “ethnic” character. Weirdly Jack Palance seems simultaneously both really off-the-wall and perfect for Fidel. Also that was some awful Chinese from the narrator in the Dr. Bethune trailer.

It's rare indeed one finds films with the Byzantine Empire in them.
Here's early on, when the Byzantines still had Egypt:


And this is film about Swedish adventurers:


And we end with this patriotic Turkish film (Erdogan-approved!) about the end of the empire in the conquest of Constantinople.

Mid-2000 video game movies.

Star Trek parodies.

German Nibelunglied films.