The new teaser trailer for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is online. Using innovative new technology, I have created an article where you, the reader, get to decide what sort of tone I use in my writing. This is all part of CHUD’s continuing improvement campaign; if this goes well, all articles will be written in this form. All reviews will have positive and negative options, depending on what you would like to read. We’re CHUD, and we live to serve.

Click here if you want to read an indignant article.

Click here if you want to read a jaded, sarcastic article.

Click here if you want to just read the press release.

Click here if you want to read constructive criticism.

Click here if you want to read the excited, loves everything blogger version.

You have chosen INDIGNANT.

The new trailer for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Fox’s naked money grab capitalizing on the success of the first film, has premiered… on the fucking Happy Meal website! How is it that in the final days of 2008 we’re still marketing crappy, anti-nutricious at our children? How morally corrupt must the cash hungry execs at Fox be to tie their film in with America’s obesity epidemic? Why not tie it in with a Healthy Meal, for the love of god? Why not use your ill-gotten gains to actually do something good for once? And that’s setting aside the way that these movies program our children into being consumerist automatons. Change will come some day, and these people will be the ones who feel the brunt of it!

You have chosen JADED AND SARCASTIC.

Shockingly, Fox has decided to sequelize Night at the Museum instead of letting that cinematic masterwork sit as its own piece of art. But hey, maybe we’ll get a look at the deep exciting mythology behind a bunch of fucking mannequins coming to life*. Anyway, the trailer is up at the McDonald’s Happy Meal site – perfect place for the kind of morons who go see movies like this – and it showcases all of the huge comedic potential in this one. Once again Ben Stiller is in a museum, and it’s night! Anyway, the trailer has a nice moment where Jonah Hill threatens to hit Stiller with a flashlight, but that never goes anywhere.

If there’s one bright spot, it’s friend of the site Bill Hader as Custer. He’s not been overexposed as much as everybody else in this film, so I feel comfortable still liking him.

* and why isn’t Kim Cattrall cast in these movies anyway? Hello!

You have chosen THE PRESS RELEASE.

The Night at the Museum Sequel Teaser Trailer!
Source: 20th Century Fox
December 19, 2008

McDonald’s is hosting the exclusive online launch of the teaser trailer for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, at its HappyMeal.com website!

This first-look/trailer event is part of overall promotions deal between the restaurant giant and Twentieth Century Fox, which releases the much-anticipated film, the follow-up to the blockbuster Night at the Museum, on May 22, 2009. Timed to the movie’s theatrical debut, McDonald’s will launch a special Happy Meal collection of toys, which will be available in eight different designs featuring characters from the original Night at the Museum and the upcoming film.

It’s a new “Night” and “Museum” for Ben Stiller, who is joined by several other stars from the original film, as well as new characters from history — including Amy Adams as famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart, Hank Azaria as villainous Egyptian pharaoh Ka Mun Rah, Christopher Guest as Russian tyrant Ivan the Terrible and Alain Chabat as Napoleon. Owen Wilson is back as cowboy Jedediah, and Robin Williams again rides into history as Teddy Roosevelt. The centerpiece of the film will be bringing to life the Smithsonian Institution, which houses the world’s largest museum complex with more than 136 million items in its collections.

You have chosen CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.

The new trailer for Fox’s Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is out, and it’s filled with lots of great special effects and some flat jokes. The original film wasn’t actually as bad as you might think, and it’s the kind of imaginative story that delights kids. Plus it’s not based on some toy line or anything. The truth, though, is that what keeps the first film (and by the looks of the trailer, the new one) out of the pantheon of kid’s classics is the reliance on ‘hip’ comedy. Just check out the new teaser – the statues talking like a screenwriter’s idea of club kids is embarrassing, as is Abraham Lincoln’s bit at the end. It would be funnier, I believe, if the statues were acting period correct. Oh well, at least none of them appear to be rapping.

You have chosen EXCITED BLOGGER WHO LOVES EVERYTHING.

Hey guys! Super psyched right now because the teaser trailer for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Simsonian is online right now! And it’s on the Happy Meal site, which probably means I’ll be able to add all sorts of cool toys to my huge collection of collectibles! Yeah!

The trailer looks AMAZING. As someone who grew up on spectacle films like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Home Alone, I really like movies that in no way tax my higher brain functions. But then again, you know me – just put me in a theater with loud noises and lights flashing on a screen and I’ll probably get pretty excited about it! I love it all!

I couldn’t be more pumped up about this movie. Right now I’m siphoning the video from the Happy Meal site so that I can watch it whenever I want (which will be all the time I’m sure!) and so that I can embed it here so you guys don’t have to keep clicking away from me. And then I’ll Digg it and we’ll get a bunch of hits!

Man, I’m so happy right now about this movie. The release date just can’t get here soon enough! I can’t wait to see what sort of adventure and comedy Shawn Levy has up his sleeve this time! Maybe I should watch the original a bunch of times to get prepared! It’s one of the greatest movies of all time, I think!